As you may have heard, the University has a big shiny beefed up Athletics and Aquatics center, unveiled in all it’s renovated glory just this year. Whether it’s truly an improvement, I cannot say, as I never had the opportunity to see what stood there before.

That’s not to say that I would be the best witness anyway. It took me two entire weeks after school started before I actually checked the place out. I would blame the fact that it’s at the opposite end of the campus from where I live, but that would imply that I’m too lazy to walk for five minutes before working out. Actually I only showed up in the gym today because I was already in the building for something else, so maybe I really am that lazy.

In my defense, I feel profoundly out of place in a gym. My athletics background is mainly distance running, a pursuit that takes me to a great and wonderful range of places that look nothing like gyms. The one here is nice and open, but it’s very grey. Worse, the dizzying array of machines is readily intimidating. I had no idea where to begin.

After about twenty minutes of playing smartphone games while doing a StairMaster workout, I decided that maybe I should make a serious attempt at figuring out what some of the other machines did. So I walked up to this contraption that claimed to be a “Hammer Strength Bicep Curl” machine, and decided to give it a go. So I slipped my arms where I thought they were supposed to go and calmly looked stupid. After a couple minutes of failing to figure out the proper operation, I moved on.

Fortunately, it turned out that the other machines were a bit more intuitive. Granted, I would rather pretend that some of the higher weight settings were designed for the edge case of a figure from one of the old pantheons descending from Olympus or Norway or wherever to test them out than admit that I’m not actually all that strong, but I was still able to exercise parts of my body without too much trouble. I even figured out the bicep curl machine eventually. I’m not sure that what I ended up doing was a truly effective workout, but I did manage to walk away feeling kind of satisfied.

I’ll admit that’s hardly the most positive spin I could give the experience, but I do think I’m going to give it another try. If you’re a student reading this and you haven’t, I’d suggest testing it for yourself.

It’s been a little while since Orientation, but my mind keeps on drifting back to that time. It was… incredible to say the least. I mean, I can easily say being a Perspectives Leader was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

For those of you that don’t know, the University of Puget Sound has an intense 9/10 day (depending on who you ask) orientation program. Yeah. We’re crazy. Whatever. Three of those days are dedicated to Passages, which is a camping trip in the Olympic National Park. Another three days is for Perspectives, which is for learning more about Tacoma and how to get around/involved. The rest of the days are for various other orientation activities. Every year, the university hires upperclassmen to come back to campus early and lead Passages or Perspectives and pays them the princely sum of $100. Don’t worry, the experience was totally worth only being paid $100.

I arrived on campus on August 13th (exactly 3 months after I left campus for the summer in May!) and spent the day moving into my room. That night, I was so excited for training beginning the next day I could barely sleep! I didn’t know what to expect and couldn’t wait to meet the other leaders.

The next few days were long and damn hard. We spent anywhere between 10 and 14 hours together, training, learning and discussing. I always went to sleep completely drained. Sometimes, I dozed off during presentations because I was just so burned out. But I would do everything again in a heartbeat.

In those few days, I bonded so much with all of the other leaders. We laughed together, cheered together, chanted together and even cried together. We all got to learn so much about one another through more activities or discussions than I can count. They became more than just friends. They became family.

Ashley and Ben were impressed with my Nalgene balancing skills

And then came move-in day. Training was over. Time to face the first-years. My day started at 6:30AM and I didn’t go to sleep until almost 1AM. It was a reeeeeeeeeeally long day. But it was so much fun!

The best part of the day was Convocation. All of the new students and parents were gathered in Baker Stadium to listen to speeches from the Dean of Students Mike Segawa, New University President Isiaah Crawford and other speakers. I’m gonna be honest, as great as those speeches were, they weren’t the best part.

The best part of the best part of the day was being in the section of the bleachers with all of the other campus student leaders. Perspectives, Passages, ResLife, CICE, we were all there. We were all screaming our heads off, coming up with chants, doing weird things and generally acting crazy. We were having the time of our lives.

Lots of orange -ahem- salmon

My voice was so sore by the end of the day. But it was totally worth it. Then I realized that I was freaking exhausted and Orientation hadn’t even technically started yet.

Also, sometime around 9/10PM-ish, I yelled “ALL MY LIFE I WANNA BE LOGGER” at the first-years in Anderson/Langdon Hall. No one replied. It was a sad time. Moving on.

Orientation was crazy. Almost every day, there was something going on. Meetings, skit rehearsals (more on that later), groups to talk to, volunteer activities, debriefs, updates, registrations and tons of other things to do. But like training, it was so much fun.

One of my groups, with my co-lead Ashley

Ryan needs to get better at selfies…

One of my favorite parts of Orientation was the Campus Life Skit. The CLS is a series of skits, songs and dance numbers to help inform new students about all aspects of campus life, from university services to partying safely. All the Perspectives leaders had parts to play. I had roles in multiple skits, which were: Tour Guide, Drunk Partygoer (in two different skits) and Drunk Naked Boy. I think I see a common theme among some of these roles. Whatever. And as I keep saying with just about everything, IT WAS SO MUCH FUN.

Yes, I am in an orange morphsuit

After our second showing of the CLS (we had two showings for the two different orientation sessions), we had one of our final activities. We did a name board activity. Basically, we all took turns writing notes on each other’s boards, which ranged from little messages to short essays. These boards would become our keepsakes of Perspectives. A physical memory of our time as leaders. Together.

That night, I read all the messages that everyone wrote on my board. Because my roommate was asleep, I had to use the light peeking between my window blinds to read. As I read, I was filled with just so much happiness. The messages were so sweet, being filled with praise and just good old love. Then I was filled with a ton of regret. Everyone had written such amazing messages on my board while I had written what I considered as comparatively superficial messages on theirs. So I spent all night laying in bed, thinking about how terrible a person I am. Okay maybe I’m over dramatizing things. It was more like two hours.

And then the next day was the final day of orientation. The first event planned for the day was Matriculation, a ceremony that signaled the official beginning of college for the new students. Given that this was a semi-formal event, all the leaders were dressed up, so while the speeches were happening, we were taking awesome pictures. My favorite was of when we were lined up on the side of Commencement Walk with Mike Segawa talking to the first years in the background.

Best Picture ever

After Matriculation, we had our final debrief. The very last one. The one that, when finished, would signal the end of the our time as Perspectives Leaders for the year.

It was an activity. Our last activity. We all sat in a circle with one person holding a ball of yarn. That person pointed out another person and threw the yarn to them. Then they just talked about them. Complimented them, praised them, talked about a funny memory. Anything. Then that person would pass it to another and another and so forth. Sometimes, the yarn would travel across the circle, other times, just a few people away. We were crying, but we didn’t care, we had cried in front of each other before. This continued until the yarn reached every single person in the circle. The end result was a network of yarn. It showed that each and every one of us was connected. We were more than just a group of leaders, more than a team, we were a family.

Once the activity was over, there was a hesitation. No one stood up. Standing up meant that we accepted that it was over. And many of us just weren’t ready to accept that fact. After a minute, someone stood up and it was over.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, being a Perspectives Leader was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was life changing. After reading this post, I hope that you can see why.

If you have the chance, apply to be an Orientation Leader! I promise you, you’ll have the time of your life.

This is for all of the Perspectives Leaders reading this right now: Ya’ll were LIT. I love you guys.

Outside a fenced off building that appeared to be the former location of a soviet physics and science university.

A lot has gone on since I wrote last, which I’m sure you expected. I’ll start with my classes. My Russian language classes have been going really well. I almost have the alphabet memorized. I believe I wrote about this briefly in my last post, but I’ll get into a little more detail just in case anyone is interested 😛

I live 20 minutes from this place.

With Russian you write in a unique form of cursive. Each print letter like you would see in any publication or on a storefront sign has a corresponding uppercase and lowercase cursive letter. Each letter has a particular pronunciation with a hard sign and soft sign that separate consonants. More to come on my language classes…according to my “prepadavacia “ (professor) Inga, it takes students on average about a month to be able to read and write in Russian (which doesn’t seem like that long if you think about it).

St. Petersburg, Russia City Center Canal tour.

I also had my first 17^th Century Russian Literature class this past Thursday. Right off the bat the “prepadavatelitsa “ asked if she could teach the class in Russian and write in Russian cursive on the white board. Luckily the class all agreed to have her speak in English, but I had to ask her to write in English since I can’t quite read Russian cursive that quickly. This wasn’t embarrassing to me, but rather I just hope she doesn’t resent having to write in English. I’m really excited about the different texts we’re going to be reading in the class: Diary of a Madman, Anna Karenina, Eugene Onegin, Crime & Punishment, and a couple other titles that are slipping my memory at the moment (I’m sitting in the laundry room doing an early morning load as I write this). If our first class discussion is going to be the standard, then I don’t mind reading a few thousands pages this semester and conducting literary analysis on them (I really liked this class if you can’t already tell).

Peter and Paul Fortress

I received information about my homestay family from my program advisor earlier this week. I move into my homestay the 24^th of September! I got a babushka that lives a 15-minute walk away from the Politekhnicheskaya metro station. This is on the red line one stop from Akademicheskaya where my college is. She has hosted homestays for a few years now and usually takes students who are brand new to speaking Russian. Apparently she is a great cook, so needless to say I am really excited. I’m really looking forward to improving my Russian conversational ability (apparently homestays are one of the best ways to do this because of the constant interaction using the language). It is interesting the way rent & utilities are paid for during my homestay. I pay 600 rubles per day (about 10 USD), a onetime 1200 ruble fee for Wi-Fi for the semester (about 20 USD). Just take a mental note of how inexpensive the cost of living is in Russia in comparison to America. I have dinner with my homestay babushka this coming Wednesday, so more to come on that.

Neva River Canal tour

Note the title of this blog post, it means “Are you able to speak English?” When I went to order my food at Peterburgers, I threw out my usual tell-all phrase “Ya ni gavaru pa-ruski harasho,” (I don’t speak Russian well). The guy taking my order looked a bit annoyed or maybe even offended and said in clear English, “Well I speak English so that’s fine.” Of course when I tell Russians I can’t speak Russian that well, it’s not because I’m assuming they’re uneducated and unable to speak English. In terms of becoming aware of cultural differences, this interaction really helped me to realize how language barriers can present unintentional consequences. My interactions over the last couple of weeks have shown me just how important it is to learn another culture’s language if you want to interact with them decently.

Neva River canal tour shot

I still think it’s a little insane that I live about 20 minutes from that place. Anyway, this wasn’t as simple as planning a date in America, mind you, remembering that “Ya ni gavaru pa-ruski harasho.” That morning I went to pick up some flowers for her. In Russia you have to pick up an odd number of flowers because an even number indicates someone has died. None of the babushkas that sell flowers on the street corners here had flowers that looked any good, so I went into a flower shop next door to the metro station. The lady at the flower shop didn’t speak English so I spent about 20 minutes pointing, umming and ahhing, and quickly typing into a translator on my phone to try to speed the process along. This type of thing happens semi-often, but that just provides all that much more motivation to keep on hitting the books in my language class. All the signs in the metro are in Russian, with phonetic English names of the stops included on the maps. That week I charted out what route we would take to get to the restaurant, and scoped it out once when I was out getting a haircut in the city center with one of my suitemates.

That’s a lot of gold!

Speaking of my suite mates, the Slav Bros, one of them had to leave the program during the second week due to bereavement. He is a solid dude and I wish him all the best. People throughout the dorms have also been sick this past week (knock on wood, my immune system has just always been pretty good). Getting sick seems to be much more of a hassle in Russia, and I attribute this mostly to generally lower standards of hygiene and medical care in the country in comparison to America. Hey, Russia is apart of the BRICS “emerging” economies, so I’m sure this will improve over time.

Aesthetic

I’ve also had the opportunity to meet some other foreign students studying at Peter the Great, from places such as Bogota, Colombia, South Korea, and Iran. It’s been interesting to have conversations with them, examining how native English compares to textbook English. I also got to talk to Jose from Columbia in Spanish, which was pretty cool (apparently my Spanish isn’t all that bad).

The Amsterdam of the East

The Amsterdam of the East pt. 2

This past Friday the other Americans and I took a boat tour around the canals in the St. Petersburg city center. This was something I had wanted to do for along time. I got a lot of great photos. There was this Russian kid who kept running along the canals and waving at our boat as it went under bridges. He had most of us laughing by the end of the tour. Anyway, this has been a fairly long post in comparison to my other ones. I’m about to hit the gym and start reading my next book for my lit class. Thank you to those who have emailed me with suggestions and questions thus far, I’m glad I could give you some additional info! As always anyone else with questions feel free to email me: asexton@pugetsound.edu

Pacah,

-Andrei

Well I’ve been in Russia for an entire week, and what a week it has been! I originally did not think that I would be blogging this often, but there’s so much to talk about. Where to start…

High rise apartments in southern St. Petersburg, Russia.

I guess I’ll start with my classes. Now that I have a more solid class schedule, I’m taking: Russian Language, Contemporary Russian Society, Russian Literature, and The History of Russia from Kiev to the Rus. My language teacher Inga (not Ingra, pazhalusta Inga) has been making sure we don’t get too overwhelmed. Not surprisingly Russian is a difficult language to learn. There are 33 letters in the alphabet, and you write in one form of cursive, read in print form (as well as your own cursive), and then there is speaking of course. Don’t get me wrong, Inga is giving us a lot of work considering that the majority of us in our class are complete novices, but she’s not making it difficult to learn. M/W/F we have language class from 10:00-13:30 (they use military time in Russia). T/Th are electives days, with six hours split between whichever electives we chose. I can honestly say I am excited about all of my classes; true self-motivated learning here since UPS doesn’t offer any Russian language classes.

Some amazing architecture commonly seen throughout the city of St. Petersburg, Russia.

Now to exploring Sanct Peterborg (that’s how the local’s pronounce it).I have been out exploring the city everyday since we arrived. We’ve gotten lost every single day, but that’s fine with me. We’ve gotten off on the wrong stop on the metro & taken wrong turns in the Nevsky Prospekt, but we’re better for it. I’d say we’ve probably walked a good 15 miles every day getting to know the city. It can be a bit overwhelming living and studying in a completely new country where you don’t know the language.

The group of American students I’m studying abroad with, as I mentioned in my last post, are all a bunch of really smart and interesting people. We all meld really well and have the same mindset; we care about school and obviously didn’t choose to study abroad in Russia to go on a vacation.

Some of the American students, #florence2k16.

The food portions are about half the size of American servings, so whenever I go to order something I always end with “Bolshoi” (indicating a large size of that item). They never indulge my request, except for the Blini place down the street where I got a ton of strawberry jam and a bigger sized coffee the other morning (I think the ladies appreciated I was trying to order in Russian). Russians tend to drink tea instead of coffee, so finding a nice large cup of medium roast black coffee to start my day has been a big struggle.

A typical lunch of Georgian cuisine I eat here for less than 200 Rubles, or the equivalent of 2 USD, which is so much food that it’s my dinner as well.

As a part of studying abroad the American students and myself go on excursions and see different major landmarks throughout the city. We went to the Hermitage, which was crazy aesthetic. Just to give you an idea, apparently you would have to spend nine years to see every single piece of art in the museum. Through this program I have the opportunity to volunteer there, which I’m hoping will work out. We’ve been to Peter and Paul Fortress, where we saw the Russian soldiers march, and they let off a blank mortar round as usual at 12:00. We’ve also been to the summer palace of Peter the Great, where we got to see all of the amazing gardens, fountains, and gold coated cupolas. We didn’t get to go inside the main palace, but instead went through the Dacha, where the Russian royalty used to go to Banya. Banya is a great Russian tradition where you sit in a sauna, and cleanse your body of all it’s toxins.

The summer palace in southern St. Petersburg, Russia.

I know I put a couple of common touristy photos in here, but come on this is incredible. Getting adjusted to life here in Russia has been a bit of a learning curve, but overall I think my faculty advisor was dead right, “a life changing, once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Golden cupolas that capture the glare of the sun, according to one of our professors, “a Russian representation of God’s divinity.”

That’s all for now, more soon to come.

Pacah,

-Andrey