So this blog begins with the story of my trip from the US to Russia.
Day 1: Flight to New York and Russia?
So everything went well for a while, I got there plenty early and made a new friend, Christine, who was flying to Kuwait to visit her family. Then the gate was moved, not a big deal. Then it was moved again and there was the possibility of an unknown delay. Then we were told that our 1^15 flight would leave at 3, I needed to be in New York and on the next flight by 5:45. Then teh delay was only to take until 2:15. We got on the plane around two, but sat there for over two hours and didn't leave until 4:15. In fact, we did not see a single Northwest Airlines plane leave during those two hours. I made another new friend on the plane, the woman sitting next to me also had a son that attends the same University I did. The plane landed at 5:30. A nice man from across the aisle let us use his phone to call our teacher who informed us that she had arranged tickets for us on the next plane, 24 hours later. Sam, another student on the same trip and I were stranded in JFK. We decided to make the best of it and tried to find a customer service person so that we could get compensated for a hotel room, but all of the workers had already left, so we had to stay in JFK overnight because we missed our international connection. I ended up staying up all night reading while Sam slept on a cement bench because that was the only thing to sleep on. We also hung out with Christine whose flight was delayed 3 hours but she made it out of there. We made it our mission to visit every terminal in JFK and did just that.
Day 2: Flight to Russia Take 2
Well, I did get a lot of homework read this day. We finally got to see a custmer service agaent and all they gave us was a 5 dollar coupon for food. Eventually, we made it on the plane where I met two more nice young women. I ended up feeling rather motion sick and one of them lent me her motion sickness bracelets for the flight. We ended up landing late in Helsinki too and were afraid that we would miss our connection to St. Petersburg, but it turned out that most of that flight was on our plane so we didn't get stuck. On the half hour flight I ended up getting sick and then we made it to Russia. We claimed our bags and got through customs no problem to be met by a guide. We missed seeing the Hermitage but changed the rest of our money and met the group in a cafe. Then we went for a walk with the group followed by a nice dinner. I was still feeling very sick by the time we got back to the hotel so I took a shower and went to sleep, only to wake up less than an hour later, thinking that it was the next morning and time to leave. I found the professor and she put me back to bed.
Day 3: Leaving St. Petersburg and Meeting the Host Family
I was feeling much better even though we had a three hour bus ride ahead of us. On the bus teh professor attempted to teach us some survival Russian but I didn't retain much. Then we arrived and met our host families. The daughter in my host family is very nice, she is studying English in teh University and studied in America for a while so we can talk. My host mother and brother also seem nice, but do not speak any English, so... Oh, and did I mention that I found out my host sister's birthday was the next day?
Day 4: First Day of Class
The first day of class was daunting and exhausting, we learned about half of the cyrillic alphabet in cursive, some words and some dialogue. Then we toured the Kremlin. We came back to the apartment and within an hour or so people began arriving for her party, which started at six and lasted until after midnight. My host aunt is a lot of fun and very interesting, I'm supposed to go visit her at some point. Her son is planning to study in the States next year. I also met her ex-boyfriend who only spoke Spanish and Russian (only my host sister, aunt, and cousin could speak English), so I practiced my Spanish as well. It was a lot of fun, Russian birthday cake is delicious, but exhausting.