Novgorod (July 19-20)

Small cathedrals. There were several of them in this one area. This church in particular, several of the young women ran around three times, in order that we might one day have good husbands. As opposed to bad husbands, I guess. Running around it seemed like a good precaution to take.




Bridge in Novgorod. The Kreml is on the other side of the bridge. Also on the other side of the bridge, a very nice beach.





This image kind of struck me. This girl was standing there (I assume she was waiting for someone) and had no idea how close she was to that graffiti.



We spent a good deal of time just walking around this statue, while our tour guide told us about all of the important people in Russian history that are on it. I'm not that into large informational statues; I had a hard time paying attention. Again, if I'd taken more Russian history, I would have gotten more out of it. Well, except for the it being a statue part.


This is an old church in Novgorod. I forget how old. Older than you great great great grandparents' ancestors, probably. You can see that there used to be these large icons painted on the front of the building, but time has worn a lot of it away.




Aaaand, some of us went swimming. Some others built a sandkreml. Then the "Mongols" attacked. In the form of our friend Sasha, mainly, as I recall.



This is the little church in the monastery we visited on our second day in Novgorod. A monk came out and talked to us. He told us about how a church is like a classroom, and how while we are there we are preparing for a large exam, and that while we're busy with our everyday lives, we shouldn't forget about this exam, too. I'm not sure how the other students took it, but I appreciated it: I felt like many of the monasteries and churches we had visited we were treating like tourist spots. It was neat to go see this monastery and feel a stronger connection to the spiritual life that is alive there, without feeling like I'm intruding on anyone's worship. He also told us about the drug rehabilitation program they have at that monastery, while is astronomically more successful than the numbers for the state as a whole. It has occurred to me that I might have told you about this before, without pictures. If so, well, I can't remember.




After the monastery (we're on to Sunday now, btw), we went to this museum-like place, which is a bunch of houses set up to give visitors an idea of how old Russian villages operated. This is an old wooden church. We got to go inside some houses and see what those looked like, and one even had a loom set up, with some roving, and what looking like a drop spindle...

Then, we found this large wooden post, with some ropes attached. It's kind of like tetherball, except instead of hitting one ball around on a string, four people swing around on ropes. It's awesome. It really shows how some of the most fun things in the world have absolutely nothing to do with technology. So, here are some people I know, swinging around and knocking into each other. First, we have Louis, Emma (both Obies), possibly Megan (I can't tell), and Adams.


Jonah, Elya, and Adams.



Me, losing control of my momentum, and Megan. You can't see Erica in this picture, but imagine that I swing toward you, and then knock into her, because her rope is slowing down and mine is so not.


The Russian tutors! Vika, Tatyana, Christina, and Elya. Oh goodness, I hope those names are correct.

A good bit on Vyborg, and not very much on Novgorod.

Yesterday, I left my house at 6:55 in order to catch a 7:40 train. I ended up leaving much later than I intended to, and needed to take the metro to the train station. As I may or may not have mentioned, my host family lives about 15-20 minutes away from the nearest metro station on foot. So for the first time by myself, I flagged down a car and paid a guy 100 rubles to take me to the metro station. (Don't worry - that's completely normal in Russia.) Anyway I got there in time for the days's excursion. After a two hour train ride, we arrived in Vyborg (vui-berg), which is an older town on the Baltic coast that's got a history including both Russian and Scandinavian ownership. Consequently, it's much less heavy on the Russian architecture than Pskov or Novgorod or Petersburg. We spent the morning walking around the city with the best tour guide I've had on this trip (an old pensioner), and he would frequently stop in front of buildings and tell us about them. He was also one of the most understandable tour guides I've had. He spoke slowly enough to process what he was saying (even long enough to process chetirnadsataya veka = 14th century = .... 1300s), and had a good sense of what words we did and didn't understand.

In the afternoon we walked around a bit more and went to a park, which was quite wonderful. After our tour ended, a couple of folks went swimming, and then while she was climing along some of the rocks on the shore, Olga, the organizer of our cultural excursion program, slid down the rocks and fell in the lake. It was hilariously funny (though not from her perspective), but her clothes dried before the bus ride back to Petersburg.

That pretty much sums up this weekend. I suppose I could tell you about last week, though.

Last weekend we had a trip to Novgorod, which is also really old, too. There was a big beach there, and some of us went swimming, which was incredibly enjoyable. I was trying to throw rocks from the river bed around with my foot, which probably looked pretty ridiculous. We also drank some of this delicious honey beer they sell at this tent next to the beach.

Then, the highlight, or rather lowlight, of the week was that I happened to catch a cold. I brought five doses of Tylenol Cold along with me, which lasted about a day and half. My host family gave me some herbal tea that was supposed to help, but it tasted really awful, so I went back to the regular black tea. They also gave me some stuff, which I think works kind of like Vicks, but I opted for taking my Tylenol Cold instead. Wednesday, after school, I went to a drugstore and found some 'Antiflu' medicine, which has been working well, when I remember to take it. I then proceeded to go to a little grocery store and pick up some orange juice. My strategy for handling anything with cold-like symptoms is to drink orange juice. I mean, if I have orange juice, I can't be sick, right? The two don't mix! So I drank the bulk of a 1.5 liter box in about an hour. It was awesome.

Oh, I also got my first sunburn here in Vyborg. After spending about 7-8 hours outside. And I'm not even that burned. What a deal!

And in the spirit of 'pics or it didn't happen' (a CPAAG thing (a Ravelry thing)), photos will go up tomorrow, when I'm not paying for wi-fi access at Idealnaya Chashka.