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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| The Hermitage. |
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| We all kissed this camel's nose for good luck. Almost had a few cases of frozen lips stuck to frozen camel statue. |
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| The grimiest Danish bar in the city. |
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| 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 |
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| I wonder if Obama knows about this classy joint.... |
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| Jamie Oliver apparently has an Italian restaurant here. I wonder if he knows about this too. |
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| Sunny day, pretty river still covered in ice. |
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| Their ickle feet must be so chilly |
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