Thursday, June 23, 2005
Heyyy Everyone!Greetings from Russia!
I found a computer here in Russia finally (it's my cousin's), so I'm finally getting around to posting something. In St. Petersburg there were a lot of internet cafes but we just never had time to stop at one because there was so much to do and see! I don't have time right now to write about everything that we saw, but it was AMAZING! we went to the Hermitage, the State Museum, the Winter Palace, and that is only to name a few. The whole city is astounding, and when I post pictures later you'll hardly believe that such a beautiful city exists. All of the buildings are in classical European architecture, and the city is full of beautiful bridges, parks, monuments, and statues. We were in St. Petersburg for only 4 days. Now, we're in Sochi, a resort city by the Black Sea. Unfortunately it's been raining here so we haven't had a chance to go swimming yet. The city has really changed since 3 years ago, and they've even opened a really nice, two-story McDonalds. The people here are even different from the people in Moscow and St.Petersburg. It's nice to see family again, but it's also extremely chaotic.
Well I hope everybody's summer is going well and I'm going to try and get on this computer more often. Right now I'm writing in a journal manually so I don't forget all of my experiences and feelings, and later when I finally get back home to CA I'll post everything here. It's funny being in Russia though, especially in St. Petersburg because the contrast from America is so huge. Sometimes one can imagine how China or India, or a foreign country can be, but it's even hard to imagine the contrast just because it is so extreme here in Russia- from the mannerisms to the quotidian things of daily life. I'll give two examples: first everything here is on military time- in cars, on tv, in the stores. I'll be watching a Russian program, and then they'll advertise a certain movie at 22:00, and naturally I have to convert it and think, oh okay, that means 10 o'clock. It was also funny, because I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith, with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, in the theaters in Russian. Although they are showing the movie in the theaters, I was walking by an outside movie selling stand and I saw that they were already selling Mr. and Mrs. Smith on DVD...and they're already selling Star Wars 3 here on DVD. These are just a couple of differences out of hundreds that exist here. As opposed to America, here in Russia, things are not done in a way to make it more comfortable for a person to live. Russian have a LONG way to go before they understand the concept of service in stores, restaurants, and other public places.
I'm going to try and check back here more often...I miss you guys and blogging in general!8:16 AM 2 Falling Stars
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