things I wish someone had told me: packing

As I unpack from my regional field excursion and re-pack to go home, I find myself tempted to slap myself in the forehead so many times you'd think I were filming a V8 commercial. Why did I pack all of these unnecessary things? Why did I fail to pack all of those necessary things? …and occasionally I give myself a pat on the back instead of a smack on the head, because I accidentally did something right. Hurrah! But anyway, retrospective packing tips… 

1. If you have a smartphone or iPod touch, there is no reason to bring a dictionary. The app is more convenient when walking around, and if for some reason you need a paper one, chances are good your host family will already have one. Also, books are relatively heavy, and you don't want to bring that dictionary home.
2. Check with past students of your host family to see if you need a towel. Because buying a towel you don't really need just so you can use it for one semester is not the most fun thing.
3. You don't need your whole medicine cabinet. Vitamins, ibuprofen, prescriptions? Great, bring those. But honestly, everything else you might need you can easily find in a pharmacy here. And they don't ask for prescriptions usually, even with antibiotics.
4. If you only want to bring one purse, make sure it matches both of your coats. So that you don't end up spending all spring with a khaki coat and khaki purse.
5. Bring your own pillowcase. If you do any train travelling, it will save you the worry of lice/skin irritations/strange smells transferred to your hair.
6. If your duffle bag has a shoulder strap, bring it. If your duffle bag doesn't have a shoulder strap, get one that does. Don't be a hero. You'll thank me when you're lugging your semester's life through Europe's largest airports and the streets of St. Petersburg.
7. Bring heavy, expendable stuff like shampoo, contact solution, and lined paper. That way your suitcase will be unexpectedly light and roomy on the return trip (so as to accommodate all of the chocolate you will want to bring home).
8. Don't bring heavy, unexpendable stuff that isn't necessary. Namely, lots of books. My host family has a bookshelf full of English books (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Tolstoy…) which, I'm guessing, past students have brought, not had room/weight allowance for on the return, and left behind.
9. Russian washing machines do really eat clothes. …But not all of them. Button-downs handle it well. Jeans are okay too. But anything that has natural stretch to it… will stretch. So those nice poly-cotton shirts that fit you really well right now might end up full of pulls and a few sizes larger than you bought them.
10. If you like tea without caffeine or good coffee that doesn't cost your arm, leg, and firstborn child… bring it with you. That can also act as a nice placeholder in your bag for when you return home.

PS- Chances are good this is the last post from me till I'm back to the States! yay!

things I wish someone had told me: money

These are money-saving tips. They are also important, and probably most relevant to those studying abroad (although some also to tourists). Some of these I figured out fairly quickly… others took me all semester long, and I’m kicking myself a little for them now.

1. There is CitiBank in St. Petersburg. And there is not a Bank of America. And withdrawing money has cost me… well… a lot of money. So about 6.5% of what I withdraw, but still. I highly suggest opening a CitiBank account for this purpose.
2. If you need a free bathroom, look for Столовая Но. 1. This is not the classiest location around, but its dim light, constant cloud of smoke, and over-loud techno remixes of Taylor Swift mean that nobody notices you zipping in to the WC and out again without buying anything. Also, they’re everywhere.
3. Столовая Но. 1 is also a good resource for free-ish wifi. Just don’t take your Mac laptop there, people will start paying attention to you.
4. Also good for wifi is the fifth floor of Стокманс. It functions a lot like a classy shopping mall food court… nobody is checking to make sure you bought something, and Macs are acceptable there.
5. The Mikhailovsky Theater has this thing called “Student Wednesdays.” One Wednesday a month, any seat in the whole place will cost an even 700 rubles (~$20). Even the ones that usually go for 4 times that. Take advantage while you can.
6. Cheap peanuts do exist. The Продукты behind Kazan Cathedral sells them 220/kg, which is really really good.
7. A student transport card becomes worth it if you ride the metro/bus about 22 times/month. That means 11 round trips per month. That means, if you take an average of two trips on public transportation/week… a card saves you money. Even if you take less than that, it’s SO convenient and lessens the cost of getting lost/taking 6 different busses to get home.
8. Stop buying water in stores. Totally unnecessary. A filtering + boiling process will more than clear out the water for you, will save you money, and help you avoid the annoyance of carrying 6-liter jugs home from the grocery store.
9. You can get calling cards from MegaFone, which puts international calling down to 1.5ish rubles/minute. I didn’t actually do this, since I found it out so late, but my RD said it’s possible.
10. I don’t care that the cheeseburger in the bistro near the metro only costs 45 rubles. It is, on principle, not worth it. Do not buy food from the bistro near the metro. Find a Продукты and buy yourself something pre-packaged, like a sirok. I repeat: avoid the bistro next to the metro. (This applies mainly to metro stops that are not in center city.)

Heed these. Save money. Spend it on donuts.

things I wish someone had told me, part 1

ATTENTION PERSPECTIVE ABROAD STUDENTS AND/OR VISITORS. These are important things to know, which I wish I'd known earlier.

1. The donut cafe on Большая Конюшенная is the best thing ever. Buy yourself three donuts and a cherry juicebox, and your life will be happier.
2. If you are a girl, bring lots of pairs of tights with you. It will save you headache and your babushka a heart attack.
3. The Russian Museum is better than the Hermitage, but the Hermitage is free for you with Student ID.
4. There is absolutely no need to pay 250 rubles for a cup of coffee, ever. Unless you're really attached to Starbucks-the-name-brand. Check Буше or Пироговой Дворик for good coffee/hot chocolate with more reasonable prices and better accompanying foodstuff.
5. You cannot wait to see things until the weather is good. The weather might never be good. Suck it up and get outside.
6. That said, count on it being colder in Peterhoff or Pavlovsk than in the city. Go on a really warm day, or wear your parka.
7. Wear a sleep mask from day 1. It will protect you from some of the weirdness of the WILDLY VARYING daylight-hours in this city (perspective: when I got here, daylight was about 9:45a-5:30p. Now, it's about 5:30a-10:30p.)
8. Speaking of hours, start thinking in military time now.
9. Carrying a wallet is unnecessary. Pockets are sufficient for the small change you'll need on an average day, and money there is less likely to get lost (especially if you're wearing women's jeans, because I can barely fit my hand into the pockets).
10. The best souvenirs are sold at monasteries and underground crosswalks.

More advice coming up soon.

Also, prepare yourselves: I will not be posting between May 9-16, because I will be on a long and treacherous regional field study through the provinces of Russia (read: river cruise without wifi). I may or may not post between the 16^th and when I leave, but when I get to the States I'll come back and upload lots of pictures for your viewing pleasure.

shoe shopping in Russia

Oy. I hate shoe shopping. A lot. Shoes are, generally, expensive, and once you wear them outside, you can’t return them. Also, I’m picky. Therefore, it is a high risk activity. I don’t like high risk activities.

However, this week it became necessary. You don’t know how necessary shoe shopping is until your snowboots break (yes, break), and your Russian babushka professors get on your case. And when the Russian babushka professors get on your case, they spend 20 minutes in class telling you just how necessary it is for you to buy new shoes, and then they spend 20 minutes in the other class telling the other students that they need to ensure you buy new shoes. Okay, yes ma’am. But still… hate shoe shopping.

they broke.

I went to this place called “Galleria.” I didn’t know what it was, except that apparently all of the shoes in the whole place were on sale. Good grief. It was like the Mall of America, I think, except maybe bigger. There must have been at least 50 stores that sold only shoes, let alone the 300 others that sold shoes + other things. So this was overwhelming, to put it mildly.

Besides that, it did not take long for me to figure out that I could not pull my normal American model of “how to buy shoes” for this errand.

So here is a maximally efficient way to describe the situation.

What I Usually Do

• Go to a store.
• Pull out boxes for 3 different styles of shoe in 2 sizes each.
• Try them on, weed out the ones that are immediately “no”s, try on the rest again.
• Choose a pair, buy it.
• Go to the next store.
• Do exactly the same thing.
• Rinse & repeat, up to 5 or 6 times.
• Take these 5 pairs of shoes home, sit on the decision for a day or two, return the ones I don’t want.
• If “the ones I don’t want” are not 4 but rather all 5 pairs, start from the beginning and do it again.

Reasons Why This Doesn’t Work Here

• Most stores are of the Macy’s sort of model, where you have to ask to try on a certain shoe in a certain size. The employees will only bring out one at a time.
• I don’t mean one pair. I mean one shoe.
• Carrying five pairs of shoes home on the metro/bus sounds like a gigantic pain.
• I’m operating on cash. 5 pairs of boots would come out to 10,000-20,000 rubles. I, on principle, do not carry that much cash EVER.
• It’s very weird in Russia to return things once you’ve bought them.
• I hate shoe shopping, and I’d rather only have to drag myself out once.

What I Ended Up Doing

• Looked at shoes in ~7 different stores.
• Dismissed somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 otherwise viable options, because I don’t really want to spend $200 on a pair of boots when I don’t even have my mom with me to confirm that this is a good idea.
• Dismissed somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 otherwise viable options, because they weren’t waterproof.
• Dismissed somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 otherwise viable options, because they weren’t well-insulated.
• Dismissed somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 otherwise viable options, because seriously do all Russian women wear 3 inch heels all the time.
• Tried on a total of 2 pairs.
• Dismissed them both because of reasons.
• Bought a can of waterproofing spray at Payless and determined to just wear three pairs of socks with the brown leather boots I already have, which didn’t break in half.

So there is my tale of woe. I hate shoe shopping. Do I really need snowboots anyway? I don’t have to be outside that much, and this year is warmer than usual. Right?

words to the wise

I am here! I’ve actually been here for about 24 hours, but more on that later. For now, I would like to fill you in on the 12 hours prior, aka Katie Travels From Washington To Russia By Herself.
In Dulles, I was all set to sit down in my lonely little gate for a lonely little 7 hours before my flight took off. I had gotten through security very easily (nobody even needed to pat down my hair!), and my luggage was all under the weight limit. I would sit, draw up Russian vocabulary lists, make last minute phone calls, and write cards to a few friends.

But the best laid plans of mice and men are silly when you’re in an airport. I found two of the other girls, Stephanie and Nicole (who were also travelling separately from the group), and we chatted for a while. Meanwhile, I drank like three days’ worth of Vitamin C via a very expensive juice drink. Everything, I have learned, is very expensive in an airport. Their flight left about two hours before mine, at which point I started looking to mail my cards.

Word to the wise: there are no mailboxes in Dulles. Also, thanks to frequent intercom announcements about not accepting packages from strangers, there is nobody willing to take your mail and send it for you. Sigh.

The first flight was the long one. Thanks to the fact that I was travelling alone, and the fact that not many people travel to northern Europe this time of year, I shared a 4-seat row with a very nice Indian lady. She helped me find my boarding pass when I dropped it (oops). I scooted over, we each had two seats, and all was lovely. Including the food. Wow, that meal was good.

Another word to the wise: when Air France tells you they’re going to serve you “fruit compote,” it’s probably just a cup of Mott’s applesauce. Which is great. Also, their mango cake is, as we say, очень вкусно.

I didn’t sleep much, but all was otherwise good until descent, when my ears started hurting really badly. Ouch. The flight was approximately 7pm-2:30am EST. Dinner was at 8:15, breakfast was at 1. Time to begin the jet-lagging of the eating schedule.

Layover was nothing special. I was tired, hungry, and thirsty, but I didn’t have any euros or anyone to watch my stuff while I sleep, so I powered through.

It was during this time that I realized I was wearing/carrying not one… not two… no, five different plaids. I felt really self conscious for the rest of the day. It was not intentional. It just happened that my shirt, scarf, hat, backpack, and carry-on were all mismatched plaids.

Yet another word to the wise: when you see something plaid you want to wear, consider carefully. It does not lend itself to matching things.

4/5 plaids. Интересно, что в русском языке нет слова "plaid," или нет слова в моей словари.

THEN I had THREE SEATS to myself on the flight to St. Petersburg. I slept a little more. The lunch was not as good… some strange potato salad stuff, a piece of chicken that was literally bright orange, and some bread. I felt super sick to my stomach already (nerves and sleeplessness), so I just ate a few pieces of potato and the bread. But still, three seats to myself.

I arrived in St. Petersburg with no problem. Got through customs very easily. Met up with the group not long after. Began speaking Russian, and by that I mean pointing and grunting “Вот, вот,” for whatever it was, because it was 8am EST, and my brain had roughly the consistency and intelligence of that Mott’s applesauce.

Last word to the wise: sleep is important.