Marine Corps Ball

After getting home on Saturday from St. Petersburg, I took a nap before starting to get ready for the Marine Corps Ball. Instead of getting ready at my place and riding the metro over in my fancy dress, I packed all of my stuff and took it over to the embassy compound, where I got ready with Vienna, Josue's girlfriend. She turned out to be super cool, so it was fun to get ready together. It reminded me of high school when I would get ready for formal dances with my friends. We took a van over to the ball, where we met up with Elliot and Josue.

After a cocktail hour, they had the beginning of the ceremony. I was right in the front so I could see, but they did it far enough over on the other side of the room that I couldn't get great pictures. Elliot was the youngest Marine, so he was in part of the ceremony. After that part was over, we had dinner and had the second half of the ceremony. They had a buffet with a million different choices. All of it tasted really good so it was hard to choose and I ended up with a super full plate. After dinner was over, we took pictures, mingled a bit and then went to dance. Everyone had a great time dancing. I have a bunch of really great pictures. After a while, it was getting close to the end of the ball, so we went back to the embassy to change clothes and go out. We went to a club called Fabrique. It was fun there, but we didn't stay super long. When we were back in the car, I had a long chat with the driver in a funny mix of Russian and English. I was trying to practice my Russian, but I didn't know a bunch of words and he knew English pretty well, so it was really fun. The whole experience of going to the ball was so great. It was a perfect night.

Since we were leaving to go to Egypt on Wednesday, Erin and I had planned on hanging out with Elliot and Justin on Monday and Tuesday. We had two different dates planned out, neither of which worked out how we planned, but we had a great time anyway. We wanted to watch Harry Potter but it was only playing in Russian then, so Erin, Justin, Vienna, Josue, Elliot, and I went to a German food place for dinner. I tried escargot for the first time and it was delicious! I just figured everyone said that it was good to sound cultured, but it really was good if you didn't look at it for too long.

On Tuesday we had planned on going ice skating, but the rink collapsed a couple days before so it wasn't going to be open for another week. Instead, we planned on going to KFC and then making snowmen by the river. We couldn't find KFC so we ate at a Chinese food place instead. Elliot and I ordered almost everything off the menu because we were so hungry. It was pretty funny when they were bringing it out because we realized how much food we had actually ordered. After dinner, we decided not to make snowmen because the snow wasn't good enough and we went back to watch a movie. Even though everything didn't work as planned, we're pretty good at having a fun time anyways.

Marine Corps Ball

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St. Petersburg

While in St. Petersburg, we stayed very busy, waking up fairly early every morning and staying up pretty late every night. Since I have a hard time keeping all the museums and palaces straight, I'm just going to write about my favorite/most memorable parts of the trip.

One of the days, we went to a "museum of curiosities" that was basically a museum of everything that Peter the Great liked to collect. The oddest, and by far the most interesting, part of the collection was an entire room of deformed fetuses. Some of the descriptions should be redone, in my opinion, so that they don't call any of them "monsters". Besides that, it was interesting to apply what I learned in Humbio core to what we saw at the museum. There were babies with a single eye, a ton of conjoined twins, and a lot of other developmental problems. A lot of people in the group were bothered by what they saw, but I found it very interesting. The creepy part was when some of the fetuses were dressed in clothes. Apparently that was so they wouldn't scare as many people, but I found it to have the opposite effect on the people that I saw.

One day it snowed really hard the night before. I keep getting reminded that Russians are not excited for snow like Americans are. When we saw the snow, we ran around in it, had snowball fights, and looked like little children. The Russians were much less excited, and continued about their days. While the snow was really fun, when it melted, it made walking on the sidewalks exceedingly difficult. I now understand what people were warning me about when they said the slush was terrible. It was really slippery and got everyone's shoes wet. I much prefer the snow.

On Thursday night, we went to see Don Quixote at the ballet at the Marinski Theater. I really liked it because it was more playful and a little less serious than Romeo and Juliet was when we saw it at the Bolshoi. It was still really good, though. At the first intermission, we went to get champagne and met another American student studying in Russia. He seemed really nice, but he tried to convince us that he was from Russia. That doesn't work too well when you have a very clear American accent. A couple people got caviar because it seemed like the place to get it, but I tried theirs and it tasted awful. I've only had caviar three times now, but i'm pretty sure I don't like it.

Mass graves

The hardest thing to visit was the cemetery for those who lost their lives in the Siege of Leningrad. There were 600,000 people buried there in mass graves marked only by the year and civilian vs. military. There was a wall with a very nice poem dedicated to those buried there. My favorite line was "Death would sooner be afraid of us than we would be afraid of death."

I left St. Petersburg a day earlier than the rest of the group in order to get back in time for the Marine Corps Ball on Saturday. When I got on the train, I was excited to be in the same compartment as a family with a little daughter because I figured they would go to bed early and sleep until we got into Moscow. But, when the father asked me if I drank Russian vodka, I knew I wouldn't be getting much sleep. As much as I wanted to sleep before the ball, I didn't want to be rude, so I joined the two Russian men in my compartment in drinking the vodka. It was pretty harsh, but after a bit, I realized they were sort of testing me to see if I could drink it without asking for juice. If I would have known, I would have just gotten juice at the beginning.

As for my general impressions of St. Petersburg, I don't really understand why everyone raves about it so much. I had a good time there, but it isn't as different from Moscow as I had imagined. The streets were wider and straighter so traffic was a little less horrible, the buildings were prettier, and the metro was nicer but not as well put together. There are definitely pros and cons to both St. Petersburg and Moscow, but Moscow feels like home at this point, so I'm inclined to say that I like it more there.

Before St. Petersburg - opera and shuffleboard

It's time that I finally update my blog. We got delayed on our flight back from Cairo, so I have a little more time in between papers to update.

At Liga Pap after the opera

After coming back from Istanbul, we had a week in Moscow before leaving again for St. Petersburg. The highlight of the week was when Elliot and I went to see MacBeth at the Bolshoi. We hadn't made specific plans for dinner so we ended up running around in our opera clothes looking for a decent place to eat. After wandering for a while, we found a sushi restaurant that looked pretty good. The sushi there was as good as the sushi at home. I'm no sushi expert, but it was pretty good. When we got to the opera, we were surprised by how good our seats were. We were in the sixth row from the front, right in the middle. It was kind of difficult to figure out exactly what was going on, even though both of us knew the story. At intermission, we went to a snack area that was much nicer than the one I had gone to when we saw the ballet a couple weeks before. Everyone around us could speak at least three languages (mostly Russian, English, and French) and were switching between them with very little difficulty. I'd like to be as good as that someday. I had some really yummy strawberries and cream and champagne, followed by a juice box to add some extra classiness. Haha. After the opera, we went to Liga Pap, where we were definitely overdressed but had a good time.

Oh, also I have fallen in love with shuffleboard. My second favorite part of the week was playing shuffleboard back at the embassy. I am not the best at it, but it is so much fun! I'm getting better and last time, Erin and I even won!

Istanbul Day 5

I realize I'm about two weeks late finishing this entry, but here it is:

The palace we visited

On Sunday, we decided to go over to the Asian side of Istanbul. We walked down to the ferries and got onto one right away. It only took about 15 minutes to get to the other side, which seemed super fast after the previous day's boat ride. When we got off the ferry, a couple of us were really hungry so we stopped to get some food before setting out for the day. Thank goodness we did, too, because it was a long day before we ate again. We started exploring before we really knew what there was to do on that side of Istanbul. It's not a touristy side at all, and we didn't really see any tourists while we were over there. We walked for a while until we found a palace. We were only allowed to explore it on an official tour and we didn't want to wait for the English tour, so we decided to tag on to the tour that was given in Turkish. The tour guide was confused why we were on the tour since we didn't understand a word he was saying, but it was fine. We took a bus back from the palace to the ferry. It was one of the craziest bus rides I've ever been on. I didn't feel like I was going to die or anything, but it was really fast and swerving around corners. Definitely eventful.

The group on the ferry

Once we got back to the European side of Istanbul, we ate lunch at another kebab place. We decided that we wanted to go to the Egyptian Spice Bazaar. Eduardo and Teava mentioned that they had gone the day before and saw a bunch of pet food stuff, so when we were pointed towards what we thought was the bazaar and saw pet food, we thought we had found it. We kept walking through and only saw pet food, pigeons, leeches, dogs, roosters, fish…but no spices! We were debating whether or not we had actually found it, but decided to leave since we couldn't bring puppies back to Russia, no matter how cute they were. Right after we got out of the "pet food bazaar" (the only name that really fits it), we immediately saw the spice bazaar. It was similar to the big market place, but it had spices (hence the name), which were really fun to go through and smell.

We left the bazaar and walked to a pretty park, where we stayed until we had to go back to the hostel. It was nice to just sit and take it all in. We headed back to the airport, ate some dinner, and went to wait in the line at the airport. It took soooo long! By the time we got through, we were literally sprinting through the airport. We didn't want to miss our flight. But, when we finally got to our gate, our flight was delayed. They didn't say how long it was going to be delayed, but everyone was getting antsy because we knew we were already getting back late and delays would only make us more sleepy the next day in class. Finally, we got on the plane and made it into Moscow safely. Eduardo's host parents were nice enough to pick a few of us up (him, me, and Jean).

Istanbul was probably my favorite place I've ever visited. Everyone should go if they get the chance. It's amazing!

Istanbul Days 3 and 4

Sorry this is taking so long! I'm almost done with the other entries.

On Friday, we went around in smaller groups and explored the city. In the morning, Jean, Lilly, Erin, and I went to the bazaar again to shop for more gifts. I spent more money than I had intended, but I bought some really cool things.

In the afternoon, Jean, Ellen, and I decided to go to the Turkish Bath since everyone had been talking about how great it was. We didn't really know what to expect, but we decided to get massages since it seemed like a nice way to relax. When we got there, we were handed a towel and a pair of panties each and shown to our changing area. We changed and managed to find the area where we entered into the bath. We walked through one room into another and then we were led into yet another room. This room had a giant marble slab in the middle and was really warm - not quite sauna hot, but it was pretty warm. One of the attendants in the room came up to Ellen, who was in front of us, and ripped off Ellen's towel. She tried to protest, but to no avail - the towel was already laying on the slab, waiting for her to lay down and get massaged. Jean's towel was taken off next, followed by mine. We all felt a little awkward at first, but everyone in the room was wearing the exact same thing, so we tried to get over it. We saw other people getting massaged, and we realized we were about to get into a really awkward situation. There wasn't any way around getting massaged, so we decided to just suck it up and deal with it. Our "massage" wasn't so much a massage as it was a full body scrub by an old, sweaty, obese woman in her underwear while we were wearing only bikini bottoms. To say it was awkward is to seriously understate our feelings at the time. After our scrub/massage, we went into another room to the hot tub. When we left there, our towels were gone and we didn't know where to find new ones. There weren't any new ones in the room where we were, so we ventured topless into the next room where the attendant was covered head to toe. Thankfully, she pointed us in the direction of new towels and we went back to the dressing rooms to change. It was definitely a bonding experience between the three of us and a funny story to tell everyone when we got back to the hostel.

Everyone met back up at the hostel to go to dinner with Jack and Nancy at a nearby restaurant. The food was pretty good, and it was nice to eat all together. After dinner, we headed back to the hostel for a belly dance show. The belly dancer was wearing five-inch heels while she was dancing - impressive! She brought up people from the audience to dance with her (it was a small group - I don't know if I'd really call it an audience). It was pretty entertaining to watch. Two people in our group - Eduardo and Erin - got up to dance with her. Erin had mad skills, too.

On Saturday, we went on a trip to the Princes' Islands by boat. On our walk over to Nastia and Liza's hotel, we met some stray dogs who decided to be our friends. They kept play-fighting, but it made a lot of the people in the group nervous. The dogs kept lagging behind and then running up to catch up with us. One of the times they were running to catch up, one of them ran straight through my legs, almost making me fall over, and reminded me of the time in middle school when my dog ran into me on the beach and broke my toe. We got on a bus at the hotel and drove to the water, where we got on the boat that was going to take us to the islands. It was a really long ride over, and it was foggy, but we had a really good time on the boat, playing cards and chatting. The islands we went to theoretically didn't have any cars (except for emergency vehicles), so they were really quiet. It was really nice. We made friends with a bunch of the stray dogs on every island and had a pretty quiet day wandering around the islands. On the last island we went to, we got to ride horse carriages around the island. It was my first time in a carriage, and it was really fun. We even raced another carriage.

Our boat

Jean, me, Lilly, and Grace on the boat

The adorable puppy we named Scout

After we got back from the islands, we went to dinner near our hostel, which took a really long time, but was really good. While we were there, we saw a fire truck outside with its lights on, so we were really curious what was happening. When we got outside, it smelled like smoke, but we couldn't find a fire anywhere. We went back to the hostel, and after about 5 minutes back there, the electricity went out. We didn't know why it went out, but the people who worked there distributed candles and we all went into the 6-person room downstairs and played games. I was feeling kind of sick, so I decided to go to bed early. Apparently the electricity came on in the middle of the night, but I wasn't awake for it.

Istanbul, Days 1 and 2

This update is going to take a while, so I'm splitting it up into different days. Here is the update from Wednesday and Thursday.

On Wednesday after class, I hurried home and started to get packed. I hadn't packed the night before because I was being super lazy, so I had to figure out how to get everything for Istanbul into one school-sized backpack. I managed to fit it all (minus a towel) and I walked over to Yugo-Zapadnaya (my metro stop) to meet everyone and get on the shuttle bus to the airport. Getting through the airport wasn't much of a problem, but Jean got delayed getting through immigration because they printed her visa in a strange way. It was valid and everything, but they immigration people were confused. So, it took a while for her to get through, but it didn't take any "fees" or anything. While we were waiting for our flight, we played cards in the waiting area. We boarded on time, but the flight took forever!!! We took off about 30 or 40 minutes after we were supposed to and the flight itself took forever to get there. After we arrived in Istanbul, the first thing I noticed was how much friendlier everyone was. People smiled and didn't look like you just killed their puppies like they often do in Moscow. After everyone got their bags, we bought sim cards so we could make local calls and we got out some Turkish Lira to spend. We had an airport pickup scheduled and there was a man waiting for us when we got in.

Erin and Grace dancing to pass the time at the airport

After checking in at the hostel, we were hungry so we decided to go exploring for food. Everyone was calling at us, trying to get us to eat at their restaurants. Our first walk down the street was unsuccessful because everyone was a little overwhelmed with the yelling men. Once we got to the end of the street, we decided to turn back and pick one. One man approached us and we took a chance and came in to get some food. The place we chose was called Topdeck Cafe and Phillipe (the owner) was super cool and really nice. He talked to us for a long time about how much he liked the US and all sorts of other things. We had a great time there, but eventually we had to go to sleep. Lilly, Erin, Jean, and I all shared a 4-person room and everyone else stayed in the 6-person room.

On Thursday, we woke up and had breakfast (hard boiled eggs, bread, tomatoes, and apples) upstairs in the hostel before leaving to go see Hagia Sophia with the Kollmans (our professors). It turned out to be super close to our hostel - only a 5 minute walk. The building was one of the most impressive buildings I've ever seen in my life. It was huge and gorgeous. There was a place in it where you could make wishes by turning your thumb around in a hole in the wall, which we all did. So we'll see if that comes true…

Making a wish

After Hagia Sophia, we got some corn on the cob from a street vendor. It was possibly the worst corn I've ever had. I didn't want to have corn again for a while. I also tried a chestnut. I wasn't a fan, but maybe it was because the man making them was the same man making the corn. We got real food after that (kebabs) from a place down the street and went over to the Blue Mosque afterwards. All of us girls wore scarves on our heads (I had bought a pretty new one a couple hours earlier) and we were supposed to wear long skirts, but they didn't stop us when we were wearing pants. I don't know if it was because they just wanted our legs not to show and the pants achieved the same purpose, or if it was because they didn't have enough wrap skirts at the front to cover all the women wearing pants, but it all worked out. We took off our shoes, but the other barefoot people I saw were wearing plastic covers on their feet and I didn't have anything. Oops!

Inside of the mosque

The group split up after visiting the mosque, and some of us went to the Grand Bazaar while others went to the Basilica Cistern. The Bazaar was a very interesting experience. I don't want to give away what I bought (they are mostly presents for people), but the people selling them were very forward. They loved using pickup lines to get us to stop. It was a very interesting strategy. We decided they must all learn the lines from a certain place, because they all had the same ones. Mostly they called us "angels" or "Spice Girls" (I'm not sure where that one came from). The pickup line I heard the most was "You dropped something!…..my heart." Jean said the real line says "jaw" instead of "heart", which would make a lot more sense. The second-most heard pickup line was "You must be from paradise" or "Are you from China?" (again, not sure about that one). It was a little overwhelming, but there was a bunch of really cool things at the bazaar.

When we came back from the bazaar, we all met up to go to dinner. We decided to walk over to a bridge that had a bunch of restaurants underneath it. First, we got lost, so we missed the sunset we had wanted to watch. Then, we ended up walking waayyyy farther than we had to in order to get there. Once we got to the bridge, we had a hard time choosing where to eat. We haggled for a good price for dinner and chose a place that was okay.

After dinner, we went to Topdeck Cafe again and hung out with Phillipe again. We hung out there for a long time and some of the group left, but a few of us stayed to hang out longer. One of the bartenders let me mix behind the bar and we met a lot of really cool people. We learned some games from some British people visiting, and we met some other college kids from California. We had a great time, and I have about a million pictures from that night.