School

Alright, so now that I'm on the internet on a regular basis, I'm going to be updating as such.  I decided I'm going to do this more thematically than chronologically, since I'm pretty much settling into a pattern anyway. So I'm going to write a little about my schooling here in St. Petersburg.


I'm taking classes at the Russian as a foreign language department (not it's real name) at Gerzen University.  The classes are designed specifically for Americans, and only other program participants attend them. Most of my classes are with the same core group of three people.  We comprise level 4 (out of six levels) and we take Phonetics, Grammar, and Conversation together.  I also have what we call a спецкурс (spets-coors). Mine is a syntax and phraseology class which teaches me to speak more like an actual Russian, covering colloquialisms and such. This class has about 8 people in it.  Lastly, I have a duel politics class which is split  into one weekly period covering current politics of Russia, and one period covering historical politics of Russia. This class is taught entirely Russian by politics professors. They speak really quickly and are hard to understand, but they're good about going back and explaining things.


Every day I commute for about an hour to get to school, which starts at 9:40.  I usually take a машрутка (ma-shroot-ka, a short bus) to the train to save time, though sometimes traffic is really heavy and I just walk, though it's quite far.  Then I take the metro three stops into the city.  The metro is really efficient, and I rarely have to wait more than 2 minutes for one to arrive.  A great difference in Russian metro stations is how deep underground they are. The escalators you have to take down to the platform are the longest I have ever seen in my life and take a couple minutes to ride all the way. Russians are really good about lining up on the right side and letting people run past, though, probably owing to years of experience standing in line in Soviet days.


I have three classes every day, with a lunch break between the second and third classes. Some friends and I have taken to going to the same restaurant for lunch, where we've discovered a three course lunch special (salad, soup, entree+side) for 159 rubles, or slightly over $5.  Today at lunch, we noticed our two politics professors were eating there as well. At lunch we speak a combination of English and broken Russian, but it is indeed nice to speak English for half an hour since it is forbidden of us on university campus. This is ACTR's policy, not the university's, but it's a good one for a few reasons. First, it will obviously improve our Russian. Second, it's more respectful to our professors, showing that we take the Russian language seriously. There are a lot of Chinese students at the school who ALL speak in very loud Chinese amongst themselves in the hallways and outside. It can be a bit annoying.


I hope to upload some photos soon, I've been having trouble transferring them from my computer to the internet, but as soon I can I'll share them with you guys!