The News and The Weather

I haven't had access to the internet in a few days. I'll make more of an effort to post M-F.

The weather verges on apocalypic. The wind and rain come off the Gulf of Finland in massive thunder clouds. Where I live, by the water, the rain falls horizontally and twice a day. I wonder if Dostoevsky would have been himself without the Petersburg weather––which includes the famous whitenights, when you'll go outside in broad daylight and the streets will be completely empty as though the city were deserted.

I have my first actual Smolny class today, in about an hour. The class is psychoanalysis. I've heard great things about the professor, but I'm a bit worried I won't understand her. In addition to that, I'm signed up to take a RSL class (Russian as a second language), and courses on Shastakovich, the theory of fascism, late Soviet un-official culture, and weekly piano lessons. All but the Soviet culture class are in Russian. Yes, I'm scared.

This past weekend we met some Smolny students, and I stayed up all night Friday in Oksana's apartment somewhere in the Petrogradskaya region (north Petersburg) listening and occasionally talking to two Siberians (two people from Siberia, two students, two peers, two kids...is there any really good way to say this). Before that we all played charades and I had to act out "imagination." I thought I did it rather well.

The girls who hang out with Oksana are energetic and cheerful (some Russians actually are, hilariously so. My grammar professor spends the whole class giggling to herself and asking us and God for forgiveness). They run and dance and laugh like crazy. Yesterday they came with us to Peterhoff (which reminds me I have to tell about the Hermitage another time)––Peter the Great's answer to Versaille, a 30 minute hydrofoil ride from the city (see picture). The girls piruetted, mimicing the actors in period clothing who waltz by the fountains everyday at noon and then retreat like the figurines in a coocoo clock. The palace itself is magnificent blah blah blah. Didn't anybody realize how lame they were being when they built ANOTHER huge, Italian-renaissance palace. Still everybody seems to think its a smash hit––tons of tourists. Everybody loves a good palace––the Czars, the Soviets, the Nazis (the Soviets destroyed Peterhoff in part because Hitler was planning a celebration "horaay we beat Russia-themed" party there. I'm sure he had a "Mission Accomplished" banner made up), and of course the tourists.