Stuck At Customs: February 2014

I’m pretty much ready to call social services on the current situation. If such a thing even exists here. The little boy that lives here has already missed 2 days of school in the past week to sit and stare at his laptop screen from 9am until at least midnight. He doesn’t seem to get fed and most certainly isn’t getting his homework done. The father spends most of his time wretching in the bathroom (potential eating disorder)?? And the mother is in and out of the house leaving the child seemingly under only my supervision. Irresponsibility at its finest.

We had our first phonetics class the other day with a lady in a very purple ensemble. We didn’t have those last semester and I’m still not entirely sure what the class is supposed to entail. We started off by spending 10 minutes repeating lalala, dododo, soosoosoo, teeteetee and then watched “Up” in Russki. Obviously once the lights went out, so did any form of concentration until she started drawing photos of mouths and the direction in which our words come out on the board. The point?? I have no idea.

Finally received my student card! I saw finally, but it was definitely sitting in the international office for 5 days before I knew I was supposed to get it myself. We also filled out the paperwork and paid for our visa extension. Obviously Russia thinks students study for what is a 90 day semester and charge you a cheeky 1000 rubles for the privelege of staying any longer. The form was general transliterating your life history into cyrillic and then you pay via an ATM-type machine in the corridor.

The face I make when I think about having to study. Study shmuddy

Speaking of ATMs, the ruble is currently crashing (or whatever currencies do) against the pound. Last semester we were looking at 47-50r to the £ and now we’re up to 59.89. I’m checking google every 15 minutes and praying for the economy to crash whilst simultaneously withdrawing all the money in my bank account. Soon we'll probably all be millionaires here. Best case scenario is that the currency gets such that everything in H&M is cheaper than in the UK.

There's actually an ATM to the left. Smiling at the crashing rouble wooo.

Speaking of H&M, I popped to the Galeria shopping centre on Sunday and it’s basically a glorified form of the Trafford Centre. So much so that there was even an M&S. All it was missing was a Primark.

On Saturday a bunch of us met in town and went for a bit of a walk to explore the city as our days are so long that we don’t have much time after school during the week. We loitered outside some famous monuments and the Hermitage but didn’t venture in as we didn’t all have those magical student cards that give you free entry everywhere. The main highlight of the day was really our long lunch with the worst service I think I’ve seen here as of yet. They must’ve had only one oven for the restaurant because all 6 pizzas that we ordered came out 1 by 1 with a solid 8-9 minutes in between each one. We got our revenge by making the waitress feel uncomfortable with her stupid side plates. Moody cow.

The Hermitage.

We all kissed this camel's nose for good luck. Almost had a few cases of frozen lips stuck to frozen camel statue.

The grimiest Danish bar in the city.

This desolate car park is apparently the centre of all St. Petersburg night life, as one can see from the empty champagne bottles strewn on the floor

I wonder if Obama knows about this classy joint....

Jamie Oliver apparently has an Italian restaurant here. I wonder if he knows about this too.

Sunny day, pretty river still covered in ice.

Their ickle feet must be so chilly

My arrival back to the motherland has been long and arduous; starting with a 3am start at Heathrow for the first of my flights to Frankfurt. Needless to say, I hadn’t slept more than about an hour but it was adrenaline keeping me going. When that wore off I took the opportunity to charge all of my already fully charged gadgets at the airport merely because they had plugs there; such excitment charging your phone at an unfamiliar place. Unfortunately the only food we got on the flight there was yoghurt. Anyone that knows me knows I’m scared of yoghurt. It has a horrible consistency, is normally a rank colour and shouldn’t be allowed to exist. I can’t touch it, look at it, eat it or even think about it without having a mild panic attack. Needless to say I had to control myself because panic attacks don’t tend to go down too well on planes. Something about someone thrashing and screaming in a confined metal box 3000 feet in the air.

Thankfully it was handed to me in a napkin so no touching of the offending article was necessary.

When I arrived in Frankfurt I had to go through security again to get to my gate. My bag was picked out to be searched. The security guard fondled my stock of cereal bars for a bit and then let me go. I like to think he didn’t have a proper search due to my very aryan looks. Germans don’t wanna mess with that. I found a 5 euro note in my purse, but somehow still felt the need to ask the lady at McDs if I could use that here. She was like uuuuuh yeah, it’s a euro. Except I didn’t understand what she said because I don’t speak German, so I took her mocking eyes to mean yes.

The next flight was longer than the 1^st but I slept for most of it; awaking only when they bought the drinks carriage round. I had a glass of wine, and then another one when they came round again with the tea and coffee. Not as generous as BA where they give you a whole bottle to enjoy, but none the less it sent me right back to sleep. Kinda disappointed I didn’t get any on my 1^st flight. When I asked the guy then what drinks he had, he most certainly didn’t offer any wine. Maybe he thought I was too young, or maybe he thought 6am is too early for it. Either way, he’d be soo totes wrong.

Arriving to the airport was so much less stressful than last semester when I had no idea what was going on. I was straight through customs, and they clearly have no idea what they’re doing either. I have quite a typical Russian name and it’s spelt differently on both visas I have. What are this Russki visa office? My 1^st visa was right there in my passport; you probably could’ve photocopied it and just changed the dates. The whole journey to where I’m living was quite easy and I’ve missed this country where you can’t walk 2 steps without a man offering to help you with your stuff; although a few times it probably could’ve been confused for an almost mugging of my cases.

My room is little, but cute, and also a library. Guess who doesn’t even have to now leave her room for YA project research?! For 9000r a month, there is no going wrong. The host family live here; apparently in the kitchen. I’ve been here 4 days and the 7 year old blonde kid has been sat in the kitchen staring at his laptop almost every time I’ve walked through. Not sure he goes to school. After about midnight they must send him off to bed and the father takes up stag duty of the kitchen. Either that or the little boy morphes into a man at night. I’ve never seen them in the same room together, thereby making this the prevalent theory.

Classes are very different to Petrozavodsk. We have Fridays off and a late start Monday but 10-3:20 Tues and Wed. Us international lot have taken up residence loitering around the coffee machine at lunchtime. We went for a few getting to know you drinks last night with some of the Benedict Language School lot and ended up at some cool little bar playing music circa 2001. We’re talking Jennifer Lopez, bit of N’Sync, the ever-classic Bad Touch. Loving life. Except for the slush falling from the sky into my face no matter what direction I walk in.