Past Adventures

My schedule for teaching is pretty great.  I teach Mondays at 10:15 to 12:15 (Primary), and then again from 5-7 (Level 1), Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 4:15-6:15 (Primary), Wednesdays 5-7 (Level 1), and then Fridays from 10:15-12:15.  So I can sleep in, or do whatever I want.  Andrew has the same schedule as me.  It is nice because I can go on adventures with him.  Jessica comes with us too.

On last Thursday - the 20th, Andrew, Jessica, and I went to this place called the Summer Gardens.  It is the most famous gardens in St. Petersburg.  It is the location for Peter the Great's first Summer Palace in St. Petersburg.  It was a really pretty gardens to see.  There are a lot of fountains, statues, and ya know, trees.  Jess and I took lots of pictures with the statues, and the fountains.  We even considered taking home one of them.  Haha, well, Jess did.  The paths were framed with green fences, and lots of trees with leaves turning the different shades of yellow, and orange.

When we were about to leave, we found a pond with swans in it.  Jess' host mom gave her bread to feed the swans.  So she threw the bread to the swans.  The swans didn't eat it.  We couldn't figure out why.  We turned the corner, and there was a sign, of course in Russian, that said something like "Don't feed the Swans"  But again, there was a bunch of kids standing in front of the sign, so we wouldn't have seen it anyway.  We then went to the old KG for lunch.  It was good.


The next day, which was the 21st, we went to the center of the city, and got our student cards because we are taking Russian classes.  It started to rain, so the other girls went to the apartment, and Andrew and I went to the Hermitage.

The Hermitage.  That place.  It is a place of wonder.  Because we are students, we get into the museum for free.  It is so great.  The price to get into it is about 500 rubles, or more.  So it is really nice.  We were there for about 3 hours, and I feel like we didn't really see anything.  The Hermitage was founded by Catherine the Great.  The part that we went to was called the Winter Palace.  When we walked in, and went to the Ancient Egyptians exhibit.  It was pretty cool.  Then we saw a bunch of statues of Greeks Gods.  Those were cool to look at.  We eventually saw a bunch of painting, including 2 Da Vinci's, and other famous people.  I'm not exactly sure who they were because we got tired of reading, and a lot of them were in Russian.  We also saw an exhibit about finding motion.  They had sculptures that showed movement, and little models of places with movements.  The last thing we saw were the interior design of Russia in earlier centuries.

Funny story.  So we were walking from room to room, and there are doors between the rooms.  (The Winter Palace, was a home to Catherine the Great)  Well... in the Hermitage, everything is greatly decorated.  We passed through a room, and I looked at the doorknobs.  They were these ruby looking things for the handles.  They looked cool, so I really wanted to touch it.  So I did.  The lady in the room, kinda yelled at me.  I figured she did, but I don't know.  It was in Russian, so, I don't really know what she said.  But there is no where in the museum that says don't touch the doorknobs.  It only said don't touch the art.

On Saturday, we made Apple Pie with Sveta.  It was quite delicious.  It isn't like American Pie.  This pie only has flour, sugar, eggs, baking soda, salt, and apples.  It is more like a streusel.  It made a great breakfast too.  Then Andrew, Jess and I went on an adventure.  It was great.  We were trying to find the Cruiser Aurora.  We got off the metro, and started to walked to where we thought the right direction was.  On the way to the Cruiser, we saw a military building, got almost yelled out by a army guy, jay walked across the highway, ran into a construction site, and finally got to the Cruiser, and it was closed.  So basically we walked a bunch, and didn't get to do what we wanted.  But that was okay, we had an adventure anyway.  

Then we called Marci to see what they were doing.  They decided to go on a boat ride of the city.   Andrew called them, and then we met up with them.  But first we got Subway.  It was super good, and I throughly enjoyed it.  While we were waiting for the other girls, Jess and I were waiting on the corner.  Andrew called us over, and showed us this black guy handing out roses.  He told us to walk by to see if he would give us one.  Well apparently, we weren't up to par.  We didn't get a rose, oh well.  Then the other half of our party showed up, and we got on the boat.  The boat ride was amazing.  But it would have been better if we weren't freezing.  We got a tour of the city through the rivers, and we got a new perspective of the city.  I'm glad that we decided to go.

On Tuesday, Andrew and I went to the Political Museum of Russia.  That was very informative, but at the same time, it was really boring.  The student cards that we got, have seriously saved us a bunch of money.  We got in the museum for free, if we wanted English audio, it would have cost though.  All of the signs were in Russian, so it wasn't very fun.  Then we found out that they had English binders.  It was informative, but also very boring.  In one room, Andrew set off the alarm.  Haha.  He was a little to close to the exhibit.  So the lady came to see what happened, and kind of laughed at us.  I think that happens a lot.  We left the museum, and got on the metro.  We were on a train, and it went the wrong direction.  I was really confused, but Andrew said don't worry about it, and that we would get to class just fine.

On Thursday, Andrew, Jess and I went to the Alexander Pushkin museum, which was the apartment he lived in before he died.  In case you didn't know, he was according to Sveta, the Shakespeare of Russia.  He wrote poems, stories, etc.  I found out a lot about him that I didn't know.  He died in a duel at age 37.  It was a huge loss for Russia.  The duel was between him, and this guy who wanted his wife.  He was a proud man, and wouldn't stand down, and that was his downfall.  We were glad that we got the English audio, it was very informative.  It made the whole experience better.

Those were my fun adventures for the week!  I still can't believe that I'm here in St. Petersburg, it is crazy!