By the Gulf of Finland

I've been without internet for a few days and a lot has happened. It will take me a few days to get back up to speed. I had planned to post from the hotel while waiting to be escorted to my host family. With three escorts, and twenty students living at far as an hour from the hotel, I expected it to be a long time, and it would have been, except Brian decided there was time for a run before the scheduled drop offs and asked for a volunteer. I accepted.

We snaked through the Petersburg streets. The man behind the wheel was a stranger to us both, a nice-looking, middle-aged man in Western clothes and rimless glasses. He looked like he belonged in the passenger seat. He drove swiftly (deft, like most city drivers), and kept on making these preparatory harrumph sounds as if he was about to say something. But conversation never happened––I simply couldn't say anything, and Brian's mind needed to be elsewhere. We drove over the bridge to Vasilevsky Island, and down the main drag. In Russia, there are Russians everywhere and they do practically everything like Russians. Further from the city center, the densely packed five to six story buildings gave way to crumbling (well let’s hope not) Soviet-era high-rises. The Gulf of Finland emerged in the distance, and then the car slowed and pulled up beside a 30-story structure. In my first thought I questioned the building's stability. Have a look at the picture. It’s one of those semi-gravity defying structures like that famous office building on I-95 in New Haven. I dragged my bag to the entrance and into the tiny, barren lobby. Brian and I crammed into an elevator the side of a small industrial refrigerator and up we went. Within no time, we were standing before a blank brown door in a cold, concrete hallway. Brian gave three loud knocks, a pair of feet went into action, I had a mini out-of-body experience, and then the door opened to reveal Tatiana S.