I really need to start stocking up on portable foods, just so I have something to eat during the break in the middle of my Russian class. Apparently, only Brenda, Corinne and I are taking the culture class, and all three of us have our language class together in the afternoon, so the culture class has to meet after that (~3:30 in the afternoon). It's so hard to budget for time when the class format is so open-ended and fluid, and Sergei and the other professors have obligations in the morning anyway; I think Sergei teaches over at the other faculty, I don't know what Volodya does, and I haven't met the psychology professors yet. I normally have a small breakfast around 10 AM, and most of you know what I'm like when I haven't eaten in several hours, so I definitely need to purchase some snackies or something. I bought a hot chocolate from the coffee machine during the break and that helped some, but by the time we were done with Sergei (~5:00) I was craving meat because practically all I'd had to eat today was chocolate (Nutella porridge this morning and hot chocolate during the break). Every few weeks or so, I'm totally OK with that. This week is not one of those weeks.
Brenda, Corinne and I met with Sergei for about an hour and a half after our language class; we started discussing cultural differences between Russia and the US, as well as talking about the first chapter of Natasha's Dance, a book about Russian culture throughout its history. The first chapter is about "European Russia," which basically means the history of St. Petersburg. Fascinating stuff, really; all about how Peter the Great picked the worst possible plot of land (a giant swamp) on which to build a new city that would jump-start Russia's modernization and catching-up with Europe, how the intelligentsia of the 19th century were more European than Russian, having been raised and educated in the European fashion and only having learned a smattering of Russian from their nannies as children (because, of course, they were taught French in school), that kind of thing.
We have to watch a film over the weekend for discussion on Monday; Brenda has it right now but she's going to watch it at home tonight and give me the flash drive that the film is on tomorrow, and then Corinne and I will watch it and return the flash drive to Sergei on Saturday. I'm still really excited for this class, even if it is almost shaping up to be like Honors 3 with field trips in terms of how organized and well-defined the curriculum is. Sergei is somehow much easier to understand than the K-team, probably because he tries so much harder to articulate himself than the K-team ever did. At least I'm not being told to read 500 pages of incomprehensibly philosophical literary criticism and distill all of that into a 3-page paper that makes sense to humans. Just 60 or so pages of a very well-written historico-cultural analysis, and then journaling about it. I need to write that journal entry and email it; eventually the whole class (all three of us) will be publishing our journal entries on a blog, and we have to write responses to each other's entries as well. Right now they're still working out the kinks of the extremely complicated and very difficult to use (</sarcasm>) Wordpress system, although I think I might suggest to Josh (head of the SRAS, in Moscow, though he'll be grading part of this course) that we just use Blogger. It's a very straightforward system, and I think we all have Google accounts of one type or another. It's what I use, anyway.
There must be something in the air at the philology faculty; there is no reason we should be so exhausted after class! I mean, Corinne got up early to Skype with a friend, but I slept in! The walk isn't that difficult! Am I working that hard to understand Valentina Semyonovna? I feel like I get the gist of what she's saying; at least, I'm not totally lost most of the time. In any case, as usual Corinne and I were tired and not looking forward to braving the metro. But we endured the subway ride back to Mayakovskaya all the same; I hate coming home during rush hour because we can never find a seat on the metro, and it's a bumpy, lurching 15-20 minutes from Vasiliostrovskaya to Mayakovskaya (with a stop at Gostiny Dvor, but since that's a shopping district more people usually get on the subway than get off at this time of day). My balance isn't the greatest anyway, and I'm leery of being crammed like sardines into a subway car with a backpack on. I can't see it if it's behind me, and I'm not sure I'd hear or feel someone trying to unzip a pocket. There's nothing worth stealing in it, but still.
Once we got out of the metro station, Corinne and I decided to explore a bit and get something to eat, because we were hungry and didn't have any food at home that appealed to us. All I had waiting for me was more leftover chili, and she had some cookies and other assorted snackfoods, so we decided to find a restaurant or cafe and get some linner. We settled on the Palmira Bistro, which apparently gets a reasonable number of tourists since the menu was in both Russian and badly-translated English. She got a margherita pizza; I opted for shawarma on a pita. They also had an extensive menu of adult beverages, including about a dozen regular cocktails (typical stuff like cosmopolitans, long island iced teas, martinis, etc) and a virgin mojito. I don't remember if they also offered a regular mojito, but it seems stupid not to, since they obviously have all the ingredients on hand (there were also menus of beer, wine, and liquor, including rum, as well as hot beverages and soft drinks). It amused me enough that I decided to get a безалкогольный мохито with my food; it was incredibly sweet, the rum having been replaced by 7-Up, but it actually went pretty well with the spicy, garlicky flavor of the shawarma.
I think I'm gonna go back to that cafe sometime, since it was pretty good and very reasonably priced. They have a business lunch special that looks good, too; unfortunately, every бизнес-ланч (pronounced "business lunch") special I've seen is only offered between noon and 4 pm, which is precisely when I am in class. Do the businesses in this city, particularly the ones near academic buildings, not realize how much money they could make if they started offering their business lunch just one hour earlier? I'd patronize the [swear word] out of any cafe or restaurant near the school that had a business lunch special that started at 11. Even 11:30. The quintessential бизнес-ланч consists of a little bowl of soup, a small salad, a bit of some kind of meat, and a beverage, and almost every eatery in the city that isn't a fancy sit-down restaurant has a special along these lines for between 100 and 200 rubles; it's a great deal. There's a shawarma place a block from the school that has a shawarma-and-beer business lunch special for, I think, something like 140p. It's Jorge's favorite shawarma place; maybe we'll check it out someday.
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