Niet, Niet, Niet

Big day! I'm forcing myself to write this because I don't want to forget anything.

First, in the hostel.

We're staying in a hostel, which means anyone can stay here and we share common kitchen and bathroom, with separate bedrooms. For the past few days, we've been interacting with some fisherman staying next door. They are friendly, but speak very little English. They invited us (Julie and I) to drink and talk with them last night. We did. They were all really nice. There were three older men (I only remember 1 name, Serge, who was a fisherman), a younger (25) guy who is from Siberia and worked in a snowboarding shop, and today one of the older men had his son (Michail) over, who is training in a military cadet school and is about our age. The younger guys speak functional English, and the young man tonight is actually still over there talking to Titus and Michael (from our group). He is very curious and told us he is enjoying practicing his English because he's never interacted so long with Americans before. Julie and I left, because both nights, Michail's father has been very insistent with the shots, haha. Last night, we took 3 each. In Russia, the culture is that if there is a group around the table, everyone at the table drinks, no one sits out a round. So after 3, we extracted ourselves and tried not to be rude. I was worried that they were offended, but tonight they invited us back, so I guess they weren't! I was skyping with Mom and Dave when Michail's dad came in and vehemently asked us to join them again. Tonight, Michail was there and he defended us a little, because he said he too did not like to drink much. We had 1 shot each of vodka and 1 of whiskey, which I guess is becoming more popular. Also interesting is that after 10pm, buying alcohol is illegal. However, that didn't stop any of the guys from running to the corner liquor store and buying more anyway. I wanted to stay and talk with Michail, but his father would not let up with the insistence that we take more shots, so we left while he was out smoking, haha. We definitely will never forget the word for "No" (Niet). We asked Michail if there was a more polite way to say "No," but he said that "Niet" is all the politeness you need. He said that he finds that Americans are always very worried about offending everyone, and we try too hard to be polite. I can see that, haha. We still told Michail to apologize for us because we don't mean to be rude, but he said that he also wanted to apologize to us for his father's rudeness. They're honestly all harmless, although judging by their scars, they can choose when not to be harmless. Michail was a little more discreet, and he gave Titus his email, so the four of us may try to hang out with him again before we leave. He was telling us about his school, his home (Orenburg, South near Kazakhstan), the date that he had earlier when he and his girlfriend went to see an American Johnny Depp/Tim Burton movie (dunno which one), and the way his friends and peers talk about America. A lot of Russians think that America is what is shown on MTV (they have it here too). We assured him that we all hate MTV, haha. He talked a lot of patriotism, how it seems that Americans have it and Russians lack it. He said that a lot of young Russians want it to be different, not like Putin wants it to be different, but more modern and Western. We assured him that not everyone in America thinks it's the best, and we told him about the phrase "The grass is always greener on the other side." His English was really very good for never having interacted with native speakers, but he told us that his friends' was better.

Now, for the excursion of the day.

We went first to the Russian Military History Museum. It was massive. MASSIVE. Look at the pictures on facebook, but even they don't show the scale of this place, there were about 100 tanks, missiles, and trucks out on the front lawn, and then they had full exhibits in the buildings too. Anatoli said he really wasn't interested in the military, so we mostly wandered by ourselves. It was really interesting and I took a lot of pictures. It was really evident that Russia truly is both Asian and European. There were medieval knights in armor with lances and swords, but there were also 16th century cannons with Chinese technology and oriental carvings. It was more than fascinating.

After the museum, which we sped through because only 4 in our group are interested in that sort of thing (but trust me, we dawdled as long as we could without causing our own personal uprising), we went to a place called Peter's Cottage. It was the first building built as part of St. Petersburg in 1712, and Peter the Great lived there. It was a wooden building inside an outer brick building built later to protect the cabin. Pictures weren't allowed inside (they cost 100 rubles, $5, per picture), but I still took 1. My camera died tonight, so I'll put them up later.

Then we walked to a ship called Augusta. It is the most famous ship of the Russian fleet because it signaled the Bulshevik Revolution in 1917. It also survived the Russo-Japanese war in 1904, which was a pretty big feat because the Japanese fleet pretty much destroyed the Russian fleet. They were charging admission to the inside of the boat because I guess some anarchists tried to vandalize it in October. Anatoli said it was silly to pay, so we just wandered around the deck and took some pictures and then left without going inside.

Then we walked back to the hostel around 2:15, Julie and I took a 2-hour nap, and then we went out walking again. This time, we walked across the canal to the Hermitage museum. We just went outside it because we're going there as a group later this week. It's beautiful. Then we tried buying some ice cream, but the vendor was an older woman and she got really frustrated. She was saying something about we had to buy 3 or something, and then she finally just put our ice cream back in the freezer and walked away. So we left. It kind of rattled me because that was the first time someone had not been really nice to me, but I can see that it would be really frustrating to have some silly girl not know what you're saying. I did think she was a little grouchy, though. Anyways, I'll have to take Anatoli with me to get ice cream next time, which won't be a problem, because he's addicted to it and gets it everywhere. When someone asked him where to get the best ice cream in St. Petersburg, he said, "Where? Everywhere!"

Tomorrow we have class, and then we're going to a market to buy souvenirs. Sorry if this blog is a little longer than you were expecting! :)

Good night!