A weekend filled with animals

I was actually sitting in class today and was thinking "wow I am starting to actually know what is going on." Note to self: be active, even if you screw up (A LOT) you still will get more out of it than staring aimlessly at the wall for 3 hours. Home is good too. As soon as I hear my host fam say "so tell me Claire" (obviously in Russia), I perk up and listen intently. Then I answer cause apparently I know what they is saying. I feel very accomplished at the moment. Watch Thursday ruin it all because I have a harder (less caring) teacher then. My Monday/Tuesday teacher is this wonderful older lady. She is fluent in English (which helps with definitions) and plays games. Yesterday we threw around a ball. Who every caught it had to answer the question. How wonderful. Its like kindergarten for adults.

So anyway, enough of me gloating and boosting my ego on with what happened last week. Well I didn't do much. I had my 30 page paper due in my business class. It was a group assignment (that we had 2 weeks to do). We had to analyze the entrance of a business into the Russian market. My group picked MasterCard. Mind you, I hate everything to do with finance but it really wasn't that bad. There was a lot pulling things out of our butts. I e-mailed the Russian division of MasterCard and of course they couldn't answer any of my questions. It wasn't until I read a summary by some no named author that I found out the year MasterCard entered the Russian market. Worse off, my group had two Germans (or Austrians) and one single Russian. Well that doesn't help the situation. So we just took like certain concepts like Porter's 5 Forces and Behavior Approach (all of which are useless in the real world) and analyzed it to the best of our ability. It turned out quite well. I haven't gotten an e-mail back yet about the paper so that should be a good sign. It wound up being 37 pages (some of which were pictures, graphs, and a survey we did). Of course I was the only one that didn't have anything else going on so I did a lot of the work. I wrote the introduction, conclusion, edited, wrote my own stuff, and then made it look all pretty. I didn't get much sleep the day the paper was due. A week later/tomorrow is the presentation. No one could meet up beforehand so this should be interesting. Nothing like a good 10 minutes of presentations and another 10 minutes of questions. I better not get grilled on financial stuff. I would rather die, or maybe I would just stare blankly at someone else in my group. It really funny knowing that every person bull craps everything, yet we still grill them on the simplest things. Last class was just hilarious. A lot of grilling and a lot of pulling answers out of nowhere. Nothing is better than that in a business class.

So again Thursday and Friday I didn't have my normal teacher. I think this is week 3 of her being "sick." I say she is sick of children that don't know the Russian language. Again this week it was a new lady. She was young and fluent in English and German. I think I didn't like her because she would casually have conversations outside of the Russia language. Of course that is better for me (and the rest of the class) but it almost makes me feel more inept. It is like she is over exerting herself because we are not capable. Of course that isn't true but that is how it feels.

Saturday I decided to wake up later than normal. Apparently that is 11am now. How depressing. So i call Jessica and obviously she is like I want to sleep because she (every Friday night) has to stay out all night. The dorms open at 6 and her hockey practices are at 6:30. She cannot stay in the dorms and risk being late. She usually goes to an internet cafe all night and then goes to practice and then sleeps. It seems terrible. So anyways I told her I would call her at 1, but I didn't want to stay at my place till then. I went around town. I didn't take a metro so I was in like nowhere land St. Pete (where I live). There is of course the sea and a wonderful hotel by there. So I walk there and get to some random play ground. There are like two types of playgrounds in Russia, the very top notch ones where it is colorful and bright and the really bad ones made out of metal and have graffiti on them. This one (because it was right next to a high end hotel) was quite nice. It was themed I think hundred acre woods. Winni Pooh (the Russian version) was painted on the sides of the play areas. It was very cute, I took pictures.

So it was finally 1 and I called Jessica. We decided to go to the zoo. Of course I am inept in every which way and didn't realize that the zoo in the rain would be awful. So we get there and it is awful. On a better note: there was no one there. So this zoo is probably the most bizarre zoo you will ever hear about. The first place we go to has a linx (you know those big cats with huge paws that can maul people with) and a calico cat. Yes the calico cat was inside the cage with this wild beast animal cat thing. Better yet, the linx was licking the cat. I didn't think it would get more bizarre than that. Apparently I was wrong. The next cage had foxes, then the next cage had chickens and hens, and then the last cage on the row had raccoons. Of course the Russians call them raccoon dogs. Well that was awkward. Then we see this extravagant area with a mote and a island. I automatically think monkey because that seems logical. Nope, it was for porcupines. Yes a whole exhibit for porcupines. hmmmmm. I couldn't find any because it was raining out and I do believe they are nocturnal. There was also a whole area devoted to bunnies. Cute, but unneeded. I also saw moose, horses, donkeys, and deers. They might have been all in the same area I don't remember. There was a monkey section and right by it was a polar bear section. One of the polar bears was in the water playing with a baseball cap. It was cute. There were two in cages and between their cages was a black bear. Nothing like having every random animal together. It is really weird seeing all these animals in the same area living in the same weather. don't monkeys need the warmth and polar bears need the cold? I kinda felt like I was in the circus in the Last Unicorn. If you haven't seen that movie you should. But it was like the spell wore off and instead of there being scary soviet animals (that eat humans of course) there were wimpy raccoons. That is the only good explanation i could come up with. And when we were leaving we decided to see the calico cat and linx because it was just so mind boggling. The cat was gone and the linx was freaking out. She/he was just pacing the cage. It was quite interesting to watch.

Sunday Jessica didn't feel like going out. It was raining really bad the day before and she refused to hold an umbrella. something about them being useless? I personally think they protect you from hypothermia in areas such as Russia but I could be wrong. Anyways I decided to stay indoors and go to the zoology museum. It was fun. I think it has the most taxidermitized (yes i will make up a word for the day) animals in one area. It is quite a freaky place. Small, but freaky. They decided to make it as real as possible so I saw taxidermitized rats being eaten by taxidermitized snakes. There were "dead" dog carcasses and vultures. I think I saw a wolf eating another animal. Its like seriously, it is bad enough that I am looking at taxidermy, you have to also make them look like they are dying. A glass eye is bad enough really. I am quite perplexed on the rhinoceros front, also. So can you taxideritize a rhino or can they only be fake made out of wood. I couldn't tell. They also had like every possible embalmed (happy Audrey) parasite. Nothing like fearing for your life. especially since I am in Russia and if I drink the water something slimy and worm like will enter my body and eat me alive. It was still pretty interesting. All that was on just one floor. Then I went up to the second floor where there were insects. That was so much better. I like butterflies. They are pretty and don't have glass eyes or fake tongues.

It only took me an hour to go through the whole museum so i decided to just walk around town. I had a destination though it was just a long walk. I decided to go to 'the' Peter and Paul fortress. So i finally get there and go to the ticket place to find out the place is huge. You would think I would know this already. Well anyways the tickets last for two days so I thought to myself that it be best if I go on a Saturday and finish on a Sunday. So I leave the area and decide to just walk around the town there. It is on its own little island and I didn't get a chance to explore the area yet (ironically the zoo is there also). I wind up at this nice religious building. I say that because I know it wasn't a church and I thought it was a temple (because there was Semitic writing on it) but according to Jessica there is a mosque somewhere around there. It was all different shades of blue and I believe it was like partly made out of mosaic. Very interesting. Anyways I am taking pictures of this wonderful building when I get stopped by these three drunken (not noticeably) Russians. I do believe their names were Nikita, Igor, and Vlad (not short for Vladimir). I talk with them for a bit, obviously they don't know English so it was quite painful. I left them and, because we were walking and talking, I got lost. Of course I have a map and it is a good map but that usually never stops me from being a blond. I thought I was going in a different direction than I was going. I decided to just go with the flow and walk in a straight line. No matter what you will eventually hit a metro in St. Pete. It was definitely a terrible long cold walk but it was fun none of the less.

So I am walking to the metro doors when I hear this crazy babooshka. I really do think that when a Russia lady turns like 80 they go mad. I haven't met one that hasn't. Anyways this lady was obviously homeless. She was howling with her dog and throwing/twirling around a dead rat. I really have no comment for that. After that experience I was like it has got to be a full moon. Guess what it was! First time in my life I really felt that. It is weird how you just know it is due to the moon.

So after that it is still only 5pm. I didn't want to go home yet so I hung out with Jessica. We made popcorn on the stove. We bought one of those microwavable popcorn bags and then opened it up and put it in a closed pot. How brilliant were we? I think I am now a gourmet chef!

It was a good weekend I believe. I have two plans for next week. If it isn't too ugly out (like it has been) I will go to Pavlovsk. It is like Pushkin, a town outside of St. Pete, that has a nice palace (or something like that). If it is worse out, I will go to Peter and Paul's fortress on Saturday and Sunday and Sunday afternoon will go to the weaponry museum (There were tanks outside the building) sounds interesting enough. Watch none of this work out :-D