My first free day in St. Petersburg!

I still need to document my first few days in St Petersburg, but I was without internet until last night, so bear with me. I thought I'd jump right into today though, which was our first entirely free day since we got here. A scavenger hunt was planned, but they thought it would be cruel to make us run around the city in such temperatures (10ish degrees Fahrenheit?).

I still wanted to get out and about, though, so I met up with 5 other people in the program to wander around the city. We got off the metro at Nevsky Prospekt and worked our way to the Church of the Savior on Blood aka Church on Spilt Blood aka Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ. Many names, yes, but it's not hard to remember which church you're talking about when it looks like this:(Not my picture. Wikipedia's was prettier.) Like many other attractions in the city, visiting it was completely free with a studenchyesky bilyet aka student ID.

A little history about it, because it's interesting (to me, at least): it gets its graphic name due to the fact that it was built on the spot where Czar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. It was constructed to intentionally resemble the famous St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. You know the one: During the Soviet era, the Church on Spilt Blood was badly damaged. Restoration didn't begin until the 1970s and, even then, it wasn't reopened until 1997. It doesn't function as a church and actually never has. It's just a gorgeous memorial to a Russian czar.

The inside was absolutely stunning. The interior consists entirely of mosaics. The ceiling alone was magnificent:(Again, not my picture.) I would've taken pictures, but I was an idiot and forgot my camera battery in its charger back in the apartment. Don't worry, I'll go back when the weather's nicer and get a billion pictures of me inside and in front of the church from every angle.

Afterwards, we walked across Palace Square behind the Hermitage and across the Palace Bridge to Vasilyesky Island. (I'll post a map soon and label where major things are, including where I live and where I study.) Along the way, we stopped at the end of the bridge where there was a walkway leading down to the Neva River. There were children and others playing on the ice, so we figured it was safe to venture out ourselves. We didn't go far, maybe 10 to 15 feet onto the river, but the ice was so thick I wasn't worried in the least. It was a gorgeous view though. You could see steam or fog or something rising off the small area in the middle of the river where only a tiny portion wasn't iced over. We tried taking a picture of the group, but it's really difficult to take a picture of 6 people when we're doing it ourselves. There wasn't really anyone around at the moment to take a picture for us. I think we got a few good close-ups, (which I'll post if someone sends it to me) but you can't really see that we're standing on a river. Eh, maybe we'll try again next week?

We then continued on to our destination of Kunstkamera, which is the location of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. It has the normal but interesting anthropological displays, but also bizarre collections of deformed fetuses. Gross? Completely. The Eskimo and Indian displays on the first floor were interesting too. It was odd reading about native Americans and Eskimos in Alaska completely in Russian. I'll be honest, we only made the trek here to sneak a peak at the gross things. I'll be back to spend a good amount of time examining all the other exhibits, because there were a lot of others.

After this, we crossed the bridge again and walked back along Nevsky Prospekt where we caught the metro back to our respective apartments. I had a lovely dinner with my host mom and we watched some Russian TV. Oddly enough, "The Road to El Dorado" (one of my favorite movies ever) was on, so I got to practice my Russian on the dubbed version of an underrated Dreamworks classic. It was actually fantastic practice since I know every word to that movie in English and could therefore immediately translate the dialogue. I'm kind of wondering where all the Russian cartoons are, since we flipped through the channels and kept seeing Disney shows, "King of the Hill," "The Cleveland Show," and the like. After this, we watched a concert celebration for Lev Leshchenko, a Russian singer. I didn't recognize a single guest star, but I understood a great deal of it and it was very enjoyable nonetheless. I can't think of a good word for it. It was like a roast, but instead of making fun of the guy, they were singing and celebrating how awesome he is? Yeah, let's just go with "concert."

And here I am! Tomorrow is my first day at the university. I don't think we have classes until Tuesday though. Monday is learning where, when, and what our classes are like and taking a placement exam that will put me in the correct level of Russian language study. I'm nervous, but looking forward to it. If nothing else, the commute is going to be quite the killer! I'll be sure to check in afterwards to report.