Where I live and study

Here is a map of central St. Petersburg. The black arrow shows where I live currently, which is on Vasilyevsky Island. The blue arrow shows where I have classes. The red arrow marks where the Hermitage/Winter Palace is, which I would call the exact city center.

Just in case you were dying to know, I'll tell you my route to school, which I took for the very first time today. (I drew in the route with a thin black line. Hooray for Paint!) I walk down Ulitsa Korablestroitelei, turn onto Nalychnaya Ulitsa (Ulitsa means street), and catch the metro at Primorskaya. It's about a 20 minute journey to get to this point. I ride the green line a few stops until I get off at Mayakovskaya to switch to the red line. I then get off at Chernyshevskaya, walk across the street to the bus stop, and catch the small bus/van that takes us CIEE students to Smolny. I haven't timed this whole journey yet, but I'm sure it's around an hour of commuting.

Pictures do not lie - Smolny is beautiful. The icey blue color of the buildings looks fantastic against the snow and almost makes you forget how ridiculously cold it is outside. We have classes in a branch of the complex behind the big cathedral in the center. Why am I having classes behind a church? Because the complex was originally intended to be a convent. The Soviets shut down the church and it wasn't reopened until the 1980s, when it was used as a concert hall. Today, it still houses a concert hall while the surrounding buildings contain various offices for difference organizations (like St Petersburg State's Political Science department!) I'll try to get some pictures of the interior this week.

On the subject of where I live, I still haven't taken pictures of the inside of my apartment. But I did manage a picture of the view from my room today. I wanted to get a picture during the daytime, but it was dark when I left this morning and near sunset when I came home. When the weather is a little less frigid, I'll take pictures of my neighborhood and path to school.