2-6-07

2-6-07

One of these days, I swear, I’ll post pictures without posting the same picture twice. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

So yesterday after I finished writing up that entry and shut down my computer, I checked my email on one of the internet stations. I hung out on that for a while, because no one was in line behind me, and slowly some of the people who’d had afternoon classes trickled in with their laptops. Lo and behold, the internet was working! I think that maybe it turns on at 4 or something. I don’t know, that’s my hypothesis that I’m going to go on. Tomorrow I’ll take this puppy to school and after my late class ends at 3 I’ll head to Kolobok with the other laptop folk for a Coke and some hangout time.

So it’s getting ridiculously cold. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be –25 Celsius. Roughly –18 before wind chill is factored in in Fahrenheit. Thursday and Friday Marina said it could hit –35 Celsius. That’s roughly –28 before Fahrenheit, again before wind-chill. It’s just getting preposterous. I can only layer so much before I am unable to move. Tomorrow I’m thinking it’ll be: Long underwear shirt, long sleeve tee, sweatshirt, two pairs long underwear pants, sock liners, socks, boots, glove liners, gloves, mittens, coat, scarf, hat. And I’m sure even then when I’m standing at the door, about to leave and walking like I’ve got poles in my sleeves and pant legs, Marina will ask me a couple of times if I’m going to be warm enough.

The other adverse effect of the cold is that I’m drying out. I’ve never been a fan of dry skin (Who is?), but during winter, of course, I’d make sure to keep myself moisturized. But even then, in the bitterest of Indiana winters, my hands never felt like this. My hands NEVER get this dry. I’ll be honest; I put my hands through a lot. At one point this summer, I counted and I had a total of 15 paper cuts on my hands from work. But my hands are getting so dry that the skin on my knuckles is cracking so it kind of looks like I’ve been punching a brick wall. The carry-on size Olay lotion that I brought does a semi-adequate job, but it also has glitter in it, which then gets on everything. So today while I was at Diksi (more on that later), I saw some Russian brand hand cream. I figured the Russians know what kind of crap I’m dealing with right now, so their product may be more effective. That logic may be flawed, because there’s a good chance the Russian product is some other country’s product repackaged, but whatever. I’m giving it a shot. It smells nice, and my hands certainly feel better.

My eyes burn after walking outside because they get so dry. Becky told me that on her way to school this morning her eyes started watering because of the wind, and then her tears froze on her face. One of the Matts came to school with an ice goatee. I asked Marina during dinner when it was supposed to get warmer, expecting her to say, “Oh, this weekend it’ll be a little warmer” or “Next week it won’t be so bad.” Instead, her answer: March. Faaaaantastic.

The highlight of today was receiving the letter Mom sent me back on January 22nd with clippings from the Journal-Gazette’s coverage of the Colts beating the Patriots and a couple of IU games. So that means it took a little over two weeks to get here. I guess that means if you’re going to send me a letter (No packages, they’ll get here in June), don’t send it after the last week of April.
After classes Becky, Hannah, Hillary, Lael and I went to the Chainaya Lozhka (Tea Spoon) restaurant near the Metro. It’s a chain fast food place with tasty, tasty blini. We sat around in there for like an hour after we finished our food, discussing the trip to Novgorod, weddings (Hillary’s sister is getting married the same day as Emily), and trying to read fortunes in tea cups.

Then we got on the Metro and went to a stop we’d never been to before because Becky had seen an ad that said right next to the station was St. Petersburg’s largest shoe store. We all kind of want new, warmer boots. Instead of being one giant shoe store, it was a three-story building filled only with shoe stores. We spent a good two hours there. The boots that I liked the most were, of course, the most expensive. I tried on some cheaper boots in a different store. But my arches are far too high for them to be anywhere near comfortable. I know you really don’t care about how many pairs of boots I tried on, but the exciting part of the experience was that I actually experienced customer service! The idea of “customer service” has, for the most part, bypassed this entire country. Cashiers sullenly and silently stare at you as you walk around. Then when you actually buy something they’ll mumble things to you that even if you were completely fluent in Russian there’s no way you would understand. Then, when you ask politely what they said, they’ll just kind of roll their eyes in a “Never mind” fashion. But today! Today was different! We were in the big store on the third floor. It was kind of like a DSW, the boxes with different sizes of the shoes on the shelves were all accessible, so, in theory, the entire trying on process could be self-service. So I was going to try on a pair when I was approached by an associate who then got the boots for me and unzipped them and whatnot. And then when I needed a size larger, she bopped over to the shelf and got them for me. I kind of felt bad for not buying them. Maybe that was her plan all along.

I’ll admit, it was a little embarrassing to take off my smelly, utilitarian black boots to reveal SmartWool socks and the bottoms of my long underwear. Becky and Hannah bought bags and Hillary bought gloves and not a single one of us bought any kind of footwear.

This place was on the yellow line, and I could’ve taken the yellow line all the way down to where it intersects with the blue line (my line), and then change and go back up to my island. But the yellow line also has stops on my island. I got off with Hillary at her stop. She’s one of the other two girls who live on the island (Claire’s like 5 minutes away from me and uses the same stop that I do), and it’s about a 20-minute walk from her station down Bolshaya to my apartment. I stopped about a third of the way there and went into a Diksi mini-market. You see, for the first two weeks CIEE paid for our lunches at the cafeteria at Smolny, but that’s over now. So on the days when I have afternoon classes (Usually Monday and Friday, but one of our teachers is in Austria for two weeks and the teacher taking over here isn’t available Monday, so for the next two weeks it’s Wednesday and Friday), I only have 50 minutes for lunch. This is not enough time to leave the campus to buy something. Solution: Brown bag it! So I bought some juice boxes, cookies, little bags of pistachios, a loaf of bread, sliced salami, and sliced cheese. I’ll just make myself a sandwich in the morning and then take that and eat it. It’s a little elementary school, I know. Juice boxes make me feel like I’m about 15 years younger, but I love apple juice and while skim milk is available, it’s not available in a convenient portable container. We’ll see how tomorrow, Sandwich Day 1, goes.

I mentioned in my last post that I wanted to time the Metro station escalators. So far I’ve timed three: Petrogradskaya, Staraya Derevnya, and Chklakovskaya (I think that’s how it’s spelled? It’s Hillary’s usual stop, not mine). So far the longest is Staraya Derevnya, clocking in at 2 minutes, 50 seconds. That’s a long time to just be standing there. I’d love to take pictures of it, but cameras are banned inside the Metro stations and the scary police with their automatic weapons look like they’re the sorts of folk with whom it’s best not to trifle.

So. Tomorrow. Me. Kolobok. It’s a date.