Weekend Fun

Well my Friday definitely was not a weekend, however I did skip class. Instead I needed to register for my visa extension/multi-entry visa.

Let me explain registration as best I can. Its like making a whole pie in an easy bake oven. Nothing gets accomplished. We 1) you need to say you are registering. This is when you get a spravka (or document paper) saying you are in the process of registering. 2) about two days later you go back to the same people to receive a paper that ironically you filled out to get your spravka. This paper allows you to start your visa extension paperwork. 3) you need to prepare your visa extension paperwork. Now this is painful because each place you go to you are told different things. Some say you need photos, others say you need matted photos, even others say you need 4 or 5. Also, each year St. Petersburg University adds a piece of paper to the list, but this is an invisible list because you don't know about this piece of paper. 4) you give the babooshka's your paperwork and they take your passport. 5) you wait a week to get back your passport and a month to get your visa extension. Ironically enough, if you wait until exactly a month and give them your paperwork they cannot promise you that you will get your visa in time.

So where am I in this mess. on step 2. yes I have been here for 2 weeks and I am on step 2. Why it took me so long? well thats because everything is just so disorganized. The place that you get all this work done changes every like 2 days, it could be buildings it could be rooms. So I got my spravka on Thursday(ish) the week before. I couldn't go on monday to get the paperwork back so I waited till Tuesday. I wait in line (maybe 2 hour) and the babooshkas tell me that they aren't do that paperwork today. Mind you it isn't paperwork, it is receiving a piece of paper you filled out. So i wait till Friday to do it attempt getting this paper again. I wait in the same line for about an hour to be told that I am in the wrong line. So I wait again in another line for an hour and I get everything done. It took all of 5 minutes.

Wish me luck on step 3!



Saturday
Saturday was pretty much amazing. Jessica and I decided to go to Peterhof. It was a bright sunny day, the birds were chirping, the wind was mild, it was just perfect. We decide to take the boat to Peterhof and come across a couple and their children. They are from Wellington, New Zealand (and I am from Wellington, FL, how wonderful). They were just on a 3 week vacay. We tried to help them out a little, tell them what to do and such because they spoke no Russian. But the one thing we were all confused about were the boat tickets. When paying for the ticket there were two prices 350 rubles or 400 rubles. We payed 400 so we thought that meant we payed round trip. But still, we weren't sure....

So Peterhof, gorgeous. I really can't explain it besides showing pictures. It HUGE. Me and Jessica decided not to go inside the building and just tour the outside. We had plans later that day for a hockey game and we knew the inside was going to be packed.

The outside was amazing. I saw swans, squirrels, and flowers galore. The random thing I noticed was the fascination with water. There were a couple of random places that to get by you needed to get wet. I don't understand why anyone doesn't see this as human torture. Yes it is like 60(ish) degrees outside and the sun is shining but there is still a breeze.

I saw a load of weddings as well. I think I finished at counting 7 maybe 8 weddings. I tried to take pictures, but I had to be a stalker so my pictures all came out bad.

This is where I finished the ticket story. So Jessica and I are still under the assumption that our trip is round trip so we wait for the boat starting at 2:30. We need to be at the arena by 4, because her coach (she is on a Woman's Hockey team here) had our tickets. That gave us plenty of time to go across town. Well we were also under the assumption that, like North America, everything came on the half hour or hour. WRONG. so we watch other people go on different boats from different company while we wait for ours. It doesn't show up. It eventually shows up at 3:15 and we wait in line to be told that our ticket was only one way. We waited, and saw, 4 other boats depart to find out we could have been on them. So we buy our tickets and go on a different boat. The boat ride took about a half an hour and we were still needed to take 2 metros, 4 stops to get to the arena. We were screwed.

So Jessica texts her coach (in Russian) to tell him we would be late. It worked out in the end and we wind up meeting up with the coach later. We payed him 100 rubles (or 3 dollars) for professional hockey game tickets. Yes 3 dollars!

The game was St. Pete Vs Belarus. Of course St. Pete won! ...and of course I wasn't paying attention. I was too busy taking pictures. It is kinda amazing how fast hockey games go. I am so used to (American) football games. They take like 4 hours, the timer stops like 40 times, and there are like a 5 time outs. Nope, none of that in hockey. There are two breaks, the timer rarely stops, and I don't think there are any time outs.

Random things in Russian hockey: Cheerleaders, I don't believe they are in North American hockey. Yes they cheer and have pom-poms. They also look just as skank-a-licious as in American. I would describe them as the winter version of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. They have have short skirts and boots on. There are also random choirs, and by that I mean people that clap together. They start random clapping songs and scream a lot. When i looked at them towards the end of the game I notice that all the men were shirtless. Mind you, professional hockey games here are in heated arenas, but still. Why are there people making up clapping songs and why are they not wearing clothes? Also the player are nicer the each other. There isn't much contact like you see in the movies and they shake hands at the end of the game. I was very impressed.

So after the hockey game we (Jessica Brian and I) had plans to go clubbing. Of course they fell thru, when do they not. The issue was this: the metro closes at 12 and the dorms close at 1. Yes you cannot go in or outside the dorms after 1. You are locked. So what we decided to do was play poker with kopecks in the dorm. I had to sleep over because it was past 1 when we finished.

The dorm...boy am I lucky. How do I explain the dorms. They are disgusting. The beds are such bad quality that they make noises every time you move, and I am not talking about little squeaks. I am talking about like loud obnoxious squeaks that you get woken up every time someone moves. The insulation in the dorms also sucks. The windows look like they are molding and it is always cold. Whereas, in my room it is wonderful. My bed doesn't make noise, I am always warm, and my room isn't molding are forming its own little army of cockroaches. Boy am I happy.

Sunday
I didn't really do much. I went with Jessica to another hockey game. This time is was her team vs. an 11 year old boys team. You see she is on the only woman's hockey team in all of St. Pete so they can only go against men. Why they were 11 is beyond me but boy was it cute. The girl (who were of all different ages) towered over these prepubescent boys. The goalie, i am not kidding you, was like 3 feet.

The sad part was that the girls lost. The boys were heavily funded. The girls team had on all different types of skates, clothes, and their equipment wasn't all that good. The boys were all uniformed and had on nicer stuff. With that in mind they probably also have better coaches and their parents probably ingrain in their heads that they much be the best.

This game, ironically was also longer than the professional one, or it felt that way. It lasted like 2 hours with 2 breaks. You could tell that the girls were getting tired. The goalie was almost dead. She was working a lot harder than anyone else because the puck was always by her. The girls only scored one point whereas the boys scored like 16. I would be dead too!

Jessica also didn't play so we were together talking the whole time. She still doesn't have her equipment because it is still in the cargo area. I will give the whole story once it unravels. But that was my weekend. very fun filled!