Thursday

This city is exhausting. There is so much space here, despite the buildings being crammed together along the embankment. It invites walking, but after a while much starts to look the same and you end up exhausted. As one of my professors said, this city was not built upon human dimensions. But it’s great and I probably enjoy walking around here more than most of the Russian girls do in their stiletto heels.

So the last couple of days have involved lots of walking in the heat. And because it’s been so sunny, I do not have the sickly, pale, Petersburg pallor! Instead I’m tan and peeling. On Thursday some of us spent the afternoon on Nevsky prospect (the biggest, longest, and central promenade in the city). Alisa wanted to go to this store called Passaj (Passage) that has foreign products. We met our first fellow American there—a lady from Las Vegas. I have been surprised at how few other foreigners I’ve met here, I rarely hear English. The city does also not seem very diverse—few Asians, and I’ve only seen one black guy (who was dressed up in some ridiculous period costume outside a chocolate museum/factory/café—apparently Russians find this really funny and only hire black men to work at these types of places that sell chocolate). But this city is supposed to have a lot of foreigners because it is so cheap to go to school here. Maybe it’s just because it is summer and people try to escape the heat of the city (going to their dachas) or have gone home for vacation if they’re students.

Anyway, so the store didn’t have that many foreign products, and it was all in Cyrillic anyway. I wanted cereal, but they didn’t really have cereals I’d seen except cheerios and some version of cocoa puffs. Afterwards we went to Café Propaganda, which wasn’t far. We’d heard it was kind of cool and near the Menshikov palace (really amazing). The menu was half in English there, which helped a lot. Alisa and I split this delicious drink/desert, which was champagne with strawberries and pineapple in it, sugar around the rim of the cup, and chocolate at the bottom. Delicious. The food wasn’t that great, but the décor was kind of cool (even if probably targeted to tourists). I put a picture of us (Alisa, Joel, Tania, and Zach) up. Nothing else too exciting—a little more rain in the evening, which helped cool down the city.

I don’t yet have a diminutive for my name, although my Russian family calls me variations of Elizabeth—Eleezabyet, Eleeza, Leeza, Eli. It is so sweet to hear them call each other by what are their little pet names—they are even programmed that way into their phones, which I realized when my cell phone decided to die on me. Cell phones are weird here. There are only a few companies and they all rip you off. So everyone has the same semi-crappy phones that have the same ring, which makes life a little confusing. Also, you have to buy phone cards to use your phone both locally and internationally. The local one you punch in the pin code and it puts money on your phone. I had a little problem the other day because if you go over your paid minutes (at least on whatever network I have) your phone shuts down completely. I love Russia.

This weekend should be fun. Out Friday night, ballet Saturday, opera Sunday.