4-15-07

4-15-07

Less than a month. That’s all that’s left. The other day I had a revelation—the countdown feature on my clock hasn’t gone totally wonky. It’s counting down the HOURS til midnight, May 13th. Okay, I’m weird about counting days and stuff, but honestly, this is too much. Hours? I don’t want to think about hours! It’s weird enough saying “month” in the singular and not the plural. Although I suppose I can’t even say “month” anymore because there’s less than that.

Friday night a couple of us went to this place attached to that oasis of American consumerism—the mall Grand Canyon. It was about the size of a gymnasium, with a bar on every wall, a bowling alley off to one side, and roughly 100 pool tables in the center. I haven’t seen a single pool table in this city, so this was a little overwhelming. There was also a small arcade, a small casino, air hockey tables (Alas, no foosball), “4D World,” and a small shooting range. Regrettably, I was not playing my usual fantastic game of pool. Luckily, I’m taking a billiards class next fall.

Anyway, it was just fun to hang out and play pool. This city desperately lacks places to just hang out for a little bit. We’re planning on making a return trip, but the weekends are rapidly disappearing.

Interestingly, Friday night I think I had the Russian equivalent of a Turducken. Two medallions of some kind of meat—pork, I think—stuffed with some other kind of meat. I originally thought it was ham. Though, I suppose, were it ham, it would not be the equivalent of a Turducken, it would be the equivalent of…a pig. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t ham, it was just chopped up hot dog. Yum.

On Saturday, I walked all the way down to the Cruiser Aurora and walked around on that a bit, taking pictures. A good chunk of the pictures are of other people taking pictures. One, because I enjoy taking pictures of people taking pictures in general. And two, Russians pose so seriously so often that it’s just great to observe. From there, I walked along the Neva a bit, crossing Troitsky Most, and walking to the Subway by the Ermitage for lunch. From there, I wandered down Nevsky, enjoying the fantastically bright and warm weather. I ended up watching the Zenit-Dinamo match with a bunch of rowdy Russians, and luckily Zenit won 3-0.

Saturday night, a couple of us went out to our friend Nohemi’s apartment (She lives with roommates, not a host family), and she cooked us some absolutely fantastic Mexican food. Again, it was nice to just hang out with these people and eat cookies and play a game that was the equivalent of the Jeopardy category “Rhyme Time.” That might sound lame, but it was fun.

Today, I met up with Rachel Eve and Kate and the three of us went out to the town of Tsarskoe Selo and visited the park there and Catherine’s Palace, location of the world-famous Amber Room. This, of course, is the one room where pictures weren’t allowed. The palace itself was magnificent and…palace-y. All this grandeur does begin to wear on you, I have to say. But the weather was so nice, it was fun to just wander the park and eat ice cream.

So I’ve done a lot of walking this weekend, and I’m absolutely wiped. I’m not sure what the week ahead holds, but maybe I’ll buy a ticket to the next Zenit match, the only one remaining before I leave…in roughly 669 hours. Eek! I need to figure out how to stop that.