Russia

So, last night I took a 1 1/2 hour russian course and now I am fluent. well, maybe not fluent, but at least i can start to read signs and know what they say. luckily there are enough imported english words and then words with latin roots that I can recognize and translate. I know now that there is an invitro fertilixation clinic here in Petersburg, although i have no reason or desire to visit it.

observations of today: watched a young mother teach a pre-walking baby with bunny ears on her yellow hat how to kick a can onto the street from the sidewalk. That is what people do here: drop their bottles and cans onto the street. And, in downtown Petersburg at least, someone comes along dressed in lime green coveralls with a broom and dust thingy and sweeps them up and into a trash can.

don't smile in Russia: you will be thought to be a simpleton or to have some nefarious purpose. this suits me well; as I don't smile much anyway.

don't count on street lights to clear the roads for safe pedestrian passage. this of course is a good match for my neurotic street crossing behaviour.

last night i got caught in a notorious petersburg downpour. of course i brought no umbrella or raincoat, so i got wet trying to find an unlocked entrance to the university compound. it took me an hour as at one point i backtracked and then had to re-backtrack in this pouring rain. I was carrying a plastic container of some sort of cabbage salad I had purchased in the 24 grocery convenience store, but it leaked and my salad filledwith rainwater, so I tossed it in the garbage (and did notkick it into the street). well, wet is an understatement. i was soaked through to my skin by the time i found the entrance and found my way to the residence building. luckily my roomate was still up despite the late hour so i didn't have to awaken her to let me in the room forwhich there is only one key.

the best news of many days is that therewas hot water for a shower for the first time snce i've been here. i had been warned about the possible lack of hot water, so was prepared fr it, bt this morning i woke up to find hot (if brown and stinky) water pouring out of the shower head. coincidentially this is the first day that I have felt "human".

i'm disappointed that I have not yet figured out how to post my photographs here, but i have not taken very many yet. i feel as if I am still trying to orient myself, and my picture taking has been random and likely either dull or predictable. Kristie wanted me to take pictures of the poeple that I am meeting, so I'm trying to do that. but mostly i'm interested in the dogs of petersburg, because while i don't see many during the day, i can hear them in the middle of the night...and it sounds like packs of dogs roaming the streets while engaging in internicene battles. I can hear the snarling and barking and howling, and the gnashing of teeth. the next day there is no evidence of these packs of dogs, so either Iam hearing ghosts or the dogs of petersburg are noctural, waiting until the push of people subsides.

and then, larissa, there are the cats. i've seen a few cats, most of them filthy but obviously well fat, ad i suspect that is due to the rat population. there are several cats loitering around the Hertzen campus, and they are robust muscle-bound body-building cats whose striding pecs speak of their confidence. i haven't really interacted with any of them, as there is the possibility of rabies....but i've taken a couple of pictures of cats.

and then there was the generic dog lying on the front step of the hermitage this morning. he was just lying there on his side, surrounded by hundreds of people coming and going, and he looked like he was dead, or at least in a deep sleep, and i figure he was sleeping there because it was safe from the wandering hoards of yowling dogs he travels with and fights with at night. it was safe - people just stepped around him. Some looked at him, others just ignored him. i took his picture. will post when and if i can.

this afternoon i attended a lecture on the "fire and flood mythology of Petersburg", which was essentially a lecture about how petersburg was first conceived as Peter I imaginary construct and whose european designed buildings were merely a facade for his idea of utopia...a facade, of course, with no substance. the writers of petersburg, first Gogol, PUshkin and Dostoevski and then others, including most recently Bitov in his "Pushkin House" have created and then explored the substance of the mythology that grew out of this facade.

and so on. i didn't bring my notes with me, but the lecture was great and the lecturer will be giving another 7 lectures while I am here on various aspects of russian literature, and i'm in for those.

Culture shock has not set in, and I'm not sure why. I feel very comfortable here although the white nights are somewhat of a trickster as I am never able to tell what time it is. So, i don't get my "go to bed now" cue from the dusk; thre is no dusk, just daylight until 1 am and then night until 3 or so, and then sun again. i hve never seen the sun fall so deeply into the sky and skit there, so different from say Fiji...