Update

Ok.... So I haven't written in a while.
I'm not too sad though. I don't think I have ever done all of my homework until now. I hope I can keep it up for the next 8 weeks. The most amazing part (at least to me) is that most of those homeworks are not being collected or graded. It was very hard to do some of them, since I had no idea how to do the math, it was frustrating. I started only doing a little homework each day and it ended up working. I have also been watching movies and random things like that.

All of the classes are still going well. On Monday, I spent three hours in the pool with the kayaking class. We are going to the river in two weeks, so this pool thing was like a quick introduction. Unfortunately, I'm still in pain from that.

This week I have more work to do than last week, and as usual, I'm not doing it. I don't know how I end up finishing it, I guess it just works somehow. On Friday I need to go get my car photographed somewhere so that the insurance company will insure it. I called the place they told me, and they don't work on weekends, so Friday seems like the best option.

I can't think of anything else to write. I know more things happened last week, but oh well.

First Days of School

Yesterday (Monday) was not too bad. I started by going to Physics class at 8am. I then got back to the apartment to figure out what I had or didn't have. I went to WalMart to buy some food and other things, then to OfficeMax to buy some more stuff. I tried to hurry because I thought I had my kayaking class at 4pm. I showed up a few minutes early, no one was there. After a while, I decided to check online to see if there had been any notes about the class posted after I last checked. There were. The class doesn't start until September 21st...
I then went to my Russian class, which is great, because there are only four students! I think that's one of the best class sizes for a language class.

Today I had Engineering Math at 10am. The professor seems pretty cool. The only problem was that the book we all bought is not the one we will be using, so I went and returned it at the bookstore. I also had Programming for Engineers. The professor there is in charge of all the robotics and stuff in the Electrical Engineering department, which is what I want to do, so I thought that was awesome.
After that was Complex Variables, which is yet another math class. I'm told the professor is from Hungary, which explains his accent, but he is a great teacher. I think the different accents help me stay focused, instead of listening to the same monotonous ones some professors have. Finally, I had Russian again. Now I think I will go to bed, I'm going to try to go to the gym tomorrow morning. I also start working then.

I'm Back

Ok, so I finally have some time to write this thing. I realize that if I try to write what happened the last two weeks in detail, I will never finish, so here's a quick summary.

My flight back from Russia was not too bad. I was awake for like 24 hours straight, so it wasn't fun. I arrived home about 11:30pm on Sunday night.
On Tuesday morning I had my wisdom teeth pulled. I was pretty miserable for the first two days, but after that, it was fine. By Friday I was eating sushi and other strange things.
I hung out with friends almost every day and packed everything on Tuesday.
Wednesday morning around 6am, me and my dad left Miami in the car to go to North Carolina. We arrived around 7pm. The next morning at 6am, we left to Rochester, and arrived somewhere around 6pm. Friday and Saturday were spent driving around buying stuff, getting my car registered, and unpacking.

Today I finished setting everything in my room and took my dad to the airport around 4pm. I then went home and did a project that was due today about my trip in Russia, I almost forgot about it. After that, I called my friends from Kazakhstan and went to visit them at their new apartment. Only one of them was there with her boyfriend, so we ate some really good Kazakh food they cooked and later went bowling. It was a very fun night.

Tomorrow I will go get a much needed haircut and buy some of the last things I need for school.

Quick Update

I haven't forgotten about the blog.
I had my wisdom teeth taken out this morning so I don't really feel like doing anything.

As I feel better, I will start writing stuff here.

Last Day in Russia

Today I took a train to St. Petersburg. I left around 8am and arrived around 11:30am.

I took a taxi to the hotel, but since check-in was not until 2pm, I left my bags and walked around the city.
I went to the artillery museum, which I enjoyed a lot. I then walked some more, took the metro, walked again, and got back to the hotel. I finally got my room and went out again.

I didn't really know what to do, so I first got some food. I later kept walking and found a movie theatre. I bought a ticket and saw a french movie (in Russian of course). Amazingly, I understood the plot and laughed a lot. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like the movie is going to come out in the USA. I found the IMDB entry for it here: http://imdb.com/title/tt0482088/ . It is called Hors de Prix or in Russian, Роковая Красотка.

Hopefully tomorrow I won't have any problems at the airports, if I do, I will sure write about them here.

Last Day in Novgorod

Yesterday was my last day of work. Other than that, all I did was buy a few gifts for people.

Today is my last full day in Novgorod. Unfortunately for me, this trip has almost come to an end. It seems like it all happened very fast. I can't believe 50 days can feel like 5. Well, I can believe it, I just don't want to.

I packed most of my things already, but as always, I will not be done packing until one minute before I have to leave tomorrow morning. I will be taking a train to St. Petersburg tomorrow morning. I will probably go to a museum, stay in a hotel overnight, and finally go to the airport Sunday morning.

Today I woke up at 8am, which was pretty good considering I haven't slept very well in a while. I had breakfast and went out around the city. I had originally planned to buy a specific item, but then I couldn't find the store, so I kept walking around. I had a few ice creams and discovered an interesting flavor of the frito lays chips. I saw the pink packaging and bought it just to see what it tasted like, the flavor is crab. I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to have crab flavored potato chips, but I definitely didn't like them. I took a picture I will later put online.

I was probably walking around for 4 hours. I went to a few stores and bought some more gifts. The reason I spent more time than I had planned was that they closed off one of the main avenues in the city. I had walked to a store in the middle not realizing the buses weren't going there. When I got out of the store and headed for the bus stop to take the bus home, I realized there were no cars in the street. I walked for about half an hour before I was able to get a bus home, which was only one bus stop away.

Now I have to continue packing or doing whatever else I need to do before tomorrow...

August 15

Sorry for not posting as often as before, I have been quite busy over the last few days. I spent some time yesterday getting my reservation for a hotel in St. Petersburg. I will go there Saturday morning. As expected, I didn't buy anything yesterday. I did walk around a mall to see what was there though.

This morning I woke up at 7am without my alarm clock. Since it has been rather warm, I am forced to leave my room windows open to let the cool air in, unfortunately, this also lets the sounds from all the cars, trucks, buses, people, and everything else on the street. Since I started going to work at 10am instead of 9am yesterday, I realized I have to take different buses. Somehow I manage to pick the only route that changes with the time of day to go to work. Now I have to get on a similar bus, get off at another stop, and switch buses. I guess that's fine because I only have one more day of work.

After work I decided to go buy some stuff. I got myself an ice cream (which are great here) and walked across the bridge to the other side of the river. I found the store my sister had recommended and bought what I went there to get. I then proceeded to take strange buses to random bus stops that eventually led me home. Tomorrow I will have to be more careful. I have a bus pass that allows me unlimited travel in buses and trolleys, but it expires today. From now on, it is 10 rubles per ride. It's not much, but I much rather buy an ice cream than get on the wrong bus and have to pay.

I also found out that my sister is finally in London. The only problem is that her luggage is in Finland, and it might stay there for a few days. I hope she will do ok with what she has. I know she has friends in London that will help her out. The family is very worried though.

Hopefully after work tomorrow I will finish buying what I need and I will be able to relax on Friday.

Less Work

Today I showed up to work only to find out there was no new group of students. I was really looking forward to meeting new people. Since only the supervisors and the locals were there, we didn't do a lot of heavy work. We mostly cleaned and measured everything for the pictures and drawings. They later told me that for the rest of the week, work was starting at 10am, not 9am, which was a nice change. I will only work for three more days, so it's not really a problem.

After work, I showered and ate lunch with the family. As usual, we all argued because me and my sister don't always want a lot of food, which is always given to us. I have resorted to pulling my plate from the table when they want to serve me more food, they still laugh when I do it. I also had a cappuccino, but without the coffee. (I just thought that would be an interesting fact.) We later exchanged email addresses and things like that because it is the last day everyone is here. Hopefully we will stay in contact.

Tomorrow I have to get myself to go buy all the things I have put off until the last week. For example: Pretty much everything. I bought a bottle of vodka and a Russian flag, but that's it. I also need to figure out exactly what to get. I asked my family where to get some of the things, so that shouldn't be a problem. I can't really write what I am buying because I rather it be a surprise to the lucky person(s) who get it.

Last Full Sunday

Today I woke up fairly early, even thought I went to bed late. I spent some time on the computer while the rest of the family woke up. I didn't really do anything interesting. I listened to music, read some stuff, and relaxed.

Later in the evening, two of my sisters friends came over and we all had a nice dinner. My sister cooked some Swedish dishes, which were very good, and we later had cake and ice cream. They talked about many things, I didn't really understand most of them, but every once in a while something would make sense. When they ask me questions I don't understand, I am usually able to answer them after a quick hint in English, but I was so tired, I didn't know when they were talking to me. It was pretty funny when I heard someone say something and then everyone stops talking and looks at me. I do know how to say “You were talking to me?” in Russian, so at least I can ask. We ended up talking about Facebook and mySpace and I tried explaining in Russian why Facebook was better, but failed miserably. I also found out there is a Russian clone of Facebook, which was pretty funny.

Later at night, my sister started worrying about packing and didn't know what the allowed weight was for the luggage. After several minutes of looking in FinnAir's website, we realized it was printed on the airplane ticket. They only allow 20 Kg for checked bags, which I don't think is much. Let's just say that my sister wasn't happy, but oh well, what can we do?

Dinner with Family

Yesterday I set my alarm to turn on at 8am because on Saturday work starts at 10am. At 7:30am I was woken up my my host mother telling me I was going to miss work. Apparently she didn't hear me when I said work started later on Saturday, but oh well.

I went to work from 10am to 2pm, it was the last day for the group of students from Moscow, so I wanted to go say good bye. I didn't find anything because we mostly did cleaning. By cleaning I mean taking all of the dirt from the wooden logs and other things in the ground. Once they are very nice and clean, they photograph them from all sorts of different angles with very nice digital cameras.

After work I went home, had a small lunch, and showered. I told my family I wanted to invite them to a restaurant, so they picked Napoli, which is a local Italian place. They made me wear my nice clothes, they didn't want me to go in jeans and a t-shirt. I'm used to Miami, where even in the nice restaurants, shorts and a t-shirt are allowed.
Around 6:30pm we took a taxi and arrived at the restaurant. I had never been there before, it is a very nice place. We took some family pictures outside and went in to eat. My host mother called in yesterday to make reservations, which I didn't even think of doing. Me and my host father ordered pizzas, grandma got some sort of fish dish, host mother got oysters, and my sister ordered shark. I also got a tequila sunrise and a piña colada for my host father. They had never had a piña colada, and they liked it.

After dinner, we walked around the city and went to visit a friend of the grandma. The friend had just left to go for a walk so my host father ran somewhere and found her. They later sat on a bench and talked for a while. My host sister and I kept walking, she showed me some good restaurants, old churches, and other interesting buildings. After all that, we all took a taxi and headed back home.

Once at home, I showed my family some more pictures of Mexico, which they really enjoyed. Later, I made a CD with a bunch of those pictures for my sister. I think it was around 12am, I was playing some Spanish music that my sister had asked for when I realized the sun had set. I don't usually stay up late enough to see darkness.

Pictures

Today we found some interesting artifacts at the archaeological dig. I found some sort of carved wood thing, we didn't know what it was, but they said it was important. One of my digging partners also found a frying pan, which was very interesting. It was pretty much a round piece of metal but the fact that it is from 1000 years ago, makes it very interesting.

After work, I went home and had dinner. During a dinner conversation, we started talking about my family, and the grandma said she wanted to see pictures of my family. I brought my laptop and started showing her. Later, my host mother came and sat down. After some time, the grandma left, and later, my sister showed up. After my host mom left, I kept going with some pictures of Mexico, Miami, Rochester, etc... Around 12:30am we decided to continue tomorrow and go to sleep. It was very nice to spend time with the family, the pictures always cause conversations to start, and I get to practice my Russian. I still need to work on the words for nephew and niece, which I keep confusing with the words for a traditional Russian meal.

Stupid Fish

Yesterday was not very eventful, except for the stupid fish. I was going through the dirt (wearing my dish washing gloves) and felt a sharp sting on one finger. It ends up that a sharp fish bone broke through the glove and stung my finger. The top broke and stayed in my finger. It took me about 10 minutes to get it out. Now whenever I grab anything, it hurts. I hope I don't get some 1000 year old disease from the thing, that sure would confuse doctors.

Today I figured out the fastest possible way from my house to the work site. After two weeks of looking at different bus routes and calculating the shortest walking distance to and from the bus stops, I can now say there is no better route. It will only help me for a week and a half, but oh well...

Rain = No Work

So it rained a lot on Saturday... It was sunny on Sunday and today. I arrived to work around 8:30am and saw several puddles on the ground. I figured that was nothing and waited for the rest of the people to arrive. When they did, the supervisors said to come back at 2:30pm. I went back home, listened to some music, ate my lunch, and went on the computer.

I then went to work and found nothing cool. After work I went home again and had some dinner. Now I'm here talking to my friend from Kazakhstan on Skype, which is totally awesome because I hadn't talked to her in a while. And she also helped me write some emails in Russian, so I don't mess up too bad.

Food

Yesterday (Saturday) was pretty uneventful, so I will not wire a blog post for it.

My host family has been asking me to cook some Mexican food. I only know how to make a few things, and getting the ingredients is pretty darn hard. I asked my real parents for some recipes over the phone, so they gave me a few. I asked my host family about some of the ingredients I would need for certain recipes. Some were in the dictionary, but they had never hear of them, and some were just impossible to translate, even using the Internet.

I found out there is a large supermarket a few bus stops away from my house, so this morning I got on a bus and went there. I found limes (which are impossible to get anywhere else for some reason), some cheese I think might be ok, and some tortilla resembling bread. When I got home, I made some lemonade with the lime juice, water, and tons of sugar. Then I found out that the grandma can't eat sugar, which apparently I missed the whole time I have been here. They liked it, which was a step in the right direction, I have no idea what else I'm going to make.

In the afternoon, I also bough a Teflon frying pan. I showed the grandma and told her my mom loves those. She thought it was for my mom, but when I said that it was a gift from my mom, she stood up and had a very happy look on her face. Hopefully they will enjoy it, at least they won't have to use as much butter and oil when they cook on it.

Today I woke up around 7:30am thanks to the sun (and my allergies), so hopefully I will sleep well because I have work tomorrow.

Another Day (I'm out of ideas)

So I didn't really get much rest last night.
After I posted the last blog entry, I was called to the kitchen to have some drinks and snacks.
Another guest came in, a young guy who I later found out was a friend of the family. He spoke Swedish too, so I had no idea what was happening. He also spoke perfect English, so I was able to talk later. Again, we had vodka and the ladies had some other drink. I'm glad the vodka bottle was not full to start with because they wouldn't take no for an answer. I ended up going to bed around 12am again.

Today I woke up as usual and went to work. I found some cool bones and a big claw, which I thought was pretty cool. My partner found an amber ornament, which was quickly taken by the supervisors. I went to lunch to a nice restaurant with two other friends and had some really good meat with cheese and vegetables. I later tried to get ice cream before heading back to work, but apparently the store closed from 2:30pm to 3:00pm, so I was out of luck. Instead, a friend bought some kvas for me to try, it wasn't as bad as I expected.

The second half of the day was not as eventful, I didn't find any interesting things.
I wonder if there will be another impromptu dinner at 10:30pm tonight. I guess you will find out tomorrow...

First Real Day of Work

Today I woke up around 7am as usual. I showered and had breakfast as usual. I went down to the bus stop and almost got into the wrong bus. I forgot I had to go straight to work, and I was getting on the one to school.

I arrived to work around 8:40am, and since work starts at 9am, I had some time to relax.
I worked until 1pm (With 10 minute breaks every hour) and went to lunch with some friends. We got back around 2:30pm to start work again. I didn't find anything very interesting today, most of the time I spent cleaning for pictures. During the last few hours, when I got to dig, I found several animal jaws, with the teeth still in them, and other cool animal bones. We also dug many pieces of ceramic pots, but those are very common.

Now I'm back home and I am exhausted, time to rest!

Last Day of Class

Today I went to school and took my final exam. I'm not sure how I did, but I don't think it was bad.
After class I went to work and arrived around 12pm. I worked for an hour and then had the lunch break. I went with some of my Russian co-workers to some underground cafeteria in a government building. I don't know how they found it, but the food is good and not expensive. After lunch, we went back to work.

Around 6pm we got out of work. I headed to a restaurant where we had the dinner with all the people that came to study here. Most of them are leaving on Friday. I had some stuffed chicken (At least that's what I think it was.) and other good stuff. We finished around 9:30pm I believe.

When I got home, I was invited to eat some apple pie and something else. The apple pie looked like a pizza from far away, I learned it was a big mistake to actually say what I saw. I hope I didn't offend my sister too bad...

I later found out that the ladies from Sweden spoke English very well and one of them a little Spanish. We spent a few hours learning Swedish/Spanish/Russian and figuring out what we were all saying, it was a lot of fun. I ended up going to bed around 12am, which wasn't too bad.

More New Friends

This morning I was faced with the same problem as before, I wanted a 21 ruble water bottle but only had a 500 bill. Instead of making the lady have to go get tons of change, I bought a bottle of vodka and a water bottle so that I would get less change. I wanted to get some Russian vodka to take home as a gift, so it really was not a waste of money, not to mention it is very cheap here.

After school today I went to the same restaurant from yesterday. This time I had two things that seemed a lot like empanadas. One filled with cheese and the other with meat, they were delicious. I also had a margarita for no reason at all and it was very good. My friend had some macaroni and cheese, which I thought was pretty funny.

When I got to the dig, I had to look for the supervisor so he could assign some location to me, and I also had to ask me to put me with Russian students. There is an American student from my program that is also working there, and they wanted to put us together, so I told them that we want to learn Russian and they split us up. I met more people from the Moscow group, they were very nice and talkative, so I got to practice a lot.

Also, two of my host sister's friends from Sweeden are here, which is pretty cool, except that I don't undertstand a thing they say...

Tomorrow I have a final exam, so I guess I should be studying...

New People at Work

After Russian class today, I headed straight to work. I got there around 12:45pm so they told me to come back at 2:30pm. There is an hour and a half break at 1pm, so it was pointless to start working then. I walked around the kremlin and then decided to get some food at a small restaurant near the dig. I was there for a while and around 2:15pm, I headed back to work.

When I got there, I saw a large group of people arrive, one of the supervisors said they were a group of students from Moscow. We didn't start working right away because they had to explain what to do to the new people, so they told me to start working alone. After a few minutes a guy and a girl from the group walked over and introduced themselves in English. I introduced myself in Russian, and they said they understood English just fine. I explained that the only reason I'm there is to learn the language, so after that we only used English when I didn't know how to say something or when the supervisors spoke very fast. Unfortunately, I forgot their names, I guess I can ask them again tomorrow. They will be here for two weeks, so hopefully I'll meet some more.

I worked until about 6:15pm and headed home. I was given an insane amount of food for dinner, which I initially refused, but later came to an agreement and ate it. My host family always gives me too much to eat, always more than they eat themselves, and since I don't like being rude, I eat it, but enough is enough. I hope they understand that I don't want to eat massive amounts of food, and if they don't, I guess I'll have to stop eating it.

Ok Sunday

Yesterday I forgot to take my allergy suppressing medicine (Claritin) and, as expected, I woke up around 6:15am sneezing and with an itchy nose. I have really bad dust allergies, and just sitting in my room, I can see the particles float around. It's very dusty, but when I take claritin, I can manage.

After showering, I stayed in my room for an hour or two so I wouldn't wake the family up. Around 9, we had breakfast. After breakfast I went to my room and took out my map of the city. I found some streets that looked interesting and planned a small walk to get there. I left the house around 10am. The streets were pretty empty, but as I got further away I started seeing more people. I walked into a movie theater and saw the posters of the movies they are playing. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place because I only saw two Harry Potter posters and another one advertising some sort of zombie-horror film in 3D, which should be interesting.
I kept walking, saw several stores, walked in to all the open markets I could find. Some of the fruit stands have things I have never seen before, but not a single one of them has mango. For some reason I decided to look for mangoes everywhere, I guess I was bored. I still haven't asked any of the fruit vendors if they know where to get them, I might try that next week. I later managed to go to some interesting neighborhoods, the kind that makes me feel uneasy to walk through. I ran into a train station and decided to go the other way. I got back to the main street I was on before and went into a pharmacy to buy some latex gloves for work.
I forgot how to say gloves in Russian, so tried describing them to the sales lady. After I realized it was pointless, I took out the ones I used last week, they were full of dirt and ripped, she laughed. I then decided to head home, while looking for mangoes in other markets of course... I ended up buying some marshmallow-like things that looked good, but only after a few minutes of misunderstanding with the salesperson. She put them on the scale and pointed at the price, it said 2.55 p., So I took out a few coins to pay her. She said no and repeated the price. I heard twenty something this time, but the price on the scale said 2.55 p., so I tried to explain to the lady. She ended up writing down the number manually, apparently the decimal point was wrong on the machine, but how was I supposed to know?

I got back around 11:30am. I read another chapter of my Russian history book, went on the computer for a little, and later took about an hour long nap. After I woke up, we had some stuffed peppers for lunch (I would have never guessed that they taste good!) and some other things. Next I went to another store to buy sunblock for work. You may think that the sun is not strong here, but after seeing that my feet have lines because of the sunburn and my sandals, I decided to take care. I'm going to be working from 9-6 in the sun every day, I hate when my skin peels. I also bought another movie, and this time I did get the real, not pirated version. I asked to see it, but the sales lady took out another one that was half the price, and told me I should get that one. I tried to explain I want the legitimate version, but I have no idea how to say that, so I just kept saying I wanted the other one until she understood.

I think I have test tomorrow, but I'm not quite sure what it is on. I'm going to check my notebook to see if I wrote it down somewhere. So that's it for today.

Weddings

Today (Saturday) was a very interesting day. I woke up about 10 times from 6am to 9am, when I finally decided to get out of bed. I showered and had breakfast with the family. After that, I went on the computer for a little and read some emails. Around 11am I left and got on a bus to go to work.

Since someone asked me how long it takes me to get to work, I timed myself each step of the way. I waited for the bus for about 15 minutes. I arrived to the final stop in another 15 and walked the rest of the way. The bus timings may not be accurate because it is Saturday, but the walking should not change a lot from day to day. I walked at a fast pace and it took me almost 20 minutes to get to the dig.

Now to the interesting stuff...
When I got there, I saw the people I met yesterday working and said hi. I then went to the supervisor and asked him where I could work for the day. He told me to work with a girl that was working alone. As soon as I sat down to work, we were given a 10 minute break. The people from yesterday came over to talk, and so did a few others. As usual, they interrogated me about many things, where I'm from, why am I in Russia, why I work at the archaeological dig, what do Americans think of Russians, do I like the pyramids in Mexico, do I like Russia, and many more... I love when this happens because I get to practice my Russian and meet people while doing it. During the next two breaks, I met more people and had more [very] short conversations. I learned that most of that group is from a big city [whose name I didn't get] near the Ural mountains. This was their last day of work and they are all heading back home tomorrow. I hope the next set of people I meet are just as nice.

Once we finished, they did all sorts of strange things. Since it was the last day, they carried out some archaeological dig traditions. They all covered their eyes with shirts and other things and held hands. Some of the local people guided them through a small path with lots of plants, trees, and rocks. In the end they arrived back to the dig, where they had hidden some sort of chocolates [with wrappers] in some dirt boxes, so they dug them up and ate them. Then they gave everyone apples and proceeded to sing the archeologist's hymn. The only reason I know what they were singing is because I saw a piece of paper that said “archeologist's hymn” (in Russian of course) while they were singing. They also did some sort of pledge that they were now Novgorodian archaeologists and received some pretty cool antique nails to take with them. After that we all headed home.

I didn't time my trip back home, but I think it took longer because that bus took forever to arrive. When I got home, I read a chapter of a book I have and later had lunch. Since I was a little bored, I decided to go take a walk, so I what I thought to be a small shopping center near where I live. Being my curious self, I went up stairs, into strange hallways, and got myself semi-lost. Apparently there are four floors in a building I thought was not part of the shopping place. I also found a small market under everything else. They sell fruits, fish, meat, clothes, cheese, and many other things.

I forgot to write about the title! The reason I chose that title is because over the last two days, I have seen many newlyweds. Yesterday I was walking around the kremlin and saw several brides taking pictures near some of the monuments. Later I saw two groups of cars all nice and decorated with flowers and balloons. The first or second car had the newlyweds (one was a limousine) and then there were about ten more cars behind them. Whenever I saw them drive by, everyone was honking their horns. Today I saw a few more, I heard them coming from far away.

So that's it for today, I wonder what I will do tomorrow...

Work, Finally!

This morning, the sky was cloudy and the forecast said there was going to be rain throughout the day. I put on my jacket and went to school. After two hours or so, I looked out the window and the sky was blue and the sun was out. After Russian class, we went to some stores looking for a flag or something and later went to a museum with a lot of golden artifacts. They were mostly church related, like gold covered bibles, crosses, and other similar things.

When we finished walking through the museum, I headed to work, since the weather was so nice. Apparently I arrived in the middle of a break, because the site was empty, except for three people. I asked one of them if there was work today and he said yes, so I waited until everyone else arrived. After some of the supervisors arrived, one told me to go talk to another one and ask him what I could do. So I went and he told me to work with some other guy that was standing there. Unfortunately, this other guy doesn't seem to enjoy talking, so we just worked quietly. We found many bones, pieces of ceramic, and other interesting things, much more than last time I worked. In one of the 10 minute breaks we get every hour, some people came over to ask me questions, so I was very happy. They first asked me if I spoke Russian, so I said I speak a little. They knew some English as well, so it was fairly easy to communicate. Unfortunately, this was their last day of work and they are all going back to their home towns next week, just my luck. Hopefully next week I will meet more people. Actually, one of them said that they might work tomorrow, and since I don't ever do anything on Saturday, I think I will go and see who is there.

No More Cold Water!

So this morning I woke up and headed to the kitchen to heat up some water for my shower.
Once I had it, I headed to the bathroom to shower. Being strange as I am, I decided to open the hot water just to see what happened. Cold water started to come out, but it wasn't quite as cold as the cold water, so I decided to use that. I started with my hair, and after a few seconds, the water didn't seem too cold, so I opened it all the way. A few seconds later hot water was burning me, but I was so happy, I didn't really care.
I think they had just turned it on because the hot water pipe, which is out in the open and usually very hot, was cold when I touched it before.

Anyway... The rest of my day was not quite as exiting (if you consider the hot water to be). My history teacher had to go to St. Peterburg so I went home right after Russian class, and since it was raining, no work again today.

I hope again and again that it doesn't rain tomorrow. If I go to work, I get to meet new people and practice my Russian, if I don't, I get to sit here at home for most of the day.

Uneventful Day

Today was pretty uneventful. We still have no hot water, but this time, I got a small bucket with hot water from the kitchen in order to shower. I shaved and showered without suffering too much. After that, I had breakfast and went to school.

During class, it was raining outside, which pretty much meant no work for the day. After history class, I got on the bus and headed home. When I arrived, I had to explain to the grandmother why I didn't go to work. I don't think she quite understood because she had an unhappy/disappointed look on her face. How do I explain that if it rains, the earth is moist, and therefore they don't do archaeological digging? I had lunch, did some homework, programmed a little, and then felt a need to go out. I went to the movie place and bought two DVDs. They were only about $4 each and this time, I made sure they were legit, unlike the last ones I got.

During dinner I drank a shot of vodka with my host dad and now I'm here. The interesting thing is that it happened after the discussion about me not liking beer and other alcoholic beverages. It was a funny series of events that led there. It wasn't too bad, I have had worse, this one didn't burn my throat. Now I still have nothing to do, so I think I'm going to sleep early today. I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow so I can work...

Cold Water

So today I woke up as usual and headed to the shower. When I opened the hot water, nothing came out, and I heard this very strange noise coming from the shower head. I thought for a few seconds and then decided to shower anyway. I still don't know if that was a good idea. The cold water here is extremely cold! After a few minutes, I was done showering, but I was also trembling like crazy. I then decided not to shave with cold water; maybe later I'll heat some on the stove and use that. I later found out that we will not be getting any hot water for three days, oh well… (In this building the hot water is supplied everyone. People don’t have their own heater in each apartment.)

I went to school, then to an art museum, the St. Sofia cathedral, and finally took a boat ride along the river. I saw some pretty cool churches and monasteries, an unfinished bridge from the 1910's, and other interesting things. Once we got back, we went to a restaurant to have dinner because one guy from the group is leaving early. I had some very good food there. I'm not sure what it was, the dish was called “Pink Flamingo” and didn't exactly say what the meat was. I doubt it was flamingo, but they did have some ostrich like pictures on a brochure on the table, which was sort of weird.

Now I'm going to go to sleep...

First Day of Work

Today went like most other days, in the morning that is. I woke up, showered, ..., and eventually finished history class. After that, I walked to the bus stop and took a bus that took me near the Kremlin. After that, I walked for 10-15 minutes to get to the job site. It is an archaeological dig. When I got there, I walked down to where the people were, stood there, and had a confused look. Soon there was two people talking to me. One of them was sort of like a supervisor, and the other one spoke English. He explained to me what to do, have me a little shovel, a bucket, and a small wooden stool. My job was to clean a large piece of wood and it's surroundings. I would get the dirt off, make sure there wasn't anything interesting in it, such as bones or pottery, and put it (the dirt) in the bucket. There was a box were we put the other stuff.

I got there around 3pm and worked until 6:15pm with a few 10 minute breaks. They didn't really explain very much how exactly I was supposed to be digging, but oh well, if I break something.... For my first day, I think I did ok. I found some small bones, and a bigger one that was either a jawbone or very large tooth. I asked the boss lady what it was and she kept pointing at her teeth, so I think that's what it was.

After work, I walked another 10-15 minutes to the bus stop and got on a bus home. When I got here, the house was empty, which is a first. I went on the computer for a little and then started writing this. Then the family got back from who knows where and told me to eat dinner. I had some nice pilmini, which are like the things in wonton soup, which I really like. Then I had some cold something and later was given a drink with a bunch of stuff in it. I wish I knew what it all was, it definitely does not look good, but always ends up tasting ok or pretty good.
Now I have to do my homework...

Walk in the Park

Today was not very interesting, but it was not very boring either. After I woke up and had breakfast, I did some of my homework for class and decided to go out. While waiting for the bus, some old lady started speaking to me and making strange gestures with her hand. I told her I did not understand her, but she kept talking. Once I got on the bust, she followed, sat down, and started speaking to half the people on the bus, it was quite strange. After the bust ride, I ended up in a big shopping center. I walked around for a while and noticed 90% of the stores were womens clothing. I found a music/movie/books store and spent some time there. I bought a book and some discs. I also managed to make the cashier lady angry. The ATM only gave me 1000 ruble bills, and she kept asking if I had smaller ones, I said no a few times until she took it and walked away. She came back with my change and a not very happy face. Oh well, I can't make everyone happy... I then walked around some more trying to find the place where I entered so I could leave and ended up in a huge furniture store. I never realized how long the mall was, and the stupid furniture store was just as long. Once I found my way out, I bought a soda and headed back home.

When I arrived, the grandma asked me where I had been and what I had in my hand. I told her I went to the store and bought a book and some disks. That wasn't enough information, she followed me into my room and asked to see exactly what I had bought. Now I just say I'm going outside, and not exactly where I am going. I doubt it will help though.

After lunch, I watched part of a Russian soccer game on tv, talked to my parents on the computer, and decided I was bored again. I got on another bus and went to another shopping place I had not been to. This one was four stories tall (the other was three) but again, a bunch of female clothing stores. After seeing that, I got out and got on another bus, which took me close to the Kremlin. I walked around the park, bought some ice cream, walked over the river, walked back, walked some more, etc... Around 8:30pm I decided to head back. When I got in the bus, I saw one of the girls I met the a few weeks ago when I visited the English class. She was with a friend, so we didn't really talk, but it was nice to see someone I knew. Now I'm back home and probably going to sleep soon. Maybe tomorrow will be more eventful.

Old Russia

Today I went to a town whose name translates to Old Russia. I think the main reason it is famous is because the house of famous writer, Dostoevsky, is there. The house is now a museum and we walked around it with a lady explaining what everything was. After the house, we went to a small church with many paintings. We didn't spend a lot of time there so we went to a restaurant to get food. Maybe all this happened in a different order, I can't seem to remember what I did this morning...
After lunch, went to a cemetery where German soldiers from WWII are buried. This was a very interesting site, I definitely did not expect to see something like it in Russia. It is located on the shore of Ilmen lake, so we walked down to the beach and took some pictures. After that, we got back on the bus and headed home. I think the ride was about an hour an a half, but I don't really remember well.
Once in Novgorod, we got some ice cream, hung out for a while, then I headed home. I still don't know if I am going to do anything else tonight, but I have a feeling I won't.

New Friends

Today was awesome. I did the usual in the morning and went to class. After Russian history class we all walked to a local university to meet some students who are learning English. On our way there we were greeted by a group of students who walked with us back to the school. We went to a very nice classroom with several computers and some amazing LCD monitors. In the middle was a sort of oval-ish table where we all sat. We introduced ourselves and separated into smaller groups to talk.

All the students were very nice, their English was great, especially since some had never spoken to a native speaker before. After two hours or so, they told us it was great that we were talking and practicing, but if we wanted to continue, we had to do it somewhere else. Once we left the university, most students went their way. Three girls came with some of us and decided to go get some pizza. As usual, we didn't take the right bus, walked, got on the right one, but didn't get off on time, and later walked back. One of them stayed on the bus and went home, but the rest came to the pizza place. I really enjoyed the pizza. We talked and took pictures while we waited. Once we were done, we wasted about 10 minutes figuring out who paid for what. The waitress returned our change, but I wanted to leave a tip. We argued about that for another 10 minutes and decided not to leave it on the table because someone else might take it. So I took it to the waitress myself. She gave me one of the weirdest looks I have gotten in a while. Apparently it is not customary to leave tip in that restaurant. It was very embarrassing, but at least I don't feel bad by not leaving any tip.

The way back was also fun, the bus took about half an hour to get to the stop, so I got more time to practice my Russian. We continued talking throughout the bus ride and got off at the same station, apparently they live close by. Now I'm back at home and I need to do my homework for tomorrow.... FUN! (not)

Laughing at Myself

I don't usually start laughing in the middle of the street, but on some occasions, I just have to do it.
On a normal day, my alarm wakes me up at 6:50am, I shower, go on the computer, have breakfast, and then around 8am I go outside to the bus stop. Around 8:25am I get to school and classes start at 9am.

Today my alarm sounded, I woke up, showered, and went on the computer. I checked my email quickly because I had to get breakfast and leave by the hour. The computer clock said something like 6:30am, I thought it must be wrong because of daylight savings or something. I checked my cell phone, and it said, 7:30am, so I proved the computer wrong and kept on going. When I got to the kitchen, nobody was there. I thought that was strange because everyday either my host mother or father are already up. I figured they were tired and slept in, so I made myself lunch for school and started making a simple breakfast. I heard an alarm in one of the rooms, but it was quickly turned off. Later, unfortunately, I dropped something and made a loud noise, my host dad jumped out of bed and came to the kitchen. He had a very confused look on his face, I assumed it was because he realized he had slept in. He helped me with breakfast and went to the bathroom or something like that. I brushed my teeth and left the house. This was about 8:10am according to my cell phone.
The day seemed strange, the sun wasn't as high as it usually was and the bus I got into was unusually crowded. After I switched to the second bus, I saw that it said 7:22 on it's display. I must have missed the 7 because it did not seem strange to me at all. Once I got off near the school, I started walking and looked at my watch; it was around 7:30. I thought, that's strange, I don't remember messing with it, I guess the battery is dying or something. Finally, after a million signs, it hit me. I remembered that I had been playing with the time zones on my cell phone last night and I must have made a mistake. I then started laughing. I realized how many things I missed, the computer clock, the sleeping family, the sun position, the crowded bus, the bus clock, etc... I then started imagining what my host family was going to think, I leave the house before I am supposed to even wake up, I don't say where I'm going, I was in a hurry. I sent an SMS to my host dad trying to explain in Russian what had just happened. Once I did that I realized I had an hour and a half before class started and nothing to do. I decided to walk around, but everything was closed. I ended up taking a nap in a bench in front of the school until it was time for class.

Class was normal, it ended a little early because we went to two convents outside of the city. The first one was very cool, it had it's silver domes and beautiful gardens. The inside was interesting, I had never been inside a working Russian Orthodox church, other than the ones in St. Petersburg, but those were full of tourists. In the same convent is the body of a famous Russian poet, I forgot his name as usual. I bought a chocolate bar from the shop the nuns run, it was very good. They also sell bottled holy water, which I thought was very interesting.

The second convent was not as interesting. The outside was amazing, it had decorated tiles on the outside of the church. They wanted to charge us to take pictures of the outside, and they didn't let us inside, so we left after a few minutes.

After that I took a bus home. When I got here, my host dad was waiting at the door, and as soon as I walked in, he told me to go in the kitchen and pointed at the clock. I just burst out laughing again, and so did the rest of the family. I'm glad they understood (at least I think they did, they were laughing...) and I didn't have to try and explain any further.

Tonight I will make sure my cell phone has the right time before I go to bed, and knowing me, I will keep doing that for a long time.

St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg was awesome! I just got back from four days over there, and I am very satisfied with what I saw.

On Thursday I woke up around 6am to make the 8am train to St. Petersburg. The train ride was about 3 hours long, so it was not bad at all. Once we arrived, we took a bus to our hotel, which was right on Nevsky Prospect, which is the main street where many nice things are. After that we went to the Saviour on the Blood cathedral, which is extremely colorful on the outside and very fancy on the inside. After that we went.... actually, I don't remember, so I'll just go to the next day.

Friday was probably the longest day. I think we went to St. Isaac cathedral in the morning. Its dome is 100m high, which is pretty incredible when you are standing right under it. There were some statues that stood about 12m tall, but since they were at the top of the dome, they seemed minuscule. We got to climb on top of the cathedral and got some pretty cool views and pictures (Which I will probably post when I get back to Miami.) We then went to the Hermitage, which I think is one of the largest museums in the world. The Hermitage used to be the winter palace for the Tsars. If I remember correctly, the museum has around 3.5 million pieces of art, but it only displays like 3% of that at a time, it is incredible. We spent a long time in there, walking from exhibit to exhibit, seeing the different rooms in the palace, etc... After the Hermitage, we had lunch, went back to the hotel, and took a long nap. We then went to see the ballet “Swans Lake”. I had never seen a ballet in my life, and I did not really enjoy the first two acts because I had no idea what was going on. The music was amazing though, there were many musicians and the conductor playing right in front of the theater, just like it used to be in old plays. After the second act, a friend let me read the program and I understood the story, once I did, I really enjoyed the rest of it.
The ballet ended around 10:30pm and five of us decided to go somewhere before we headed back. A friend wanted to go to this pub (I forget the name of it.) which took us a long time to find, even though it was right in front of us. We ordered some drinks (and a club sandwich for myself) and talked for a while. There was three Russian girls in the table next to us, and they kept looking at one of the guys in our table, eventually they threw a napkin with stuff written on it, so we went over to their table. One of them spoke English very well, another spoke very little, and the third one didn't speak any at all. We had a lot of fun speaking in English and Russian and around 3am decided to go somewhere. We walked around in circles for a while until we got to a night club, since it was 3:30am and half of the people didn't want to go in, we headed back towards our hotel. Around 4am I was tired and decided to call it a night and go to sleep, everyone else went to McDonalds.

The next morning I woke up at 7:55am, I don't know why I did; my internal clock needs some serious repairs. Around 10am we headed for the docks and got in a really futuristic looking boat. It was one of those hydrofoils that glide above the water when it is going fast. This took us to the Peterhoff, or Summer palace. This palace has hundreds of beautiful fountains, some that shoot over 20m high, but the most amazing thing is that they are purely gravity powered. There are no water pumps anywhere, I was really happy to see such an interesting thing that was built over a hundred years ago. We walked around the palace and parks for a while and later headed back. We got on the wrong boat and ended up somewhere different than where we had left earlier. Fortunately, there was a good restaurant nearby and we got some great Russian food. We then took the subway back to our area. The subway was probably the cleanest part of the city. There was not a single graffiti on the wall, no trash on the floor, there are statues and fancy lamps on the stations, it was very cool. We then took another long nap and went to a Mexican restaurant. Another unexpected thing, this Mexican restaurant was better than any Mexican restaurants I have been to in the USA! There was live music and even a couple that danced as a show. The food was great, the drinks were great, and the atmosphere was awesome. In the table next to us was a group of about 20 Russian men and women. I'm not sure who they were, but they wore very nice (expensive) clothes and had several bodyguards outside of the restaurant. They seemed to have a lot of fun taking pictures of themselves wearing sombreros.
Around midnight, there was a fountain/light/laser show in the middle of the river. I don't think I have ever seen anything like it. There was very loud music playing, and massive fountains lit with laser and colored lights playing along with it.

Today (Sunday) we walked around the city just for fun. We went to a small market, a bookstore, a military antique store (which was way too expensive), rode the subway, and headed back to the hotel. Around 4:30 we got on a bus to the train station, got on the train, and headed back to Novgorod.
I wish I could write more, but I'm tired and I have school tomorrow, so that’s it for today.

Long Day

I have not had much time to relax since 9am this morning. It feels good to finish the day.
I did the usual this morning and got to school around 8:25am. I sat on a bench outside and listened to music until class started at 9. Our teacher had to leave at 10am and left us some work to do for an hour. In the third hour, we sat in the more advanced class with another teacher and tried to learn some stuff. I think I did learn though.

After lunch, I had history for an hour and a half, we had to cut it short because we had to leave early to go catch a bus. We went to a small church like place where a man named Vladimir works. He is a master birch bark weaver (His title is something like that.) and is working in his doctorate. He was nice enough to take three hours to teach us how to make some really neat baskets. Making the basket was easier than I thought, but it takes patience and time. I am not a very patient person, and I had to finish in two hours because I was going to go to a show at 7pm and had to be home at 6pm. I finished around 5:15pm and headed out. As usual, I made a few wrong turns and decided to walk halfway home. I took a few buses that took me nowhere useful and walked some more. The funny thing is, I knew where I was, but being me, I figured out a way to take the longest possible route without meaning to.
I finally got home around 6:05pm had a quick lunch, and headed out. We got to the theater around 6:55pm, so it was ok.

I think the play is called Анаморфозы Шута, but maybe not. It has something to do with Salvador Dali, and it is a fantasy. There was no speaking in the play, which is good, because if there was, it would be in Russian. I still didn't understand much, oh well. It was pretty cool though.

Tomorrow morning I am leaving to St. Petersburg, I don't feel like carrying my laptop, so no blog posts until Sunday night/Monday. I'm tired.

(no ideas)

Yesterday wasn't very interesting so I didn't feel like writing something. I walked around the Kremlin and that's pretty much all that is interesting.

Today has been more fun. I got up early, showered, had breakfast, and headed to class. The bus I got on was extremely packed, I went in the front-most door and ended up standing pretty close to the windshield, right next to the driver. It wasn't a problem until he started asking me to move around so he could see if there were any cars coming in an intersection. The second bus wasn't nearly as full and I actually got to sit down.

Russian class was interesting too because we got a new teacher. Our original teacher had something to do this week, so she will be out. I learned some more new things about the language, which I always enjoy. After that we had our first Russian History class. Today we only covered a basic overview of the whole culture and why Russians are the way they are. I also learned some other cool things, I didn't know that Russians had gone all the way down from Alaska to California! I guess I should have payed attention in world history class a long time ago, not that I know if they covered that or not...

After class I came back home, had some good lunch, and did my homework. I later went on the computer and checked my email. I was extremely happy to see that some of my new Russian friends had sent me emails. One of the emails was completely in Russian, so it took me a few minutes to translate everything and figure out what they were telling me. I think I understood most of it, but I am not sure. I tried to reply to the email in Russian too, I hope I didn't screw up too bad. I also hope I get to see them again, they all seemed really nice.

Oh, I also found out I am going to St. Petersburg on Thursday, instead of Saturday, which was nice to hear. I also found out that I am starting my internship on Monday! I still don't know where I will be working, so that's strange, but I'll figure it out...

No ideas for a title of todays post...

I Hate Rain

It has been raining all day, and it's starting to get annoying. Today I woke up relatively late (for my standards) around 8:30am. I showered, had breakfast, did some homework, and read a magazine. Around 4pm, after we had lunch, I called my parents, who are now in NYC. They flew back from Europe yesterday, I hadn't called since I left the USA.

I then watched part of a French film dubbed in Russian, I think it was ok, but I had no idea what was going on. I also went out to a small shopping place where I saw a music store. I bought three CD's, each one 80 rubles, which is less than $4. The funny thing is that they have the songs in mp3, and each CD has 200 songs. I guess the royalty rates here in Russia are very low, it's not like the place was sketchy or anything, they had the regular type of cd's too.

I went to a bookstore and bought two children's books for handwriting in Russian. They both teach you how to write in script, they have arrows to show how to write each letter and all that stuff. Oh yeah, and it was raining when I left home. It rained on the way to the bus stop, on the way to the shopping thing, on the way to the bookstore, on the way back, etc... On they way back I had to run to catch a bus, I didn't really care that there was a deep puddle in my way to the bus, now that I look back, I should have missed the bus. I hate having wet jeans.

Once back, I watched a soccer game on tv and ate some snacks. I am starting to feel tired, if I don't find something to do soon, I'm going to fall asleep.

Sleep!

I don't think I am getting enough sleep. Yesterday I almost didn't go to talk with the English class because I was taking a nap. I was extremely tired throughout yesterday and ended up going to sleep late. Today I woke up early again to go to school. I didn't have as hard a time staying up as yesterday, but its still annoying.

Today I did not have art class, so I headed home right after Russian class around 12:30pm. As soon as I got home, I fell asleep. I was later woken up to have lunch, after that, sleep again. Around 5 or 6 I woke up again. I did some homework, spent some time on the computer, and had dinner. As usual, I learned a few new words during my dinner conversations, and was quizzed on the ones I am supposed to know, which I always forget. It is 10:30pm as I write this, the sun is still out, but I am still tired. I think I'm going to go to bed early today so I can enjoy the day tomorrow. I'm not sure what I will do, but I sure will have a better time if I am not tired.

New Friends!

I am very tired so I won't write too much...

Today was awesome. For the first time my alarm woke me up, every other day I woke up before it went off, which means I was really tired. I went to class and struggled because I was very tired. I finished my painting in the art class (Which was the last art class of the trip) and later went home.
I tried doing some homework, but my efforts were futile. I lay in bed and fell asleep instantly, which almost never happens. I set my alarm at 4:50pm so I could get up and catch a bus around 5pm. When the alarm went off, I must have turned it off because my mom woke me up around 5:15 to ask me if I was supposed to be somewhere. So I ran off and got in the bus.

The reason I left is because my Russian language teacher also teaches an English class at night, and she wanted me and a friend to meet her class so they could practice English. I got there in time, met with my teacher and friend, and walked to the school. Once people arrived, we started speaking in English and Russian. The class would ask us questions in English and we would answer either in Russian or English. I had a lot of fun. After an hour or so, a guy from Peru (who was teaching Spanish in the adjacent classroom) came in and asked if I would go do the same in his Spanish class. I asked them questions in Spanish and they would answer in Spanish as well. After a few minutes of that, I got back to the English class. The teacher was teaching the final lesson of the year, so I just sat in and listened. Two women sitting next to me wrote a note in English asking if I wanted to go to a Cafe after class, and of course I sad yes. After class, a group of seven students, myself, and the teacher went to a nice place right next to the river. We communicated as well as we could trying not to ask for too many translations by the teacher, it was a very educational experience, but it was much more fun than education. After who knows how long, I took a taxi with three of the students that live very close, they walked me to the apartment and said goodbye. I have their emails so we can keep in contact, now I can say I have my new Russian friends! The only Russian people I knew well were my host family and a few of the people that organize the program. Hopefully I will see my friends again, I am really looking forward to it.

As I said before, I am extremely tired and have school tomorrow, maybe I will write more then.

Another Fun Day

Today was an interesting day. Since it is July 4th, the group of study abroad students wanted to get together and have dinner. I was shown the location of the restaurant on a map, I already forgot the name, but it was French, and sounded funny.

I woke up at 6:40am, which is about normal, oh, I have not written about last night!
Ok, last night was even more interesting. A friend of my host family's sister came over during the day. Around 9pm I was in my room bored and getting ready to go to bed. I went to the kitchen to see what everyone was up to and saw very nice wine glasses on the table and was quickly told to sit down. We drank wine and whiskey, ate some cheese with bread, and later some tea. Everyone was talking very fast, but I was happy whenever I understood anything. Two hours went by, I was enjoying myself, everyone else was too, my only problem was that I didn't really know what we were celebrating. A lot of things went through my head, but most just didn't make sense on a Tuesday night. After we stood up to leave, I asked my host mom and she told me we were celebrating the fact that my sister got an excellent grade on one of her final exams. I think it's pretty cool that we celebrate those things, that is some great motivation, and everyone was so happy.

I went to my room, and around 11:30pm I went to get some water and tell everyone good night, well, I was wrong again. Ice cream! Yes, we all sat down and ate some ice cream, it was around 1am before I even looked at the time. Finally I went to my room and realized that that was the first time I ever used a lamp! Every other time I went to bed, the sun was still up. I am writing this around 10:30pm and the sun is still shining through my window, this is awesome.

Alright, so back to today, I woke up at 6:40am, showered, had breakfast, went to class, etc...
After class, I took a bus with some friends and arrived straight home. After that I ate lunch, met another of my sister's friends, well, I was introduced, I didn't really talk much. I did some homework and was later invited to have some tea. Around 6pm I got ready and left to go to the restaurant. Actually, it wasn't a restaurant, it was a cafe. I told my host family it was a restaurant, and they didn't let me leave the house wearing shorts. From what I understood, if you go to a restaurant at night, you wear nice clothes, where did my manners go?! I put on a pair of jeans and a polo just to look decent and left.

I was told to take bus 16 and get off at the stop after the big store. I didn't hear correctly and got off at the big store. I then started walking in the wrong direction, that's when the fun started. With my great( NOT!) sense of direction, I decided to walk in the direction I thought the restaurant was, that required not going on an actual street, but dirt trails. It ended up being the right direction for my situation, but I should have never taken that trail. I walked by next to what I later confirmed to be a prison, I thought the metal bars on the windows of all the nearby houses seemed strange... After that, I took out my map and figured out where I was. I started walking to get to the right street, and I walked, and walked, and walked. It was only about half an hour of walking when I finally arrived to the street the restaurant was on. As I was walking, I looked around, it's a nice city, the only problem is that I saw a bus drive right by, it was the same route of the one I was in. If I had stayed in the bus for one more stop, I would have saved half an hour and not have to sweat like crazy. Now that I look back, I don't really regret getting partially lost. I saw some very nice parts of the city, I also know where not to go, and learned a lot more about the bus routes.

The food at the cafe was nice, I had some salmon with mushrooms, sauce, and who knows what else, it was very good. After that, I took a bus home and got back around 10pm. When my host mother opened the door she told me she was very amazed at how punctual I was. I didn't really planned getting there exactly at 10pm, but the bus I took worked perfectly, I didn't break it, and I got off at the right stop. Tomorrow afternoon I am going to meet some students that are learning English so they can practice their conversational skills (I think that's why I'm going, my Russian teacher, who teaches English too, asked us to go.) It should be fun.

Whoa, this post is long too! Ok that's enough.

Lucky? I think not.

Today has been a very interesting day. As usual, I woke up around 5:30am, showered, ate breakfast, hung out and left around 8:10am to go to school. In class I learned some new words, how to conjugate almost every verb, and some other stuff. In the art class, I finished my very ugly painting from yesterday and started working on a new one. The teacher showed us some sample works that are traditional of this area of Russia, and told us to either copy one or make our own. I decided to take ideas from the pre-made ones and give them a touch of my own crazy imagination (or lack thereof.) The sketch has a castle with the sun shining on it, a house with a cloud and rain over it, some mountains, and two fish. I started coloring it and realized I cannot mix colors to save my life. I wanted a light green, mixed some green with white, but managed to get the ugliest color possible. I then tried to get a light brown by mixing brown and white... another miserable failure. After I saw how the teacher mixed colors I realized that putting water into the mix made a big difference, finally I got some decent colors. Unfortunately it was too late for one of the mountains, it has that very ugly green, oh well.

After school we all went to a wooden architecture museum a few kilometers out of the city, near an old monastery. Rather than a closed off museum, this one is outside on the woods and consists of several houses and churches built entirely out of wood. You might think that is not very interesting, but some of those were built hundreds of years ago. We learned how families lived in the winter many years ago, they had very big houses, but they all pretty much lived in the same room, everything else was for storage and farm animals.

After that, we drove back to the city and dropped off most people at a bus stop. I was told to stay on the car because they were dropping me off at another bus stop. Once there, I was told to take bus 6 in order to get home. I waited around 10-15 minutes until the bus arrived, it was packed, and all the people in the bus stop wanted to get inside. Unfortunately for me, I am too nice and let most people get in before me. There was almost no space left, but I decided I was not going to wait for the next one, so I jumped in and pushed some people so the doors wouldn't crush me. After the doors closed, I was pushed against the door by the mass of people. I was fine until we started to approach the next stop. Since the doors open inwards, and I was pretty much leaning on them, there was going to be a problem. The bus stopped, I heard the hiss of the doors starting to open, and then felt something crushing my foot. Thankfully my sandals are pretty hard and stopped the door from opening. I stepped up into the bus and tried to open that half of the door, it didn't work. People left through the half-open door, others came in. After a few minutes of the bus not moving, people started talking and leaving, most of us stayed in, I didn't realize that since the door wasn't closing, the bus wasn't leaving. Since I didn't hear the hissing sound the doors make when they close, I figured they weren't trying to close them. After a while I heard something through the speakers, I didn't understand a word, but everyone got angry and started walking out of the bus. I figured I should leave too, so I got out and stood there to wait for the next bus. After 10 minutes, another route 6 bus came along and everyone in the bus stop got on, this time I wasn't so nice and got in first. As we left, I saw the previous bus sit there with it's flashers, I wonder how long it stayed. I have broken many things in my life, but never something like this. I think there were at least 50 people on that bus and they all got to waste 15 minutes of their life because of me, how sad. If I add those minutes, they come out to 750, which is about 12.5 hours, what a waste. I hope my bad luck doesn't increase during my stay here, next thing you know..... I don't even want to imagine what I can cause.

Anyway, I made it home only 15 minutes after I said I would be there, so my calculations were correct if that incident had not happened. I like guesstimating times, even though they never come out right, I am happy when they do. I think this is enough writing for one day...

First Day of Class

Today was my first day of classes. I got about three hours of sleep last night, I woke up around 12 for no reason and couldn't fall back to sleep. Around 7am I took a shower and ate breakfast with Владимир. We then took two buses to get to school, it took about 15-20 minutes, which I believe was very fast. While I was in the bus stop, I saw some buses that were completely packed with people, thankfully, the ones we took were fairly empty.

My first class was Russian language. I am in the intermediate level class and there is a total of two students including me. I think that is very good because we get to ask tons of questions and practice. We reviewed some of the basics and proceeded to learn some new things. The class lasted for three hours. After that, I ate the lunch my family gave me and went to the second class. This week we are taking a folk art class. In this class there are seven of us (the whole group) and we are taught how to paint in traditional Russian style, specifically Novgorodian (I think that's how you say it.) Next week we will begin with Russian history classes. I have always thought I am not very good with art, today's class proved it. Our teacher makes it look so easy and I can't do any of the brush strokes correctly, or I mix the paint wrong, etc... The class was very interesting and fun, even though I am not good at it, it is fun to do. After class, Владимир came to pick me up and tell me which buses we were taking. I'm not sure exactly why, but we ended up taking 3 buses and a trolley (the electric one, is that what it's called?) Once we got home, we had lunch. So far I have enjoyed all of the meals I have been given. Someone told me Russian food was not very good, they were clearly wrong.

After lunch I took a nap, I'm not sure exactly how long it was, but it was long. After that I was given a really good dessert which included milk, strawberries, and vanilla ice cream (not a milk shake though), it was very good. While we ate the ice cream/strawberry/milk Владимир showed me some of the paintings he has done, he is really good. I guess it is a hobby because he paints here at home.

I have only been here for around two and a half days and I think I am understanding words much better. I guess I'm getting used to the speed (unless everyone is slowing down, which is a possibility). Now I hear the words everyone says correctly, but I still don't know what most of them mean.

It is 9pm as I am writing this, and the sun is still way up in the sky. From what I checked last week online, the sun sets around 12 and comes out around 4am or something like that. The only time it is dark out is when I wake up in the middle of the night, if I didn't wake up, I would never see darkness. I think I could get used to this, I hate when it's dark out, it makes me tired. Since I took a nap, I am not very tired, I wonder how long it will take me to fall asleep today...

First day in Russia

I flew to NYC on Wednesday and stayed at a friends house. I met a few of her friends, went around the city, and had a lot of fun. On Friday, I took a cab to the airport and met with the people that were going to Russia.

The first flight was from JFK airport to Helsinki. It took a little over 7 hours, so it was not bad at all. I didn't sleep at all, I watched two movies, a few shows, and listened to music. Another interesting thing was that in the row in front of me, there was a 3.5 week old baby, it was so small! I'm not sure why the parents travel with such a young baby, but it seemed to go ok, the baby did not cry for more than a few seconds.

The second flight was from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, that one got delayed one hour, but it was not a problem. The flight itself only lasted for 40 minutes. For some reason, Finair (the airline) decided I was vegan, and only gave me vegan meals. They had my name and seat number, so I couldn't really say it was not me. I ended better off than the non vegan meals, I got fruit, salad, and other stuff, which was more than what the normal meal was.

After we got to St. Petersburg, we took a bus to Novgorod. I slept for most of the ride, I think it was a few hours, I really don't remember.
The bus dropped me off near the apartment complex where I am staying. My host father went to pick me up there. Once I arrived, I met my host mother, grandma, and sister. They were all very nice. I still have a very hard time communicating with them, but we are doing just fine. I also had a great dinner. I don't usually eat strawberries, but I figured I would try them because they grow them here in their garden. After I ate one by itself, Татьяна, my host mother, told me to cut them and eat them with milk, like cereal. It was very very good, and with some bread on the side, made a great dinner. I also went to get a SIM card for my phone, an internet card, and got some money from the ATM. I went to bed around 9pm/ After not sleeping for a day an a half, I was very tired. Also, at some time during the day, I called my dad using Skype. I have an ATT calling card, and a Russian phone number I need to call to use it, but I haven't figure out how to dial it from my phone.

Today I woke up around 7:30am, showered, and later had some sort of fruit mix with something else for breakfast. Around 10:30, I took the bus to the Kremlin and met with all the other exchange students. We were given a tour of the Kremlin, we saw the Millennium of Russia monument, the St. Sophia cathedral, and several other things. We then had lunch in a restaurant that is actually inside the Kremlin walls, which I thought was pretty cool. Tomorrow I will start class at 9am, so that should be fun. Waking up has not been a problem for me, since we have almost 20 hours of daylight.
I think I'm going to go buy some notebooks and pens for tomorrow, I have to figure out where, but it shouldn't be a problem.

I'm in Russia!

I haven't had time to write anything, but I will soon!
My host family is awesome, they are all very nice. I will put something more detailed later.

Early Morning Update

So I woke up around 4am and could not fall asleep. I'm bored.

On Friday I went to my friend's house, we had some good food, played some wii games, and had fun. After that, I don't quite remember what I did, so it must have been nothing.

Yesterday (Saturday), I watched a movie or two in the morning, did nothing most of the day, and later went to a Chinese buffet to get lunch/dinner. After that I saw the new Fantastic 4 movie, which wasn't as bad as people told me, so I was happy. I went to the supermarket, then home, and went to sleep around 10.

I don't really have any plans for today, but I do have to go buy some stuff before I go to Russia, so it might be a good idea. On that note, I had to send my passport so I can get my Russian visa, well, it got delayed and I still don't have it. I hope that doesn't cause any serious problems.

Three days to go!

5 Days Left

On Wednesday I went to get my allergy shots around 12pm then to return some stuff at Circuit City. Later, I went to see the movie Day Watch, which I really enjoyed, maybe I'll put a summary later. At night I went to a friends house. We went to get some ice cream and then went back to her house and hung out until around 1am.

Yesterday (Thursday), I woke up around 8:30, even though my alarm was set for 9am. Some friends came over around 9am and we went to Dolphin Mall. I bought a jacket so I have some protection from the rain when I need it. I used to have a waterproof jacket, but for reasons I don't fully understand, my mom somehow broke it, so a new one was needed. After buying that, we went bowling. I had not bowled in at least a year and a half. My first game was pretty bad, I think I got around 84 points. After I got the hang of it, I got 147 on the second game. After that I realized that my shoulder still doesn't like me and today it's being annoying and hurting. A little over a year ago, I tore two ligaments on my shoulder snowboarding, I don't think it ever fully recovered. Last night I watched two soccer games. Canada(1) vs. USA(2) and Mexico(1) vs. Guadeloupe(0). Both games were ok, but in the USA vs. Canada, I got really upset. Canada scored a goal to tie the USA 2-2, but one of the refs said it was offside. The replays clearly showed it was a legal play, but the ref didn't think so. It didn't mean Canada would have won, but at least it would have given them a chance. The Gold Cup final is Mexico vs. USA, that's going to be interesting.

Today I'm going to go to a friends house, I'm not sure what I'm going to do after, I guess I'll write it here later.

Oh yeah, five days until I leave!

One Week Left!

So Saturday was in fact fun. I went to the movies with a few friends and watched Oceans 13. I had already seen it, but this is one of the movies that the second time makes much more sense. After that we all went to my house, a few more people arrived that had not gone to the movies. We played some board games, card games, and ate pizza. Around 2am they left, and I stayed up a little and called my parents around 2:30am. I figured since it was 8:30am in Germany, they would be awake. My dad was, and my mom had just started waking up, so it worked out nicely.

Since I am not writing this on Sunday, I don't remember what exactly I did. Same goes for Monday. I believe I just stayed home both of those days. Maybe not, I need to write things down more often.

Yesterday(Tuesday) was interesting. For some reason, I woke up at 8am and decided to go get a haircut. I figured that with my luck, the place would be closed, and it was, but by the time I got there, it was 8:50, and they opened at 9am, so no problem there. After that I went to the grocery store and headed home. I didn't leave home after that. I rented and watched the movie Night Watch (Ночной дозор) and enjoyed it. I think I'm going to have separate blog posts for movies I watch. The sequel of the movie, Day Watch (Дневной Дозор), is in one of the local movie theaters and I want to see it before they take it off. After all I have done this summer, I'll probably end up watching it by myself, apparently people don't like reading subtitles here...

Today(Wednesday) I woke up at 6am, don't ask my why, I have no idea, I just woke up. I went to bed around 10pm last night, but still.... Hopefully I'll do something interesting.

Oh yeah, by this time next week, I will be heading to the airport to leave Miami and go to NYC, how exiting! (Easy way to create a title for the blog post.)

Boring Friday ( and rest of week update)

On, Wednesday my parents left for their trip around Europe. After taking them to the airport around 10, I went to get my allergy shots. It ended up taking about an hour, but I had nothing better to do at the time. After I got home, my friend called me to tell me we were meeting in Dadeland mall. I met her there, had lunch and hung out for a few hours. I hate malls, but I enjoy hanging out with friends so much, I don't mind them[the malls].

On Thursday I went to Borders to return a $25 book and ended up buying two very expensive ones. I hate when that happens. I proceeded to stay at home all day and do nothing productive.

Today I didn't leave my house at all. I woke up around 8am, did some programming for a little, played some Xbox games, watched tv, ate, called my parents in Germany, and... I think that's it.

Hopefully tomorrow will be more fun.

Long(?) Update

So I haven't posted since Friday, well it was technically Saturday, but whatever. On Saturday I was going to go to a friends house to dinner with my family. They live in Miramar, which is almost an hour drive from my house. Since it was a far drive anyway, we [my family] decided to leave early and go to Sawgrass Mall to get some clothes. There are a bunch of outlet stores, so it is a good place to shop, but it is also the 2nd most visited place in Florida next to Magic Kingdom. I hate shopping, but I have to do it every once in a while in order to have clothes! After a few hours there, we went to our friends house and had an amazing Italian dinner. Around 12:00am we headed back home.

On Sunday I went with my family to Sushi Rock to get some lunch, it was really good. After that, we went to see Oceans 13, which was very entertaining. That's what I remember.

Monday was also interesting (was it?). Maybe not... A few days ago, someone contacted me about a PHP program I wrote. It receives the data from any HTML form and saves it into an excel file. He later told me he can only use PERL on his server and asked if I could write that same program in that language. I spent a few hours porting the program to PERL, but I was able to do it. It did require some minor changes later, but they were not a problem.

Today (Tuesday) I do remember. I woke up at 7am and went to a friends house at 8. Four of us got some breakfast in a restaurant in Coconut Grove (Oops, I forgot the name, I think it's green on the outside though.) We then went to a beach in Key Biscayne and hung out until around 1ish. I don't think I got very burnt by the sun, but oh well. I drove back to my friends house to drop everyone off, and apparently I left a little too soon. Everyone said bye, so I thought it was over, oh well. After I got home, I proceeded to doing what I do best, absolutely nothing. Right now, I am quite bored, as you can tell because I am writing this. Ooo, I just remembered, I also played an Xbox 360 game called Fuzion Frenzy 2, it consists of a bunch of minigames and is tons of fun. It came with my brothers Xbox, so we decided to play it today, it had never been opened.

The reason this is titled Long(?) is because it may or may not be long. The word long is a relative word. It all depends what are comparing too. If you compare it with a sentence, then it is really long, but if you compare it with a novel, it is very short. It is up to you [the reader....if any] to decide if this is a long or short update.

Quick summary of the week.

On Tuesday I went to get my wisdom teeth extraction evaluation. Looks like I have one of the worst cases, my wisdom teeth are so badly positioned that taking them out risks permanent nerve damage and/or sinus damage. It gets better, my surgery is going to be the day after I get back from Russia! Nothing says welcome back better than a morning surgery.

On Wednesday I went to get the rest of my allergy tests. Turns out I'm allergic to all kinds of grass and weeds. Thankfully though, I am not allergic to any type of food. I don't remember anything else from Tuesday...

Thursday was much better than the previous days. A few of my friends came over to have lunch and watch a movie. We saw the movie Good Bye Lenin!. After the movie we hung out for a while trying to figure out if we were going to do anything else. We ended up swimming until around 1am, which was a lot of fun.

Today (Friday) I didn't do much in the morning. I picked up my dad from the airport around 4pm and went back home. We watched the soccer game Mexico vs. Cuba where we thankfully won 2-1. That's my day for you.

I love how creative my title is this time.

Eh...Monday

Again, I cannot come up with an intelligent title...

I think I stayed home most of the morning, I went to Best Buy to get a gift card for a friend and then came back home. I'm sure I did something interesting, but I don't really remember. I ordered the developer toolkit for Windows Mobile 6 (The operating system my phone uses), maybe I'll be able to make some useful program with it. I just need an idea of what to do, I wish I was creative.

Around 6pm I went to my friends house to gather for her birthday celebration. They decided to go to the Hard Rock Cafe in Bayside, and also chose to take the metro rail. I decided just to drive there, since it is so much faster, comfortable, and convenient. Three people came with me, so it wasn't too boring. I got there much earlier than the rest of the group, but two people were already there, so I found them and talked to them for a while. It's nice to meet new people. We tried getting a table so it would be ready when everyone else got there, but they require half the party to be there before they can sit us. We were expecting 22 people, and we didn't have 11 at the time, so we just waited outside. Dinner was ok, it took a while to get there, but I'm assuming it was because there were so many orders from the same table. Since there were so many people, I didn't really get to talk much, it was too loud, oh well.
On the way back, I drove alone, a few people got picked up and none of the others wanted to come in the car with me, don't ask me why, I still don't know... I got home close to 12, and now I'm writing this. I think I'm going to go to bed, tomorrow I have to go to the doctor (surprised?) and take my dad to the airport.

First Week of Summer (Part 3 of 3)

So yesterday marked one week of me being in Miami. So far it's been fun (except for the doctors and stuff) but it looks like it will get better.
Friday was a lot of fun. I found out a friend was leaving Miami on Sunday and thought it would be nice to go get dinner or watch a movie with her and some friends. I started talking to people around mid day and by 7pm we started arriving to Panera's at Sunset Place. I don't think any of us knew there was a Paneras there, but somehow I found it online and convinced them it existed. The plan was to eat dinner there and watch Knocked Up at 8:30. About nine people ended up there, which was awesome, we sat there talking until about 9pm, we considered going to the 9:30 show, but it was sold out. Three people had to leave, the rest of us went to a friends house and watched the movie Inside Man, which [in my opinion] is really good (and confusing until the end.)

Saturday...umm yeah, I don't quite remember much of it, so I guess nothing interesting happened. I remember taking the pictures from the diving trip to get developed and that I watched Knocked Up. If it had not asked my mom, I wouldn't even know what I had for lunch! I hope my already bad memory doesn't deteriorate too fast, if it does, I won't know who I am in a few years.

Today was a little more interesting, well, at least I remember it better. I woke up, and found my dad fighting with the computer to copy a DVD of some home videos he made a few years ago. Apparently the disk is physically damaged and most programs either crash, or take forever to copy.<UselessDetails> I figured I could do an exact copy of the disk using dd in linux and then burn the ISO back onto a new DVD.</UselessDetails> Long story short, it worked, but since it is an exact copy, it copied the errors from the other disk. It works on the DVD player, but you can't really copy for other family members.
After that I went to Don Burrito to get lunch and to look at cars for my dad to buy later in the year. We went to see the Mazda 3, it's a pretty nice car and is similar to the Civic he has. Later, we saw Pirates of the Caribbean : At Worlds End. It made a little more sense this second time watching it, but it's still extremely confusing. That's it for the first week of the summer (and the Sunday after.) Now I'll have to actually come up with some sort of title for these posts, I guess I can always use “Second week of summer” ;-)

First Week of Summer (Part 2 of ?)

So today was an interesting day. In the morning I went to the Mexican consulate to get some papers for my cousin. She needs to transfer her courses taken here in the USA so they accept them in Mexico. When I got there (after 15 minutes of looking for a place to park.) the doors were closed, and there was like fifty people waiting outside. Apparently they lock the doors and only let people in every hour (That's how crowded it gets.) Fortunately I knew the name of the person I was looking for and someone told me to go to his office on the other building. Apparently the other part of the consulate (where the actual Consul works) is on the third floor of the building next to the crowded place where everyone goes. The office of the man I was looking for was next to the Consuls. I got the paper and went home.

I took my cousin to Palmetto (her school) so we could get the paper signed by the principal. After waiting a while to be noticed in the main office, the lady said that they can't fill out another schools papers. (Apparently the country of Mexico is a school, since the paper is for the country, not a specific school...) I decided not to argue with the lady, I drove home, called the school, and got an appointment with the principal. Hopefully everything will be solved tomorrow.

After I got home, I watched the video of the joint interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. I think it was one of the best interviews I have ever seen. (Now that I think about it, I haven't seen many interviews at all, but this one was still awesome.) They didn't bash each other like everyone wanted, but talked about the old days when they worked together, what they think the future will bring, what each other has contributed to technology and the world, etc... The videos can be seen here: http://www.socialham.com/2007/05/31/video-of-steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-at-d-conference/

For dinner, I went to DiNapoli with my friend Rachel. We had some awesome Hawaiian pizza and another one with no tomatoes (I forget the name, but it started with a B.) They were both really good.
Right now I'm extremely bored (hence the blog post) but I think I'm going to try and get some sleep...

First Week of Summer (Part 1 of ?)

Well, the first week of summer isn't quite over yet, but I needed to come up with a title for the post.

On Monday I went diving with dad and brother off the coast of Key Largo, it was awesome. I forget who it was, but someone asked me if I saw sharks last time I went diving. Now I can say I have, it was only a nurse shark, which is probably the least aggressive and dangerous, but whatever... I'll put up a picture when I get it developed.
Tuesday was dentist day in the morning followed by a doctors appointment. The doctor told me to go to an allergy doctor and somehow I miraculously got an appointment for today.
The doctor said they need to run some tests to see what I'm allergic to, so they did. If anyone is reading this (doubtful) and doesn't like needles, don't ever get tested for allergies. My arms when through what is equivalent to 50 mosquito bites (Some swell up more than others) later followed by 28 shots on the arm (just to make sure there were no false negatives.) The worst part is that I had to sit there and not move (scratch) for ten minutes. That was not very fun. The results said that I am highly allergic to cats and dust mites. I am also allergic to dogs, feathers, other animals, etc... Then they told me I need to come back next week for the second round of tests (food and pollen allergies.) Oh yeah, I also have to go twice a week to get allergy shots, this is looking like my best summer ever.
After the fun morning I went to Monty's with a few friends, that was (actually) fun.

I got all my grades back, I think there has been a grading mistake because I didn't get any B's. That never happened in high school, but hey, I'm not going to complain.

One Down, Four to Go!

My first year of college is officially over. This last week of finals was probably one of the worst I have had. Not because of the actual exams, but because my body decided to wake up extremely early and not fall asleep until very late. On Tuesday, I woke up nice and early at 5:30am, I took my exam, and then around 2pm or so (I don't quite remember.) I took a two hour nap. As you probably don't know, I don't work well with naps, I usually feel worse after I wake up. Unfortunately, after that nap, I didn't fall asleep until around 2am. I had an exam at 10am the next morning, so I was up around 7am, again, not by choice. I somehow managed to take my physics exam without falling asleep and later made my formula sheet for the math exam on Thursday.

Oh yeah, since it was my birthday, my roommate got some cake and a few people from the floor ate it later at night. That night I also didn't fall asleep very early, probably around 11:30. I woke up at 6am for my 8am test (I needed to get breakfast before the exam.) The exam took about an hour and a half, but when I finished, I felt so much better.
Later that day, Anel and Zhanara came over and we watched the movie Италянец (The Italian). It was in Russian, so I didn't understand most of it, but it was fun anyway (I had seen it before with subtitles.)

Today (Friday) was horrible. I had to pack everything, and I hate packing, not to mention I'm not very good at it and I take forever. It is very hard choosing what I take home and what I leave here in Rochester, hopefully I won't forget anything important (although I probably will.)
Thom (my roommate) was nice enough to let me stay in his house for the night, my plane leaves tomorrow afternoon, I'm glad I'm not spending my last day in the dorm.

I'm checking my grades online, so far it looks like I have an A in Sophomore Practicum, Beginning Russian 2 (Thanks Anel!!!), and University Physics II. The grades for Digital Systems and Differential Equations have not been posted yet. I guess I'll make a quick post when I get them.

Mid-Exam-Week Update

So tomorrow I have my Digital Systems exam at 12:30. I'm supposed to memorize some stuff for the test, hopefully it will come to me in my dreams because I am really bad at memorizing stuff. On Saturday I had my Russian exam, that one was not as bad as I expected it to be. The written portion was the hardest because it required (guess what!) memorizing all the grammar rules and words. The speaking was not so bad, thanks to my friend Anel that helped me practice the day before.

As you may or may not know, I am going to Russia over the summer to study (Russian of course), I can't wait! I'm supposed to keep a journal while I am there, so I will just put it all here instead. What use is a journal if only one or two people read it? (I don't know, I'm sure there is one.) [Actually, thats probably as many people as there are reading this blog, but hey, it's ok to hope]
I will be living with a host family (how cool is that?!), I still don't know who they are, but I'm really looking forward to it. I'll try and take a picture or two if I remember. I always take my camera in trips but forget to take pictures...

I don't know what to call this, it is more like a bunch of unrelated sentences put together, hopefully they make sense, if not, oh well, they made sense in my head as I was writing this... Now I'm going to start performing the best pre-test preparation, sleep. (I don't care what people tell me, I still believe getting a good night sleep is more important than staying up studying, at least in my experience it helps my grades more. Actually, I do care what people tell me, it's just that I believe in this case I am right. I always welcome new suggestions, what's the point in thinking I'm right if I'm not?)