Week 1

I can't believe I have already been here for a week! It flew by, but it went well. I had to be told by my Russian Communist History professor (who is Russian) that it was Chinese new year (oops) and I have officially fallen on ice in front of russians, who probably rolled their eyes at how incompetent I am at walking. Friday night AIFS took us bowling to relax after a long week full of meetings and paperwork. They said that "snacks" would be provided, but apparently what they really meant was "feast." We inhaled the salad (the big bowl in the middle of the picture below), which had bell peppers!! I had been craving bell peppers all day and somehow they knew. We also had a somewhat Caesar salad (I think you can see it in the picture below) as well as some garlic-y stuff (top right) and salami as well as other various dishes, all accompanied by orange juice. It was magical.

 On Saturday they took us to Pushkin, the town where Pushkin went to school and we saw a pretty cool monument of the great poet himself (below)

 This is Catherine's Palace, which was absolutely beautiful.

 Here is one of the rooms, which is covered in gold and the ceiling is one of the largest paintings in the world

 It snows a lot here, if you havent guessed, but the upside is that it always looks beautiful!

  Cultural lessons of the week: Dancing to techno in Russia requires way more arm movement than I ever expected and you can bargain here! Even for cab rides! Also, Kelcey and I found this cool souvenir shop and walked around for a while yesterday.  So I'd say that week one was a success. In this second week, I have both my electives (I only had Communist Russia last week) and all 3 of my language classes. I'm not sure if we have any group activities/excursions, but I really hope we do because so far, they have been really fun!