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Jillian Went to Russia! May 14, 2006 |
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Ok, so May is almost half over and I can honestly say I can't wait to come back to Florida.
It's amazing how Finland can be great and suck at the same time. I've made some pretty ok friends here in my town, but the one's I'm really going to miss are my exchange student friends. They're the ones who know exactly how you feel when you're lonely or having problems with your host family or homesick or even when you're just plain bored. Because I'll admit it, Finland is a boring place. There's no exceptional architecture in most cities, most cities look the same, and now that I've switched host families, I live 13 kms from the center, so I can't exactly go into town whenever I want.
In my past reports, I felt that I couldn't be completely honest, that I had to only tell the good parts because people who I was either living with or who I saw on a daily basis would read it, become offended, and have our relationship tarnished. But no more. Honestly, I'm sick of just writing about the good and leaving out the bad. I'm sure future exchange students would actually like to know what Finland is like, rather than just 'oh, we go on trips, I see my friends, I travel a lot, everything's wonderful.' So I'll start writing more about all the aspects of my year.
Ok, so my host counselor found out about that and she invited me over to her house. I brought over a lot of supplies to bake two cakes. And that's what I did. The next morning, my host counselor, who is also my principal at school, saw how tired I was from baking the previous evening and let me stay home till I had to catch my bus to Kuopio (a city 95 kms west) to stay with my exchange student friend Mari from Japan. We had a nice little evening and the next morning we woke up really early and went to the bus station to catch the exchange student bus to Russia!
There were only about 15 people on the bus when we boarded, but upon arriving at the border after five hours of driving, we acquired another 18 or so exchange students. We had lunch at the border where we met up with everyone going on the tour (about 100 of us all together) and then it was time to cross over. The border was very strict. It felt like if you made one wrong move, the russian ladies with the sexy boots would take you and throw you in jail. And there were a lot of check points at the border. The first one had us showing our passports to some guards outside where there were drug dogs and everything. Then we showed our passports to the guards inside the building. After that, we were led out to an outside waiting area sort of place to wait for the bus driver to get all checked out and everything. Overall, the wait at the border was a long, quiet, tense 4 hours. But we finally made it in and headed toward St. Petersburg!
I won't go through the whole program, but I'll tell you what we did. So, remember how I baked those cakes? Well, I brought them to Russia with me. The first night, we had a party and celebrated my birthday in mine and my roommate Amanda from Australia's room. It was really fun and a lot nicer to have the cake with my exchange student friends than at home. We had A LOT of sight seeing tours, went to Pavloshki's Palace, ran like raptors (the dinosaurs) through the streets of St. Petersburg, haggled in finnish with the border people, strolled into the ghetto, escaped (running away like raptors again) from this guy who must've been a pickpocket, watched russian folk dancing, went to the Russian circus where there was a 40-woman line waiting to use the bathroom which we waited on even though there were only 6 minutes till the show started and no toilet paper in any of the stalls, and also where some guys from the audience were called up to do an audience-participating-act where they stripped down to their boxers/just went into the pool with their suits and raced around a pool for a bottle of vodka (the guy wearing the suit didn't want to participate after he found out he'd have to go in a pool because he was wearing a suit. But he won. But when he was getting out of the pool, he slipped and fell in the water anyway and probably ruined the suit), we went to the winter palace, and the Hermitage.
The Hermitage was simply amazing. It was enormous! They told us that if we would spend a minute looking at each piece of art, we would spend 9 years in there! But it was incredible to see works by Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Chagall, Chaugin, Picasso, Monet, Rafael, everyone up close and in person. It was breathtaking being able to see all these famous paintings and sculptures that we've seen a million time in magazines and on postcards. Oh, and we also had some of the best breakfasts we've had all year.
And the hotel was so nice! Every night, everyone would go up to party on the 18th floor where the walls were al glass windows giving us an amazing panorama view of St. Petersburg. We ended up finding the inner workings of the hotel as well. above the 18th floor (which was supposed to be the highest floor) we found there were 2 additional floors. To find this, we had to go down to the 16th floor by elevator, and then take the stairs 4 more flights up. I don't know what the hotel people were thinking by leaving the door to the room with all the gears and things working the hotel open, but we had to see what it was. It was really creepy though. It was just like the old creepy cellar in Nightmare on Elm Street where Freddy is chasing that girl in her dream and where she woke up with that burn on her arm from one of the steam pipes. Yup, it was just like that, and there was even someone in there. When we heard him, we hightailed it back down to the 16th floor.
The trip was so much fun. The food was a little funky sometimes (especially the chicken thingy. Someone called it a quesadilla, but it was more like just a big fat ball made out of chicken and when you tried to cut it, it squirted grease at you.) And it was kind of strange having to buy a giant bottle of water to drink from, brush our teeth with, and everything, since the water in Russia is so dirty and contaminated.
The only bad part of the trip was coming back really sick. The change in bacteria will do that to you. It sucked, but Russia was worth it. We didn't celebrate my birthday until about a week after I came back, and honestly, celebrating in Russia was a hell of a lot better, seeing that my birthday at home was just a cake and sitting around the table. I got a pillow case, a mug, and a towel. Oh, and a cactus from Estonia. Yeah, a cactus. And it's less than 2 inches tall. I don't get it. But, whatever.
Yeah, so that's what's been going on. Apart from Russia, there've only been a few things that have happened. There was Vappu (May Day) on the 1st of May. That was incredibly lame and disappointing. And yesterday there was Messu (I have no idea for a translation of this). My host family just dropped my off at the ice hall (where there's no ice anymore) and it was just like a market day, but there was a depressing Finnish singer, a horrible fashion show, and a magician. That's it. Boring. And I had to stay there for hours and hours. The only good part was getting to go up in the cherry picker on the fire truck.
But
now I'm just waiting for it to be EuroTour time! It's less
than 3 weeks away!! we'll go to 9 countries in 19 days.
Here's the tour program: |
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