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.