Back from St. Pete. Wrote a whole big thing about it, but for some reason it didn't post and it's gone forever, so I'll keep this brief because I'm super pissed:

-Got my cellphone stolen (god damned pickpocketers)
-Saw freakishly deformed fetuses (fetae?) in glass jars, preserved in the 18th century. When I say freakish, I mean they're still haunting my nightmares, much like Max Neely-Cohen (doo-WOOP)
-Hung out with people from all over the world at an ex-pat bar while drinking...heavily
-Saw more than one bear on the street on leashes
-Saw all the pretty Tsar sights and all that crap
-Ate American food...it was glorious
And on and on.

I'll write more when I post pictures, which I'm not going to do yet because it's time consuming and irritating. I will however post one picture. I woke up this morning, got ready for school as normal, walked out the front door, and this is what I saw:

OK, the day before I leave for Petersburg, I'm finally going to get this Shit up here. They're not even exciting pictures, except for one. [OK a goofed on the layout again, but it takes so long to fix I'm just going to roll with it.




This is the view from one of our balconies
Pretty yes? It's not all this bad, I swear.

























This is some of our group and myself in Yaroslavl. A good time was had by all. Man, I look like shit though.














This is Misha the bear, mascot of Yaroslavl and definately the shit.
























This is the view of another local monastery. The picture is from a smaller church, the one I mentioned that's on a flood plane. In the Spring, all of the green you see is covered in water, but the church always stays above the water line.

A Church in Yaroslavl. It had what were, in my opinion, the best frescos I've seen in Russia.

Hey,
Man, I'm behind on this. I keep meaning to post the pictures I took a long time ago, but keep getting distracted. I'll do it this week, I swear.

In other news, we took a trip to Yaroslavl last weekend. I got into a spot of trouble. I won't write about what I did, it's quite silly, but if you want the story I'll tell it to you in an email. It's not even really worth telling at all, but there you have it. We had a lot of fun just throwing down at the hotel there for a couple of nights, but obviously a little too much.

Interesting side note: While sitting in the hallway of the fourth floor of our hotel talking, Lily (see photos belew), were approached by a wasted police officer who was staying in the hotel. He asked us if we were sleeping together. We said no. He then then broke into the biggest shit eating grin I've ever seen and said in terrible English "Ah, Masterbating, yes?" We were stunned. He then lifted four of his fingers proudly telling us how many times he did the deed a day...I had to shake his hand when he left, he wouldn't have it any other way.

Ummmmm also: Russian Saunas are the shit. We rented one out in Yaroslavl for a couple of hours. Pretty much you sweat your ass off in a tiny room with your friends, then jump into a pool of water so cold that almost lose bowel control when you jump into it, then repeat, with a smattering of drinking thrown in the mix. All in all, a wonderful experience which I believe will help the cold winter go by easier. Plus it left me feeling like a champion afterwords.

On Friday we had Russian arts and crafts time with this crazy old man. He's professional painter of Russian scenes on papier mache. His were beautiful, ours were shitty. I guess he takes what we did home and bakes and glazes them, after adding a few flourishes of his own so they don't suck so bad. When I get mine back I'll put a picture up. Mine was actually kind of cool, I think.

Let's see what else is new. Next week I'll be going to St. Petersburg for ten days, so I'll be MIA for a while. I'm sure lots of ridiculous things will happen there, I'll try and take a lot of pictures and get them up here. It turns out that Flickr really sucks as a site to upload photos to. I'm getting pretty sick of it. If anyone has any ideas for better sites to use, it'd be cool if you could tell me. I'm looking for something with a slightly faster upload time if at all possible. I don't need all of the bells and whistles that Flickr has. If it keeps going like this, I'm just going to start putting all of my pictures on Facebook, but I feel like if I do that, this blog will die pretty quickly.

OK, so more to come this week, bear with me, lots to see, beautiful sceneries and such. I'm trying to get more pictures of us actually doing stuff. I'm sure the pictures of churches over and over again are becoming as boring to you to see, as they are to me to visit.

Also, I can't tell if my English is making sense. I'm getting so used to writing Russian that I'm forgetting how to construct coherant English sentences. But I think this stuff is OK.

later.

OK, a couple of things I'd like to add.
Sorry about that last post, I'm still messing around with Blogger, and its tough to get a good layout when it takes 20 minutes for the pictures to load.
I'm going to Yaroslavl this weekend. Thos of you who know me well will remember that this was the town that I had hoped to be studying in originally. I'm going to have to show it who's boss I guess.
Last weekend we went to this crazy old monastery with a church that sits out on a flood plain. I have pictures, I'll post them later on.
Other than that, Life progresses as normal. Homework sucks, just like in America, but spirits are high, and the vodka is always cold.

Man, it's getting cold.
It seems that fall just sort of happens here. One day everything is green, the next, everything is covered in leaves and it's freezing. We've only had two days of frost, but it was some pretty good frost.
I haven't been keeping this up as well as I'd like, the damned dial-up connection is a real downer, makes it hard to motivate myself. But today I thought I'd throw a few random pictures up here. They're mostly from the first Thursday I was here, when a bunch of us went to our now favorite cafe/bar for a drink or four. So here you go:


This is Amanda and me. She's from Pennsylvania. That fru-fru drink in front of us is hers, I swear. See that soccer ball? That means it's a football bar. Actually, it's owned by an English guy, so it feels like any pub in Yonkers.











The girls. left to right: Megan, Aubrey, Kendra, Lily. Really, besides Lily, everyone was pretty sober except for me.


















Andrew (one of 3 Andrews in our group) is on the left, then Matt, and Megan and Aubrey on the right.

OK. I thought I'd take this opportunity to introduce you to a friend of mine. This is Borsht. Take beets, potatoes, a whole shit load of cabbage, and some boiled pork, sprinkle in a little love, and you get this lovely result. Bonus points: It makes your pee turn pink if you eat enough of it. Actually it's not that bad.