I'll expand on this later, but for now:
1. My flight was delayed in Houston, so I missed my flight in London, waited at Heathrow and was rerouted to Helsinki...Finland. Awesome.
2. Missed the CIEE bus and ended up having to take a $200 cab ride into the middle of nowhere with a driver who spoke no English, and didn't really care for my broken Russian. We ended up getting absurdly lost in the countryside around St. Petersburg and I ended up finally finding our destination at 1:00 a.m., after a 2 hour ride.
3. The Militsia (Russian Police Force) does spot checks of people they think are terrorists. These spot checks employ racial profiling, and end up being little more than the police trying to take a "fine" from you that goes straight to their pockets. One of my administrators and my kazyaika (house mother) has told me that I look Georgian and will be routinely spot checked. The protocol for if this happens (seriously): speak only in English, point to my phone, and repeatedly say "U.S. CONSULATE."
4. Despite all of this, St. Petersburg is amazing, my language skill have dramatically improved, my house mother is terrific, and I am loving being abroad.
In the next two or three days, I should have a legit post up, but I am busy right now and just got access to the internet.
5 comments:
that's what you get when you let your heart win, consulate.
now find me a bear!
I like your kazyaika already
i hope it doesn't make you feel badly that i laughed all the way through this post. lovely.
what a blessing
the weird thing about number 3 is that my parents told me to do the same thing with jehova's witnesses...
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