Josh's First Day at School

I started school on Monday of this week, and my life got a lot busier. Thoughts about my daily routine until August when I start "real" school and not just language classes can be categorized by the commute, the class, and the homework. I am quite frankly overwhelmed by what I don't understand in class. The teachers speak very quickly and I come home with more new words to learn than there are hours to learn them, but such is the life. Below Nikki could not resist snapping the motherly picture of me on my way to school. Although I honestly think this was my 3rd day of school, but who's keeping track.

The commute.

So I have done this 5 times now, so I may not have the same motivation to continue it in a few weeks, especially if the weather predictions are accurate much more into the next week, but for now I am committed to the walking commute. It takes me a little over an hour each way, so I spend two hours a day walking. The Icy sidewalks, and the speeding cars, and the sidewalks (that don't appear to offer any more protection than any other intersection) and the dog poop on the route are all inherent dangers. The weather has cooperated for the first week. It was never much above or below freezing and usually drizzling or snowing lightly. With that said it is supposed to be a high of -12 C today and into next week it will be colder so we shall see. Here is a picture downloaded from google maps that shows our respective commutes, so that you all can visualize our daily routines. I think my commute is about 3.5-4 miles each way and Nikki's is about 1.5-2 miles, so with any luck we should stay in pretty decent shape.

In other news two of our shipments have arrived and on my commute home on Thursday I actually saw with my own eyes our beloved car sitting in the Consulate courtyard, awaiting tags and processing by the local authorities, that should be complete by the end of this week and then we will be auto mobile.

We also took our first trip on the ST Petersburg Metro yesterday, I was quite surprised with its efficiency and ease of use, but I can definitely see how in rush hour it would be quite a challenging to move around in.

Hermitage Tour!

Yesterday I went on a special tour of the Hermitage Museum. The Hermitage was started by Empress Cathrine the Great in the 18th Century. It began as her private collection and is now one of the largest museums in the world. The museum is massive in size, I am positive that one person would never be able to view all the amazing art work that is housed there. The tour that I went on was of a newly opened exhibit the " The West European Silver of the 16th-19th centuries in the Alexander Hall." I will start first by saying WOW. This was my first trip into the museum and I was awe struck at the grander that surrounded me. Walking around St. Petersburg I am often left with the thought I can't imagine what Russia was like when it was in all it's glory. Inside the Hermitage is evidence of how breath taking it must have been. Every detail from the inlaid wooden floors to the detailed molding on the ceilings was astounding. Our tour was located in the Alexander Hall- and I am not dismissing what was on display there but the walk to that room was worth the admission all in it's self.

These pictures don't show how large, detailed and beautiful each different room was but you can have an idea of what I saw. The Alexander room where the exhibit I was there to see the "silver collection" was no less beautiful and it was completely filled with silver! Here is a link to the Hermitage's web page describing the exhibit if you are interested in learning about it. http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/11/2008/hm11_5_56.html
In a nut shell it is one of the largest collections of European silver from the 16th-19th centuries. It was a fascinating collection with too many things to post. Here are a few of my favorites for various reasons!

Here is a picture of a German beer Stein, and a French wine set. For our Maine viewers this a a pretty neat Lobster pot!

This whole case was silver tea sets, neat idea but I am thinking those cups would have been pretty hot to hold! This is a picture of a German wedding cup- it allows a couple to drink from the same glass without spilling a drop of wine! Here is the story behind it http://www.german-toasting-glasses.com/bridal_cups/nuernberg_bridal_cup_story.html

Ummm? Ok, Pick Me... I like the USA?

So as I am sure many of you realize from your own international travels that once you log your computer onto the Internet from a foreign IP address you get all the targeted advertising related to that area of the world. Well today I was researching airline prices for some trips that Nicole and I want to take this summer and look what came up as the advertisement....

So many questions arise about this... Does the US taxpayer really pay to advertise to recruit immigrants to the US? I suppose we might, and all in all that isn't a bad thing. Or possibly much more nefarious does some unscrupulous company of ill-repute use the name of the US Government and our new president as a face person to claim that they can easily get green cards for the rock bottom price of.... I really don't know. But I do know I was not prepared to see this advertisement when searching for tickets to Germany...
In other news I (Josh) started school on Monday, and I miss the days of last week when I had nothing to do but go acquire things we needed. My classes are hard, I feel as if I am the only student (and there are only 4 so it is hard to hide) who has no idea what is going on in class. But I do understand homework, and I do understand that 2 days in I am averaging 30-40 new words a day to put on cards and learn. I do have some funny stories, I will try to share this weekend when I have a few more minutes.

New Furniture

Our fabulous landlady visited once again last night to complete our furniture. We now have two new pieces- a dish storage in the kitchen and an extra chest of drawers for the second bedroom. Who knew Ikea furniture could be so fantastic! Our entire apartment down to the stove is outfitted with Ikea and we couldn't be more pleased. We are wondering if Ikea in Russia is different from the States or if we have just been missing out on this. Totally reasonable prices and far better quality then any other stores in their price category. I suppose the true test is how well things hold up over time. I couldn't think of any better wear and tear tester then my husband. :)

The Good, the Bad, and the Russian… Two weeks in.

The Good- There has been a great number of surprisingly great things that Josh and I have discovered during our first two weeks here that have made this transition easier and I have no doubts that I will miss when this adventure is over….

1. Heated floors- these may exist in the States but I have not had them so to me this is a new found fabulous invention.
   
2. Heated towel racks- fantastic where have these been all my life
   
3. Animal cookies- yes we have animal crackers but nothing quiet as tasty as these little zoo animals.
   
4. The most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life- perhaps they will share their secrets.
   
5. The People- yes I know Russians are normally regarded as not the friendliest of folks and I am only two weeks in but I have been very surprised with how many friendly people I have met. Sure I get quite a few nasty looks but I don’t understand enough Russian to understand if they were being rude so today my ignorance is working to my advantage.
   

The Bad- some things just can’t make sense to anyone and I remain defiant that these are, in any culture, not fun.

1. Lack of drinkable water from the tap- yes we have water delivered, and drinking water is not difficult to come by so I am thankful for that, however there is something unsettling to me that I can’t drink the water that I wash my dishes, my clothes, and myself in.
   
2. Icy sidewalks – not sure if I can blame this one on anyone but none the less the sidewalks are absolutely treacherous. Not only are they icy but they are slanted into the streets so when you do go down you are skating towards the street where a speeding car insures your doom.
   
3. Washing machines/ Dryers- I must be doing something wrong because a familiar enough looking washing machine is not performing in a familiar fashion. My clothes while washed are no longer the same shape or texture as when they went into the machine. I understand that the dry function of the machine is not superb however why are my cloths so stiff and rough? I miss the fluffy, warm just out of the wash feel! It is a bad sign when I am seriously debating washing a smelly dirty shirt because it just might be better dirty then “clean.”
   
4. Smoking!! – Yucky- These are smart people I am wondering why they have not gotten the word that smoking kills. It seems that everyone smokes here, it hangs in the air, sticks to my clothes and hair and no doubt is taking years off my life. Indisputably the worst thing about living overseas- yucky, stop smoking!!
   

The Russian- In my attempt to always remain positive and reflect on the fact that just because something is different from home doesn’t mean that it is wrong I will simply call these observations Russian.

1. Lack of Street/ building signs – I place this annoyance under the Russian because this doesn’t seem to bother anyone except for people who are like me and do not know where they are going, the Russians seem to have survived centuries without things being labeled for them. It would however be nice if they were slightly more willing to help a lost American. J
   
2. Security- We have no less than 7 locks on our two doors to enter our apartment- this is after our 3 key coded iron and wooden gates to enter our building. Did I mention we only posses 2 keys- Still wondering where the other 5 keys are? The keys we do own I am positive can be used as weapons if the need arises. They are six inches long and thicker than our doors.
   
3. Shopping for electronics- this is both a positive and a confusing experience. Here you pick out what you wish to purchase, and take it to one counter where you are shown exactly how it works and even given a full demonstration that the one you picked does indeed work, after which you must sign and stamp that this procedure took place – (I am thinking this prevents a person from returning the product) then you must take the signed slips to another counter where you pay for it and then you need to go back to another counter to actually pick up the product that you picked out 3 hours earlier. This is all fine and dandy but all we needed was an alarm clock- pretty sure you just plug that bad boy into the wall and it works. We are hoping that we don’t need to purchase anything more complex, no telling how long that would take. But all in all we have a fantastic alarm clock.

Went to Mass, and it was Catholic too....

We discovered a church, and it offers masses in English once a week on Sunday mornings at 9:30. It is only a 15 minute walk form the apartment. We went to mass this morning and it was quite normal, all things considered. Here are some pictures we snapped after mass, (I know who takes pictures in church without a wedding or a baptism.... but I knew you would want to see our new found place of worship) Next up we will build up the nerve to attend one of the masses in Russian to see how the locals behave in mass.

Here is a beautiful side altar in the church that we imagine is an original side altar from before the church's relatively recent renovation.

Apparently our church is the oldest catholic church in Russia, a history of it including how a fire actually saved it from being converted to a secular function in the Soviet era can be found at the link below

http://www.ticketsofrussia.ru/religion/catholicism/catherine/

The Juice of Life!

One of our biggest accomplishments so far in Russia has been finding all the components required to make coffee. We just completed this task yesterday. I know what you are thinking. If you remotely know Nicole or I you know you don't want to be anywhere near our 1000 square foot apartment with both of us in it if we have been coffee deprived for 2 weeks. Have no fear, like many things here, those that were here to receive us made sure we had all that we needed, coffee included. Our friends were so kind to give us their coffee maker to get us through till we found one. And find one we did when another friend here took us to the big Okey, a superwalmart type grocery store. I went through the whole process of buying an electronic appliance (see The good, the bad, the Russian-- Nicole's report two weeks in, on shopping for electronics above to understand what a headache this process is.) So here is our coffee maker...




And simply enough we found coffee beans at the local produkty where we do our daily grocery shopping. Although ground coffee is not popular, it is available. Most Russians drink Instant coffee. And apparently when they do drink ground coffee they make it via coffee press, aka french press. As those are abundant..... what is not abundant is the coffee filters that our coffee maker requires.... now it begins to make sense as to why there were only 2 electronic coffee makers at the Okey.... and absolutely no coffee filters.... and the salesman that tried to convince me that the filter in the coffee machine is the plastic cone that holds what you and I would call a coffee filter...... so not be defeated the search was on.

Eureka.... 3 hours into a search on the 4th day of looking through what must have been 20+ produkty and house ware type stores I was looking through Isles of coffee presses and heard from the other side of the store Nicole exclaim,,, Here they are,,, and sure enough behold right next to the fabric softner (I mean really? fabric softner...?) we discovered the fountain of alertness themselves, Ladies and Gentlement behold, the coffee filter.... All will be alright in our household
By the way, if you are reading this before we talk to you,,, and you know who you are,,, we are forever indebted to you, and we can return your coffee maker whenever you will be home, so give us a call with a good time for you.

Church on Spilt Blood

A few days ago we ventured out to one of the tourist spots in the city, the Church on Spilt Blood, to learn about this church and its history you can follow this link to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Savior_on_Blood

As you can see from these pictures the mosaics inside the church are absolutely amazing.

Even though the building is not currently a church, and has never been used as a public place of worship, the religious mosaics inside rival any art Nicole or I have seen throughout Italy or the rest of Mainland Europe. The church is about a 10 minute walk from our apartment. This coming week Nikki has a tour of the Hermitage scheduled with the International Wives club, so she will have to let you know about that experience...

We won't starve (part 3)

So we are not really sure what these are called officially, but these pies make a great lunch. The filling of rice and chicken, very yummy. They come in many varieties and we will be sure to try them all in the coming months. So if you are counting we can now offer two great dinner places and multiple lunch cafe's. Once we get up to a week worth of restaurants you all may want to book your trip to St Petersburg.....

Really?

Here is an interesting piece of local information I learned this week from He-Devil who posts on the Texas Devils in Russia Blog, (linked to the right of the screen) they have been here for two years now and have been a great source of information for us on many topics, but this one still blows my mind.... so you see in this picture of the River Neva, there is a strip in the middle that is broken away ice that forms somewhat of a straight water channel in the middle of the river. The first time I noticed this the ice was much crisper and not just snowed on as in this picture, so it was definitely apparent that an ice breaker had come through on purpose to make this channel. Although it wasn't a very large channel and it didn't go towards any of the coastal port type places which I thought odd....

It turns out that the purpose of this strip of water in the middle of the frozen river is not to enable some sort of transportation, but it is in fact kept open on purpose by the authorities in order to Prevent people stuck in traffic or behind a closed bridge from driving their cars across the frozen river...... Wow!

Snowy Day

Today it snowed fairly lightly but for most of the day, I think by the end of it we had 2-4 inches or so on the ground. Here are pictures of our building from a distance down the Moika Canal. Our building is the green one with the 4 white pillars facing the canal well off in the distance.

New things, and getting settled

The Past two days have been full of acquiring new things and getting settled in. As you can see our fridge is quite stocked and Nikki even found some peanut butter, although it is certainly not Jiffy. We also acquired our registered Passports and Ministry of Foreign affairs registration cards, which allowed us to purchase our cell phones.

I let you guess who has the pink one.

Our Landlord purchased us a microwave and more furniture arrived in its boxes which will be put together by the installers on Friday evening.

As Beth from http://www.bethandrobert.blogspot.com/noted on a previous comment it is much colder in many places in the states then it has been here, however it continues to snow just a little bit everyday. For some reason this morning our Weather blog widget stopped working, I hope it comes back up soon. Today we will be going for a walk to play tourist a little bit, hopefully we get some more good pictures for the blog.

St Pete's Polar Bear Club!

It was 18 degrees (F*) on our thermometer when we got home from dinner. On the way home we were walking along the river, which as you can see in many previous pictures is quite frozen. As we approached a certain spot of the river Nikki exclaimed, Oh My Gosh that man is naked! Sure enough as we approached we saw a crowd gathered around a spot on the river. Now this spot has concrete stairs that go down the retaining wall into the river. Low and behold we see a wooden stair case going down into a cut out ice spot in the river.
Not wanting to miss a show we hang out for a minute and sure enough a young man is taunted enough by his "Friends" to strip to his skives and head for the water.

Here he is completely submerged.

And here he is quickly exiting the water.

Now what I find odd about this, besides the obvious, is that someone took the care to build and implace a wooden stair case over the stone one to facilitate this activity. As if the most paramount concern for safety is of someone slipping on the icy stairs when submerging in sub freezing temperature waters!!! Needless to say Nikki and I will not be swimming in the Neva anytime soon, but it was quite a sight to see.

Amazing views

While walking home from the restaurant tonight we stopped on V. Island across the river from our apartment to take in the views. The city really is amazing at night, all the colors of the buildings are so vibrant.

Another Great Restaurant

So the disadvantage of not having our household goods or air freight arrive yet are fairly obvious, however the advantages are becoming more apparent to us almost every meal. As we can't cook anything without any dishes it gives us the best excuse in the world to go explore restaurants in the area. Couple that with the ever improving exchange rate and we have a ticket to party. Tonight was what was advertised as a Spanish restaurant, Notice Nikkis sangria, which she enjoyed down to the last piece of fruit.

I ate a Lamb shank, which was delicious, and Nikki had a chicken sandwich, equally delicious. So we now have two knockout dinner restaurants, so when you all come to visit you will eat well twice. Stay tuned for more meals as we explore other dining options.

Laundry = Washing good, Drying not so good

So yesterday we tried to use our washing/drying machine combo and were quite impressed with the washing cycle. It ran for two hours, heating its own water (which saves the water in the water heater for the shower) and ended in a normal spin cycle. We had to open the door and re-close it to move the selector knob into the drying cycle. We ran the dryer through 3 cycles, one of 12 minutes and two separate ones of 42 minutes, at the end the clothes were warm, but very damp. It was at this point we discovered why there was a very elaborate clothes drying rack in the bathroom, a room that Nikki keeps close to the temperatures of the fires of Hell due to how much she loves the in floor heating. I think we learned to wash with the washer, and to dry with the rack near the radiators....


This morning we woke up to flurries on the ground. The area is a lot more beautiful with a little white covering over the ground.

New Furniture

On Sunday evening our landlords son knocked on the door and began ferrying in two new pieces of furniture for us. Now we just need our house hold goods to arrive so we can cook dinners for the dining table and to put books in our new shelf storage. We separately had a good evening. Nikki went to a girls night out party at our American neighbors and good Friends house, while I went bowling with some of the guys from the consulate and school. Interesting evening enjoyed by both of us.