In Which I Nearly Freeze

It's been a fairly quiet week, so I'll keep this short. It's Sunday evening, and I've just gotten back from a long walk through Yaroslavl' that has in a way reaffirmed for me the beauty of this city. Recently I've been getting rather frustrated by this fairly small, very provincial Russian town, and I really was wishing I were in a properly modern, western city. It took was a two hour walk on a bitterly cold (less than 20°F) and windy afternoon, through the snow that has accumulated over the past week, to lift the frustration that has building in me in the past few weeks. Somehow the snow makes the city look much prettier: the 17^th century churches look less shabby, the streets look less dirty, and the people look less bitter and angry.

Seeing as how we have about a month left of classes, my professors have started to load us up with work somewhat – for instance my politics professor expects us to write 3-4 pages in Russian for our papers for every class. So I've been quite busy with school work, and thus haven't had too much time to wander around or waste time. Much of the rest of my time has been spent trying to figure out how I'm going to arrange meeting my big brother Teddy (or Ellis) somewhere in the world in late December. At first we discussed meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan, but then we decided that would probably be too complicated, though it would make for a good story. Then we were trying to decide between Turkey, and Northern India. We seem to have decided to meet in Delhi on Christmas, though no reservations have been made yet. I am really excited about it, and quite amused by the prospect of boarding a plane in cold, snowy Moscow, and getting off in decidedly less cold and snowy Northern India.

That's actually all I have for now; perhaps I will have more to say next time. Though it's likely I won't have a whole lot to report until I'm finished with classes on December 15^th. Oh, and I put up my pictures from Moscow on Shutterfly, along with the pictures I took on my walk today. Again, it's fromtherodina.shutterfly.com

In Which I Travel About

After a fairly long break from my blog, I feel it's time to give an update on my life. When you, faithful reader, last heard from me, I had a moustache, and my host had just recently returned from the hospital. Much has happened in the meantime, such as me shaving my moustache, and our mid-term vacation. We had ten days off from the end of October to the beginning of November, and people in the group went their separate ways. Two girls went east to Irkutsk and Mongolia, and two girls went west, one to Spain, and one to Prague. One went south, to Tbilisi, Georgia, and one went north, to Arkhangelsk. I, however, went with three friends first to St. Petersburg and then on to Moscow. We had originally planned on going to Novgorod as well, but that just didn't work out. After a twelve hour train ride from Yaroslavl' to St. Petersburg in which we befriended the strange Russian couple that was across from us on the train, we arrived tired and stinky to our hostel fairly near the center of the city. We did a lot and saw a lot in St. Petersburg, and I'm not going to go into everything that happened. What I will say is, go to St. Petersburg. It's a really beautiful and interesting city, though I don't have much nice to say about the weather. It rained a good portion of the time we were there, and we only got around 4 hours on sunshine in 4 days. Oh, and we had about the strangest coincidence I could possibly have expected – as we were getting on the train in Yaroslavl', I noticed three American girls getting onto the same train car. I thought it was interesting that there were other Americans in Yaroslavl', but didn't think about it beyond that. Then, when we arrived at our hostel, the three Americans were there waiting to check in. It turns out that they are volunteering in Yaroslavl' at orphanages and such. And then the next morning, we heard a few people in the hostel's common room speaking with English accents about Yaroslavl'. We went out to investigate, and it turned out there was a group of English students studying in Yaroslavl' that had turned up at the same hostel in Petersburg. So there were three separate groups of people, all studying or volunteering in Yaroslavl', staying at the same hostel. Weird. Anyways, after four days of doing the normal touristy things, seeing my good friend Davey, and meeting with my freshman year Russian professor who moved back to Russia, we got on a train headed for Moscow.

We arrived in Moscow in much the same manner in which we arrived in Petersburg – tired, smelly, and not really wanting to do anything. We didn't really do anything that day, other than shower and nap. In all, we spent four days in Moscow seeing all the sights, though I didn't actually get a chance to go into the Kremlin. Fortunately that will likely be rectified in December when my sister, father, and aunt arrive for a tour of Moscow, Yaroslavl', and Petersburg. We met up with my friend Alexis, who is also a Macalester student, who is studying with Middlebury in Moscow. We went to the cemetery where many famous Russians are buried, such as Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol', Nikita Khrushchev, and more recently, Boris Yeltsin. Our last day there consisted of going out to the Sparrow Hills (formerly known as the Lenin Hills) for views of the city of Moscow, and of my favourite building, Moscow State University (MGU). I would say the highlight of my time in Moscow was walking down to Red Square at midnight with a friend, in light snow. They light up all the buildings on the square at night, and GUM was covered in Christmas-type lights. It was really beautiful. We returned to Yaroslavl' last Monday, tired and loopy, and somewhat poorer. But it was a really fun trip, though I'm glad I'll be able to go back to both cities to see the things I missed.

Oh, and by the way – if you're interested, I put up some of my pictures from St. Petersburg on Shutterfly, and am working on getting the pictures from Moscow up there as well. The address: fromtherodina.shutterfly.com