The Weather Outside is Frightful...

Yeah, I know - it's not even Thanksgiving yet, and I'm already doing Christmas songs. The weather here is seriously messing with my Texas-accustomed mind. We had our first proper snowfall yesterday (ie, snow that stuck). Actually, it's still sticking around, primarily in the form of pretty banks of white snow and sort of treacherous icy sidewalks. I've been wearing my boots in the snow - for some reason, it makes me laugh.

According to the Russians, winter doesn't really start until after the third snowfall. By my count, this is third, but by the Russian count, I think this is just the first or second. We were telling our teacher about all the snow earlier this week, and we got told that part of it didn't really count as "snow". This distinction confused (and continues to befuddle) all of the Texans - as far as we're concerned, white stuff falling from the sky that isn't sleet = snow. But apparently, there are finer distinctions.

Other exciting nonsense in my life:
I went to the ballet twice this week - Swan Lake on Wednesday, 1001 Arabian Nights on Friday. The same company produced both, which is quite impressive - that's a lot of dancing to remember. As with the Nutcracker, some "artistic liberties" were taken... Somehow, Swan Lake ended up with a happy ending. Swan Lake is a tragedy - everyone dies. That's what I explained in my intermission synopsis (somehow, I'm the one who always knows most of the story - it's odd). And then, at the end of the ballet, the prince and the swan went off together, all happy, completely oblivious to their interspecies dating issues. The orchestra was kind of lacking, too - the harpist was choppy (just commenting, not that I could do better, but no one pays me to try, either) and the oboe player was having a very rough night. He kept cracking the top notes of the main melody, so it was da-daaa-da-daa-da-HONK.

1001 Arabinan Nights was really, really short - just two acts, clocking a not-so-impressive hour and 20 minutes. The choreography was okay, but parts of it definitely felt like a musical, except no one was singing. On the whole, though, the costumes were amazing and the music was much better than Wednesday, so it was certainly worth the $6.

There's nothing much to report about school. We leave on Tuesday for a week-long excursion to the Caucauses, so don't expect to hear from me. (To the rest of you: I check blogs daily - you should write more often.) It's another 24-hour train ride each way, which is always fun. It's supposed to be warmer there, so that'll be exciting. And no, we're not doing anything dumb, like going to Chechnya.

Things I've learned today:
-Walk on white snow, not on gray snow. Gray snow generally means a million other little feet have already trod there, packing the snow down in yicky ice.
-Krasnaya Shapochka candy is really good.
-You can make pancakes ("americanskii blinni") from some form of cake mix. (My hozhaika's son made them this afternoon - one of their previous exchange students had taught him how).
-Cirok with cocoa is amazing. Cirok, for the uninitiated, is essentially a small bar of cream cheese coated in chocolate. The aforementioned variety is chocolate cream cheese coated in chocolate. It takes some getting used to, but now I'm hooked. And the chocolate stuff is way better than the kind I had with breakfast - plain cream cheese, coated in chocolate, with raisins in the middle. (Raisins?)
-Russians seem to value foreign language skills more highly than Americans. (Actually, pretty much everybody puts more emphasis on foreign languages than we do.) Anyway, my beloved bookstore that sells English-language literature (I bought Mill on the Floss today - it's on my reading list, and since I finished all 1000 pages of Don Quixote, I needed some new and educational.) also sells books in Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Japanese. I found the same version of Marcelino, Pan y Vino that I read junior year in high school. I may buy a Spanish title and something in German, so I can brush up on those skills, too.

Photos: I know some of you who read don't have access to my Facebook account, so links to all the albums posted are below.
St Petersburg:
http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2138813&l=fcded&id=9214311
http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2138988&l=3290c&id=9214311
http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2139130&l=7eb3d&id=9214311
http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2139245&l=dee96&id=9214311
Voronezh:
http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2139363&l=b06f8&id=9214311

Of Gyms and Drugstores

So I went to the gym today. As I do many days. Because there's really not that much to do here, and since chocolate is one of the other major things to do here, I have to make things balance out. I'm going to pay for it tomorrow, I think, especially since today was weight-increase day for me, so I upped the amount I was lifting on most things. Maybe if I just keep telling myself I was a good girl for going, it'll be okay. At least the showers were fixed today - I went yesterday, only to be met with broken showers. I then had to run home post-workout and take a cold shower (hot water is hard to get during the day) so I wouldn't smell funny for church.

Church was fun - yesterday was a "club" for older kids in the local orphanage and for kids who've aged out of the orphanage. I still didn't understand most of what was going on, but the people are nice and the fellowship is good. Zhenya, who's about 13, I think, seems to have decided that I'm at least mildly entertaining in my attempts to follow what's going on, was kind enough to make sure I understood what I was supposed to be doing in the games and such. He's the self-declared paparazzi, so he's got a lovely shot of me sticking my tongue out. I shudder to think what's going to happen to that when he's done with the Photoshop.

Post-gym, I had to walk all the way to Frederich Engels* to buy a banana, so I stopped at the drugstore to buy some shampoo and conditioner. You know how you can stand on the hair products aisle for about an hour, considering all the various options, weighing the promises and the murky distinctions between brands and subtypes? (Ok, at least I can do that for a long time.) Now imagine trying to do that with an aisle full of products labelled in a language you have to concentrate to read. Fun times. What's up with the not actually labelling the contents of the bottle? It's great that's a new scent or for color treated hair, but what is it? Who at the advertising agency decided that the consumer didn't need to know if it was shampoo, conditioner, or some random concoction (and Russians love those) in that colorful plastic bottle? Seriously. On a random note, Palmolive (whom I mostly associate with dishwashing liquid) is a big name in beauty brands here, it seems. Then again, the company that makes my hairspray (or hair lacquer, as the can translates to) - Wella - also has a storefront on our street that sells paint products. Weird.

All of my pictures from the Volgagrad weekend are now up. Captions and translations to come. They're publicly viewable via Facebook at http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2131471&l=0482c&id=9214311 and http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2132166&l=ccb6a&id=9214311 I'm planning to blog about the weekend, too, but that's going to have to wait until I have a lot of time and concentration, as I want to do all the war memorials justice.

Have a wonderful rest of the week!

*Yes, we have a Frederich Engels street - it's one of the main streets in the area. We also have a "Revolution", "9th January", "Karl Marx", and who knows what else. Oh yeah, and a huge statue of Stalin...

That good ol' college try

First off, I think this link may work for pictures : www.russiantrip.snapfish.com/snapfish . If not, inform me again, and I'll give up and curl into a little ball under the desk at the Internet cafe.

I saw Chelsey's secret twin on the bus today. I was mildly spooked. Privet, Chelsey :-)
Obviously, I successfully rode the bus to school today. I'm still getting over my stomach bug or whatever, so I didn't really feel like making the walk.

I went to class on a proper schedule today for the first time this semester. (Everyone else did yesterday, but I was at home sleeping.) We had phonetics (yuck), grammar, a bit of history (to fill the time, we think), and speaking (for idiots). I also had History of the Russian Military (in Russian) this afternoon. I'm really excited about that one - the professor seems pretty cool, even though he doesn't speak any English at all. We had to take pictures by university (only 2 of the 4 Baylor girls are taking that class) and number ourselves in relation to the role.

After morning classes, my small group found a pizza place that actually makes fairly believable pizza. Ok, so one of them was an interesting shade of fluorescent yellow, but the rest seemed pretty normal. I'm still getting better, so I didn't eat any. They really like to douse everything in rosemary here, which kinda grosses me out.

Laura and I found the yarn shop today, so we have supplies to work on scarves and whatnot. I'm excited - I'll have something to do, finally. I'm rapidly running out of English-language literature to read (Lindsey's going to have to share her reading list, I think...). If you've ever noticed how busy I stay during the year, it's partially because I'm not very good at not doing anything...

It's getting chilly here, which means in another month or so, I'm going to be dying of cold. Excellent. I should probably get around to buying a coat, maybe, possibly, perhaps.

I <3 the lot of y'all. Be good!

And Sara doesn't know how to work the computer...

So, as has been pointed out, the link provided below is less than functional because Snapfish is dumb. Excellent. If you love me and want to see my pictures before I get around to straightening things out (which won't be today - I'm sickly), ask me for an invite and I'll happily toss one your way. Erica already gets one because she's cool and like her.

Pictures! (Kinda)

Just a quick note to let y'all know that a) I'm still breathing and b) I have, in fact, uploaded some pictures. They're viewable at http://www1.snapfish.com/home/t_=105169794 . Unfortunately, it's registration required, so I should probably move them to somewhere else. That's a later thing, though.

Have a wonderful weekend!