Я Новая Студентка! У Меня Нет Пропуска!

Well I completely underestimated just how terrifying this experience would be.  I mean, for weeks I've been getting mixed responses from people when they found out I wanted to study abroad in Russia, although usually along the lines of "WHAT?! WHY?!" or "Wow you're brave/crazy", which I dismissed as ignorant or misinformed opinion.  I like to travel, I enjoy different cultures, I'm studying Russian -it made perfect sense.  Sure, it'll be different, but it's not like I'm going to go through any major culture shock, surely.

Ha.

I arrived in St Petersburg at about 4:30 in the afternoon from London, and the concern started to eat at me when the plane dropped below the cloud cover and I saw just how dark it was already, an

d gloomy, and looking extremely post-soviet.  I got off the plane and went through migration, dealing with some very angry women behind a desk, and got my bags.  The concern grew when I walked through the doors and realised that there was no-one there to pick me up yet.  Eventually a man holding a piece of paper with my name on it showed up, and led me outside into the street, across a parking lot to a van with no seatbelts.  He didn't speak any english, and I wasn't understanding any of his Russian, so we just drove to (I assumed) my dormitory.

St Petersburg is a very European city, and I'd been told that it was absolutely beautiful, filled with churches and gorgeous architecture.  Some call it "the Venice of the North".  Well my first impression as we drove throu

gh the grey, slushy streets was less than appealing.  Venice of the North my arse.  I think the driver took the ugliest route possible.  It was very dark, there was the grey sludgey mush of old snow everywhere, and I was beginning to realise with growing panic that I couldn't really understand or read any of the signs I saw.  What the hell was I doing in this hideous, mean country?  Other study abroad students were travelling to France or Spain, beautiful places renowned for their food, fashion, dancing...places where people were warm and friendly.  I had chosen to go to a country where beets are a staple food, it's considered odd -even offensive to smile at a stranger, and routinely supplies action movies with bad guys who want to blow up the world.

Faaaaaaaaaaaarrrhhhhk!

The growing despair was hardly assuaged when my driver tried what I assume was an illegal U-turn, was pulled over by a cop, yelled at him in Russian for a minute and then angrily took documents out of his glovebox, put the blinkers on, and marched off into a building with the policeman, leaving me sitting in the van in the middle of a very loud and busy street with traffic rushing past on both sides for about 10 minutes.  That was fun.

I  guess he worked it out, because he returned and finally, we wound up at the dormitory, a big ugly building in a pretty ugly part of town.  He helped me carry my bags in, and explained to the man at the front desk...well I'm not sure what he said to the man at the front desk, but I was shuffled into a little elevator and taken to a room (I assume some kind of landlord) where a friendly lady talked to me at length in Russian (almost none of which I understood) and then indicated that I should give her 500 rubles.  In return she gave me a set of keys, and passed me onto another lady who took 300 rubles from me (which I figured out was for bedding), and sent me up to the 18th (top) floor.  I found my room, after a huge struggle with my keys, managed to get inside.

I realised I had a roommate, and was a little freaked out at first.  How long had she been here, what language did she speak, and did she know she was getting a roommate?  From the look of the room, she'd been living here for awhile, and I hoped she wouldn't be ticked off to go from having a room to herself to having to share.  Plus, I didn't want anyone to see me crying if I finally let it all overwhelm me and have a mini breakdown.

I was tired but thought I should stay up to meet her.  I figured it would be pretty awful to come back to your room and find a stranger sleeping there.  She came back with a friend and praise be to God Almighty that she is LOVELY!  And very cool.  Her name is Heather, and she is from Canada, she has been here for 5 months already, she speaks a bunch of languages, and she studied in the Ukraine for a year.  She sings and plays guitar beautifully, and is extremely normal and not at all terrifying or bizarre in any way.  She has been a tremendous help showing me which buses to take, which ATMs to use, and giving me useful advice such as "don't walk under the icicles, they fall and kill a lot of people".

After a long sleep, I woke up on Friday morning and met Masha in the lobby area, who works/helps with SRAS, and who gave me a phone, helped me sign up for a dormitory pass, and took me to the nearest metro station and then for a walk to the university.  She left me there to take a placement test (which I probably bombed) and to get signed in.

After signing forms, being placed in a class, given more paperwork I was instructed not to lose, buying books and getting some angry looks for not understanding Russian, I recieved some sketchy directions, I made my way to the visa registration office to deal with more angry russians behind desks.  There was a huge crowd of Asian students packed around a little tiny door to a little tiny room.  I won't bore you with too many details, this post is unnecessarily long as is, but basically it was a 2 hour ordeal of filling out forms, being yelled at for filling them out incorrectly, pushing through people, re-filling out forms, and then being handed a piece of paper and told I needed to come back with a photo of myself on Tuesday.

By the time I found my way back to the dormitory it was dark, and the office was closed, so I could not get my dormitory pass until Monday.  Thus followed a weekend in which anytime I wanted to leave or enter the building (there's a little gate up so you can't do either without your pass, or Propoosk) I had to get the attention of the guard behind the desk, show them my keys, and insist repeatedly that "Ya Novaya Stewdientka! Oo Meenya Nyet Propooska!" -that I'm a new student and I don't have a pass..and then explain that the office was closed, so I couldn't get one.  Eventually I would be allowed through, with a stern look and instructions to get my pass first thing Monday.

It's now been a week since I got here, and I'm enjoying myself immensely. I've seen more of the city, and it is indeed beautiful.  I've managed to coax smiles out of a few Russians, and I've even found a favourite restaurant.  I'll blog more on all of that later, and hopefully in a more interesting, less-boring details-manner, but I only just got internet in my dorm and so I wanted to get my first impressions written down while I could still remember them.

Loves to all,

Bimini