wan·der·lust: a strong desire to travel.: September 2014

Yesterday some of the girls went on an adventure. We planned to just go hang out around the Gulf of Finland and eat lunch there, but our day turned out much different from that, which was actually pretty amazing.

As soon as we got off at the metro stop we decided would probably be the closest walk to the Gulf we could see some sort of amusement park ride, we walked a little further and found the cutest amusement park. So we went and explored it.

We rode the ferris wheel in hopes of seeing where the Gulf of Finland was and we didn't really see much (we sort of saw what we thought might have been the coast so we decided after we were done to go toward that direction).

We decided to walk through a pretty awesome park and stumbled upon what we called Swan Lake, it was so pretty and we fed some swans animal crackers and just enjoyed the scenery.

Photo courtesy of Jess

We decided it was probably time we got back to the metro so we could go meet our mother/guide Sveta so she could show us around the Peter and Paul Fortress. Once we met up with Sveta we got to go to this little monument area that is a layout of St. Petersburg. It's a mini-model of all of the sites here in town. Some of them we've already been to so it was pretty cool seeing them like that. It also had black marble around which represented bodies of water.

Mini Savior on Spilled Blood

Large Scale Savior on Spilled Blood

Mini Winter Palace

Large Scale Winter Palace

Mini Our Lady of Kazan Cathedral

Large Scale Our Lady of Kazan Cathedral

Mini St. Isaacs Cathedral

Looking out from the top of the large scale St. Isaacs Cathedral

Up close details of the angels.

My boyfriend (one of the architects of these historical buildings)

Our excursion group

From there we went over the the Peter and Paul Fortress and learned some pretty interesting history.

This little guy is a symbol for the island, the Peter and Paul Fortress is located on Hare Island and so this guy was constructed, we also learned that if you throw a coin and it lands on the wood it brings good luck!

This is the final resting place of the Romanov family (which includes the infamous Anastasia)

All of the "gold" on this was carved out of wood.

There's a sculpture outside that represents time, there are twelve different chairs located around the center that represent hours, months, etc.

Our sweet group picture sitting in some of the chairs.

Outside the fortress

Pirate Ship on the Neva River

We ended our day there (well we went and got some pretty awesome pizza) and then went back to the apartment, it was an extremely awesome day of sight-seeing and learning more about this crazy Russian city I've been living in, it still seems a little unreal at times, but I'm so blessed to have this experience.

Just a few things I want to write about on my afternoon off:

Drivers are crazy here. My first experience with this was being picked up from the airport, but they make their own rules, they make their own lanes, they do whatever the heck they want. They also basically drive on top of each other, I'm not sure how I haven't witnessed a bunch of accidents There have been times when I could reach out the bus window and easily touch the vehicle next to us without sticking my arm past my elbow. Also, driving on the right side of the road is the same here (for those of you who didn't know that) but there are quite a few vehicles that still have the driver on the opposite side of the car (on the right).

While on the metro you definitely need to pay attention to who is getting on, and if you're sitting, give up your seat to someone with a kid, pregnant, or anyone who is elderly. You will get yelled at if you're not paying attention and don't do that. (Yes, it's happened to me.) Also the metro is definitely an interesting experience (of course I come from a small town so I don't use public transportation) there's so many people, and I'm getting good at metro surfing (I've decided to call it this, it's standing up and staying up without falling over and not holding onto anything to keep your balance).

Now that it's been raining here, this next thing seems less weird, but they have indoor and outdoor shoes. We have to change each time we're in a school. The streets are really dirty here so they don't want all those germs and junk all over "indoor" places. All the kids change when they are taken to go outside as well. Indoor clothes and outdoor clothes.

One thing I've found somewhat amusing since I've been here is the amount of man-purses (aka murses, aka satchels) pretty much every man has one to carry his essentials. I'm not sure why I find this so funny, but it seems different from home.

Make sure you go to the bathroom before going out and about because they charge for public toilets (in most places) here, which isn't cool. One thing I'm definitely going to be thankful for when I get back home to America is the fact that our public toilets aren't as gross as they are here. It's a weird thing, but there are a bunch of little things like that we get spoiled with back in America. (and I'm so grateful for that!)

One adjustment I've had to make is that there aren't dryers here, so we have to hang out clothes to dry, we hang them pretty much everywhere (and it takes a while for some things to dry) but we have a clothes line in the bathtub/shower so trying to shower while clothes are drying is an interesting experience.

Another adjustment is boiling our water, the water isn't potable here (can't drink it from the tap) so anytime we want to drink water we have to fill this bad boy up and boil it. We have a few jugs that we fill up with hot water and put in front of a window to cool off before we can put it in the fridge to make it cold. I guess the girls found out before I got here that if you put the water in right away it heats up the entire fridge. This is one of the reasons there are so many hot beverages here (I assume) it's just easier. I'm starting to get used to drinking herbal teas. (Plus now that it's suddenly winter I appreciate the extra warmth it brings)

Light switches on the outside of rooms is super confusing to me. I'll walk into a room and look for a light switch and realize that's not how they roll here in Russia. One of the first days I was here one of the girls actually turned the lights out on me while I was taking a shower (she didn't realize it because the kitchen light is right next to it) and it was pitch black (no windows in the bathroom) so I had to stumble around and go out of the bathroom to turn it back on.

Other than that random stuff life has been pretty interesting in Russia, teaching may be getting easier but I'm not sure if I'm a very good teacher still, I hope I am. My schedule was changed this week so I no longer have some students and now I have new ones so it's been interesting. I'm learning more about the city and some Russian culture, we also have the opportunity to take Russian Language classes every Friday so that's been pretty neat considering it's a completely new alphabet.

Last week I turned 25 and we all went out to dinner and then came back and had cake and ice cream. Over the weekend we got to see a few of the sights here in St. Petersburg and this city is really beautiful. Last night we started planning some of our first "big" vacations, I think over the weekend of Oct. 17-20 I'm going to be going to Finland!

Here are some random photos: