How you spent this week?

Today was probably our longest day yet; I am really tired. But I WILL write in this journal every night because I don't want to forget anything that happened!

First, I got up at 7 and skyped with Pat. He is going on a three-day backpacking trip with his brother and some friends in Tennessee. Pray he doesn't get attacked by a bear. I think he'll be okay though, there has to be at least one person that runs slower than him. ;)

Then Anatoli got here at 9:30 for us to go to Pushkin, a town a little ways out of St. Petersburg where the Tsar's summer homes are. We took the metro to Moscovsky, one of the longest streets in town. We stopped at the Victory Monument, a monument made to honor WWII soldiers and the inhabitants of the city (Leningrad). It was a really cool monument, but eerie because they played classical music around the square. It made it more somber. Inside the mini museum, they played every so often a short melody. Anatoli said that this melody would proceed all public announcements to citizens of Leningrad during the siege. It was chilling; a simply melody. I could barely imagine how living in Leningrad during that time felt. Anatoli said his wife's grandfather worked in a shell factory during the siege, and he wasn't allowed to go home except one day a week. He hated that because he constantly feared that his children were starving to death during the week. 1 million people died merely of starvation. That's a lot of death. Period.

After the monument, we caught a bus to Pushkin. The bus was nice, but it was HOT today. Like 80. And no one wears shorts, let alone tank tops with shorts. So I left my cardigan on. I honestly don't know how the women dress how they do; always nice with high high heels. Crazies. But Pretties.

First, we went into Catherine Park. It was huge! It was the grounds of Catherine Summer Palace. There was a lake and a lot of out-buildings for inhabitants and visitors to use. The inside of the palace was gorgeous. Interesting fact is that before the siege of Leningrad, the caretakers of the palace took all the important artifacts and moved them to inland Russia, and burned-out the building! The structure still stood, but they wanted to ruin it, so the Nazis wouldn't do that job for them. Check out the pictures, it was reallllly pretty, but not much to really talk about in this blog.

Next, we walked through another park to the palace of Tsar Nicholas II (and Anastasia, Frannie!!). It was completely different, having been built much later. There were a lot of artifacts that belonged to the family. It was really cool; it actually looked like a home, unlike the other palaces which were just insanely ornate.

After that, we looked around for a restaurant, but a lot of us were impatient, so we just caught the bus back to Moscovsy Prospekt and ate at Pizza Hut. It was actually really good and different from the U.S.! I had a baked pasta. One of the most challenging things about being here is that I have no idea where we should eat. Anatoli doesn't have ANY favorite restaurants in St. Petersburg (isn't that weird?) and obviously I have no idea what I'm doing. So when we get hungry, we basically wander the streets, go into restaurants, look at the food and the price, and decide if we want to eat there. It's really exhausting, plus every time we do this, I'm hungry (obviously) so I'm not exactly in a fine mood. It'd be nice to just go to a regular place, but I do want to try as much as I can! It's a tough situation, haha.

After Pizza Hut, we came back to the Hostel to rest for an hour or so. Then, Anatoli came back and we went to see Swan Lake!!! It was SO GOOD! Beautiful music and dance. Loved it. Anatoli said that there may be tickets to lesser known ballets for 10-15 bucks; if that's true, I definitely want to go again. I love it because it's only music, so the language barrier doesn't exist!

Now, I'm back at Hostel-Home. I got an email from my new friend Michail, and hopefully he's going to meet up with us next week so we can meet his girlfriend and his school friends! His email was really funny with the grammar struggles. At the end of the email, he asked, "How you spent this week?" He's a really nice guy, and he seems really interested in showing us around his city! I really want to make friends here, so I can start my international web of connections. ;)

This post is pretty straightforward only because I'm literally too wiped to elaborate much. I'll make sure I elaborate more in later posts! Good afternoon to you all, good night to me!