3-Day Weekend! (But not the days you'd expect)

I've been remiss in posting on this blog, I know. Mea culpa, I'll try harder. I've found out the Catch-22 of blogging. When you're actually doing enough interesting stuff to blog about, you're too busy to blog because of the aforementioned interesting stuff.

Last week was a short one here in Russia as Thursday was International Women's Day. It's a significant holiday here, which is why they get the day off school/work. But wait a minute...that means a Thursday holiday, Friday work, then Saturday and Sunday. Russia took the logical step and collectively decided to postpone Friday until Sunday. We ended up having a three-day weekend of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off. Today (Sunday) we had our Friday classes. This sounds brilliant until you realize that the next work week gets to be 6 days long. Hooray!

To add even more time confusion into the mix, Russia isn't doing Daylight Savings Time. So as of today, I am only 8 hours ahead of home instead of 9! I give major props to my computer for changing my Ohio clock but not my Petersburg clock. Ain't technology grand?

Thursday
Международный Женский День (Mezhdunarodny Zhensky Den) aka International Women's Day
*Trip to the Ballet*
CIEE booked us all tickets to the ballet which, as far as I can remember, is a first for me. We went to Mikhailovsky Theater in the city center, which ended up being a much smaller theater than I expected. The advantage of that was that even way up in the rafters we had a great view of the show. We saw Laurencia, a Soviet era ballet about a village in Spain where the title character is torn between a powerful Commander and a fellow villager with quite the dancin' skillz. Since this was a Soviet ballet, it ended with a revolution. As Wikipedia concisely puts the final act, "Villagers break into the Commander’s castle. They free Frondoso and kill the tyrant. The people celebrate their victory." I have to admit I still prefer other forms of drama over the ballet, but it was an enjoyable experience all the same.
Afterwards, I had lunch with some friends and ventured out to buy flowers for my host mother. It's expected to give the women in your life flowers in honor of this holiday. This took some cultural tact, however, because Russians get OCD about their flowers. Do you ever count the number of flowers you're given? Because Russians do, apparently. It's common knowledge here that giving an even number of flowers is a sign of death because even numbers are only ever given at funerals. It really makes me wonder how many funerals Russians are going to if they have such a strong, instant connection between flower counts and death, but whatever. We all have our strange customs.

Friday
*Georgian Cuisine Cooking Class*Along with about 10ish other people, I got to hang out at an actual cooking school in St Petersburg and learn how to cook Georgian cuisine. Rather than make lots of tiny, individual meals, we each were assigned tasks in making large communal dishes. (I'm going back to this cooking school tomorrow night to do some classic Russian cuisine. I can't come home without knowing how to make some borscht!)

(Brad and I got to make the dough for the cheesy bread, which involved throwing a bunch of liquids and flour into a pan and mixing it with our BARE HANDS. It was like making homemade Slime or Silly Putty in the first grade).

What we made: (Delicious soup and salad. The soup was Kharcho, consisting of lamb, rice, onions, tomatoes, and a whole lot of garlic and rosemary. I can't find the salad's name, but it consisted of cooked eggplant, cucumber, pomegranate seeds, all in a ground walnut/herbs sauce. Crazy, I know, but it tasted AMAZING.) (Every culture must appreciate the beauty of cheesy bread. This one was called Khachapuri. We flattened out the dough, wrapped a ball of cheese in the middle, re-flattened it, and put it in the oven. Fresh dough and cheese = a wonderfully simple, delicious treat)(I can't find the name for this one either, but it was basically cooked chicken in a stew of tomatoes, onions, herbs, and garlic. And yes, it was as good as it looked.)

Saturday
*Yusupov Palace*This excursion took us to the place where Rasputin was killed! Yeah, the palace is significant and beautiful otherwise, but let's face it - we all love hearing about that crazy monk. It was built around 1770 to house the Yusupov noble family. Felix Yusupov would participate in the murder of Rasputin in December of 1916, ensuring the palace status as a future tourist attraction.

What I loved about this building, though, is that it has its own unique character. It has the traditional grand staircase and sitting rooms filled with art, but it also has a billiards room with top-notch acoustics, a room designed in the style of Middle Eastern architecture, and a small but impressive private theater.

(Beautiful Concert Hall that still functions as a musical venue. To showcase the acoustics, they had a small male vocal group sing a choral piece that could give you chills)

(This billiard room was also designed with some excellent acoustics in mind. Our tour guide demonstrated when she described the room by going into the recess and talking into the seating area. As she got closer to the center, her voice was amplified. It was a really cool effect through simple architecture.)

(This bathing area was closed for construction while we were there, but this is what it looks like normally. The rest of the room to the right was open, though, so we got to see the amazing Eastern architecture.)

(The theater that also still functions, despite its very small size)

Best of all is the fact that they have wax figures of the key historical players in Rasputin's death placed in the rooms where they conspired to kill him and the room where they did kill him. It's just as creepy as it sounds and looks. The palace is located right along one of the many canals of Petersburg and this one.......the Moika, is where they dumped Rasputin after they were sure he was dead. Whether he really was or not at that point is one of history's great urban legends. (Yeah, walking into a tiny, dark room under a palace to see this won't haunt my dreams AT ALL)