Saturday, Excursion with Sveta

September 8, 2012

Last night we met Sveta at head teacher’s apartment and worked out our first excursion around St. Petes.  She was very enthusiastic and it was awesome.  We decided that we would meet today at 10:15am to go to the store to exchange some money.

Well, that was the plan anyways.  I woke up at around 4 and had a little problem and then I couldn’t go back to sleep after that.  So I just stayed up and wrote down some things and was up for like 2 hours.  Then I went back to sleep and thought I had an alarm at like 9am that would wake me up.  My alarm didn’t wake me up.  I ended up waking up at like 11:05am which was after the time that we were supposed to meet at the metro station to go into the center of the city.  So then I started to talk to my host mom (Anya) and was getting something really quick together to eat and run.  I got some yogurt and an apple and then I was on my way.  Right then Anya received a phone call from Sveta asking where I was.  Anya told her that I was on my way and that I would get to the metro station shortly.

I asked Anya about riding transport to get to the metro station.  She told me 2 buses that I could go on and that it would either cost me 22 or 35 rubles.  I was thinking that I didn’t want to spend that.  So when I got to the bus stop I just kept walking.  Then I walked like two bus stops and then I was like, “I don’t want to do this.” So then I got on the next transport and asked the conductor (the woman that works on a trolleybus) if this trolleybus goes to the metro and she looked at me like I was stupid and said, “Да, едете.”  Which means, “Yes, it does go.”  Then I asked her how much the bus fare was and she answered 23 rubles like I should already know.  So then I gave her the money and she gave me the ticket and she walked away.  There was another lady nearby that  heard our conversation, actually everybody probably heard our conversation, but this lady was interested and when we were approaching my stop she motioned that my stop was the next one.  Then she also made sure to let me know when the trolleybus stopped that this was my stop.  I was thankful for her kindness even though I knew where I needed to get off.  I just needed to know if the trolleybus went there.

Inside the metro I met up with the rest of the ILP group and with Sveta and we were off.  We rode the metro to the center of the city and our tour began.  We went to a ton of places.  We visited St Isaac’s cathedral, Astoria hotel, a monument to Nikolas I, Marinski palace, a statue to Peter the Great, the first (of literally hundreds of) palace in Peter, the Neva River with its cruise liners, bridges, and pirate ship/night club, one of the first universities, Hermitage which includes the Winter Palace with its thousands of windows and thousands of doors and everything else.  We also visited St. Paul’s column right there by the Hermitage.  It was humongous!  We took a picture with these navy recruits and it was really funny because they were trying to pick up on the girls, maybe just a little bit.  But nobody could really understand each other because they didn’t understand English and the girls don’t understand Russian.  But when we were walking away I faintly heard one of the navy guys say “Russia Forever” which because one of the highlights of today.

Pushkin

Then we went to a couple performing halls and спас на крови, the Church on Spilt Blood.  When I was still on my mission and was stuck in St. Petes for a couple hours we hit up that church then the market right behind it.  At that market I spent 1000 rubles and $26 for my huge шапка (fur hat).  Not the best deal but the vendor did really well and knew that I really wanted a hat.  After that we continued walking and went to the Fine Arts square where there are a couple theaters and other places for fine arts.  There was also a statue of Alexander Pushkin.  Then the last thing we saw before lunch was Kazan church.

For lunch we went to Teremok.  It is a popular place to get blini, which are very similar to crepes.  I really like them and so did the other volunteers.  I had the Italiansky blin which was like chicken, tomato, and lech (salsa) and a blin with chocolate and banana.  That was amazing. 

Blin with chocolate and banana

Then we still had time and so we went to the “park.”  The park was actually called like “Miracle Island.”  It was pretty cool.  It was free to get in but all of the rides cost money.  There were a bunch of rides like you would see at any amusement park.  There were some rollercoasters and slingshots and even a batman ride. Then from the park we went back to the head teacher’s apartment to do some more trainings and more preparation for lessons and general socializations.  Plus we were all really tired because we did A LOT of walking.  More walking than most of us have done in quite a few weeks.

Another part of today that was simply awesome was Sveta.  Sveta is this really perky Russian lady that has been working with ILP since about its founding here in St Peters.  She made sure that we were all together and that we knew some of the history about the places that we went to and the ones we just observed.