In St. Pete

I'm writing this in my temporary dorm... and stealing wifi from some hotel across the street. Sneaky...

Today (well, I guess the past two days) have been NUTS. The flight to Frankfurt seemed about 37 hours.. luckily the girl I sat next to shared my love of Michael Jackson and the airplane was showing his movie "This is it". I did not get up for the entire flight, and when I stood up after landing I almost fell over. Embarrassing!

We landed in Frankfurt at 730, our plane to St. Pete was leaving at 810.. so here are 20 some American Students SPRINTING through the airport with the grumpy Germans judging us along the way. Don't worry though, we made it in time.

But.. our baggage didn't. It was actually a blessing in disguise because I got a chance to use my sub-par Russian to tell the baggage people that my bag was missing. They call you in one by one into this room and I felt like I was about to be interrogated because they make you close the door behind you and the Russian ladies stare at you like you're the worst thing that ever happened to them. Luckily one of the program directors was in there and when my Russian went to hell all I did was look at her and she came to my rescue. I did manage to tell her: "orange bag. very big"

After that was done I made the mistake of accidentally making eye-contact with an older Russian man. He did not like that, as he stared at me until he left building. Yikes. Mental note: Russia has a lot of Russians. You don't need to look at all of them.

Then we got on this old Soviet Style bus and headed to the dorms. The males insisted on taking all the ladies' luggage and putting it on the bus. American boys take note: Chivalry is not dead. There is hope for you.

As we were driving through St. Pete, we saw the statue of Lenin... and there were Soviet Flags EVERYWHERE. I guess the anniversary of the blockade was yesterday. I took some pictures and I would upload them for you but as my DePuglio luck would have it my battery died. And I can't find any outlets in this dorm.

After driving for a while I fell asleep. I've got BAD jet-lag. It's only 4pm and our day isn't over until around 9. Also I feel very gross.

Ok that's all for now. Добры Утро (Good Morning) to those of you in America!