CLASSES!

Class 1

SO I am still in this I must go to GSOM classes but can't because I haven't registered dilemma. To top it all off I have classes at St. Pete at the same time. I already missed day one because I had to go to that apt. at 10:30, and the school warns you about missing classes. If you miss too many you are departed. I don't want to be departed! So anyways I go to the internet cafe in the morning and find out that I still have no e-mail. I leave completely petrified for my existence and go to straight to Vladim again. Of course it is 30 minutes before class starts and Vladim is in a meeting with someone else. Thankfully someone is waiting for him too. I look at her and smile and she smiles back, instantly I know she isn't Russian so I start to talk to her. Her name is Kikki (I think that is her legit name) and she is from Denmark. AWESOME! Anyways she is in the same predicament as me. About 10 minutes before class starts we both see Vladim and he tells us not to worry and tells me that the IT guy is AWOL and hasn't done anything. So I am allowed in class. YEY!
Class number 1: OMG. GSOM classes are 6 hours, once a week, for like 2 months (and another 2 classes the next 2 months). Yes you heard me correct, SIX hours. That’s like 2 6-9s in a row. I do get 2, 45 minute breaks, but that is like human torture. So we start off class by introducing ourselves. There are 10 maybe 15 Russians in my class. They all speak amazing English; yes my business classes are in English. Then there is also about 7 or so Foreigners. They come from all over the world like Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Finland, etc. Yes, I am the only person in the class whose first language is English. An English class and I’m the only one that is English. How hilarious.
Well class goes well. I learn nothing. Yes 5 hours (because we left early) and I learned nothing about the subject-International Business Strategies. Hmmmmm, let’s hope this doesn't happen again. First he makes us explain Internationalization (which isn't globalization ) and doesn't even define it himself, so now I don't know anything about internationalization but must talk about. Then, after the break, he makes us get into groups of 3 and make an oral presentation about two competing global businesses, and of course he already has decided on these companies. My group gets Caterpillar and Kamatu (construction machine companies). I don't know about you, but does anyone know about Kamatu? Thankfully, the Russian in my group (I am paired with a Finish girl and a Russian boy) worked for Caterpillar for 2 years so he knows everything about them. He, however, doesn't know anything about Kamatu. So He talks for a couple minutes giving us all this information we need and then goes into his own world. And by that I mean he takes little pieces of paper (and there are like 20) and starts making Origami swans. No joke, in like 10 minutes he make 6 swans. So you know I am with some crazy guy. It all goes well, and my group gets out alive.
Unfortunately I didn't get to the best part. With limited internet access, I must give an individual oral presentation about a business strategy, 6 group presentations analyzing cases, and one group project making a 30 page case on a company. Wish me luck.


Class two.
Yey it’s my first day of Russian language class! I finally go to St. Petersburg University. I have already befriended the Scottish people in my class. Surprisingly one is actually a Brit and one is from Boston. Yes, out of 3 people that go to Edinburgh one is actually from there. Beside that there are like 10 people from Taiwan. They are all nice and apparently speak English.
I have three classes a week, 4 hours each. Tuesday is Conversation, Thursday is Grammar and Friday is Grammar writing and it is all in Russian. My first class was Grammar. Not as bad as I thought, but still quite painful, with my poor vocabulary and all. The teacher, Katya I think, is the cutest teacher ever. She is always smiling, yes shocking again, and pretty much reminds me of a preschool teacher. And with all due respect, I am in preschool again. The whole class is straight repetition. If I don't get something the first time, and trust me I don't, I get it the second time. And by the time the question gets to me I know what is going on. Also I don't have to worry too much about screwing up because everyone does it. I mean I am in a room full of people from Taiwan. Do you want to know how hilarious their Russian accents are? Too cute!
So either Class one day or Class two day, my day are getting screwed up, I went with Jessica to get soy milk. You see she is allergic to milk, not ice cream or cheese, just milk (because it is pure or something like that). Anyways it is very hard to find soy milk in Russia so we have to go to scary faraway places in St. Pete to find it or at least find their lack of it. So there is this one place Carousel that is like a big food market and is in god knows where St. Pete. So we get off at the nearest exist and it is nowhere to be found. We walk, no joke, 30 minutes along the highway to get to it. My legs are dying, or better yet, my ankles are falling apart by the time we reach the market. So we look around for a little bit and find nothing. Turns out they don't have it. Then we go to a store nearby, and again turns out they don't have it. Now Jessica is upset (she has been backpacking Europe for 5 week without soy milk) and I am broken. I mean in the legit term. The next day I find out I have Achilles Tendentious! Boy does my ankle want to kill me!
Random Fact:: Caterpillar has this marketing scheme in which they promise you that if your machine breaks down and you need a part they will ship it to you within 24 hours. So if you break down in Timbuktu you can get a new part in 24 hours. How freaking amazing is that?

Register or DIE

Registration, registration, registration! Have you ever heard someone tell you that Russians make everything impossible and if possible as painful as possible? Well I have been hit with this realization quite hard. Registration at St. Petersburg University is like pulling teeth and I am not just talking about any teeth. I am talking about strong healthy teeth that will not budge. You have to give the same information about 100 times to like 20 different departments and no department knows the information from the other department. Even worse, you have to register with the police department to take classes at the school. Sounds simple enough, sign some papers talk to some people, and that is about it. Well no. the department at St. Pete that does this is open only for two hours a day and about 100 people need to get registered. I know this because Sergei, Jessica and I went and signed up to register and we were number 101 and 102. There is no way that this place, in 2 hours, can see 100 people and you HAVE to sign up to stay in school. Thank god for Sergei! He called up a few people who called up a few more people that made an appointment for us. Our apt. was the next day at 10:30 (making us miss out first day of class). Well that was wonderful but also not the most painful part. The paper you have to give to this said department to register with the police is impossible. You see it is so impossible that SRAS does not even know how to fill it out correctly. Somehow we got lucky again. A wonderful Russian man, some dean of some international department, took the papers from us and typed up all the information.
On top of this dramatic experience, we needed to take a test and sign up for classes. The test wasn't all that bad. It was 101 multiple choice question and we had an hour to do them. The questions were hard, I knew what was going on and what was being asked, it was just remembering the set up and all the rules that got me. I scored average. Jessica scored quite high. And the sad part, Jessica only had a year of Russian and then took a year off to save up enough money to go to Russia. I have had 2 years of Russian back to back. I feel inept. But this is also her third language. She is fluent in French because she is from Canada. I got put into a class with 3 people from Edinburgh, Scotland and like a bizillian people from Korea. Well like 10, but that is like a lot of Koreans.
So we have all the information we need and we go to the appointment at 10:30. No such luck, no one knows what is going on. We ask some nice young looking lady that we were sent here to get paperwork done. She says that we have to wait till 2 (when they start registration for everyone) and we were like no we have an appointment. This was all in English mind you. The lady stares at us and says “I am not an English translator, I am a French translator” and gives us the death stare. We run out of the room in complete and total fear. Mind you Jessica is beyond fluent in French, but we were still scared for our life and were alone. Sergei did not come with us. So we call us Sergei right away and he calls like a thousand people and then calls us back and we get seen. NO it doesn't end there. Now we need to have the correct information that the nice Russian man typed up for us the day beforehand. Nope, epic fail. I had the wrong date on something and Jessica has the wrong last name. Then we leave to redue all the paperwork by hand, and again we messed up on something and had to repeat. Finally, we get everything correct. Registration is complete, at. St. Pete University.
My registration process did not end there. Nope, I had to also register for school number 2, Graduate School of Management (GSOM). I already saw the dean with Sergei the day before (when we started the whole registration process) and was told what to do. He told me to look at my time table (like the hell I know what that is) and see when my classes were later that day. I didn't go back to GSOM because I was stuck at St. Pete dealing with them. So the next day I went back after the 10:30 appt. and talk with Vladim the Dean of exchange students (he speaks English-YEY). I get my student pass, which is an electronic card that I must swipe to get in AND out of the building (why out is beyond me, if you enter the building then obviously you are important enough to exit as well). Well anyways I get that and am told that I must wait for an e-mail telling me my username and password to register for classes and use their FREE computers whenever I want. Well after Jessica and I finish everything we have to do that day, and it is later in the evening, I go to the internet cafe to get my username and password. FAIL. I have NOTHING. I don't know what to do. I have to register that day because my classes start the next day! AHHHHH so I am completely freaking out like I always do and e-mail Vladim. He tells me not to worry, but I must be registered to go to class.
Random Fact: Escalators in Russia are some of the steepest ones in the world. They average 15 stories and they are building a new one that will go down 30 stories. Talk about a long fall!

Getting to Know you, getting to feel free and easy

St. Petersburg is not like the US. Although we have historical cities, like Washington DC and parts of New York, we do not have HISTORY. St. Petersburg has stories of kings and queens, war and peace, communistic rule and democratic (?) rule. In the heart of St. Pete it feels like you are frozen in time (ironically due to the Soviet Union ignoring the city for many years). I cannot begin to explain the beauty. Sergei, my amazing tour guide, walked me and another girl in the SRAS program, Jessica, through most of St. Pete today. Sergei is a teacher (I believe) from Russia that speaks perfect English. He also is amazingly knowledgeable about the city. Unfortunately, it was raining all day and was very gloomy out.
During our amazing tour we didn't go inside many building. As soon as me and Jessica get our student cards we can go to most places for free or for very little. Because of this Sergei just told us to wait a little before visiting the tourist attractions. We did, however, walk into one church. So I go inside this church and am completely awestruck. The building was just magnificent. There was marble everywhere, high ceilings, a balcony where the chorus sings, and painting galore. According to Sergei, the church is best known for have a famous prince/general buried there, or something like that. So while my mouth is agape and I can't even think straight I look to my left and there is a wedding going on. We walked into a wedding, what better way for me to start off my Russian experience with my favorite thing in the world. So we go outside after listening to the chorus and stumble upon two more couples that just got married. Am I lucky or what? The cutest thing of this whole experience was when Jessica, and Sergei, and I were looking at the Church of Spilt Blood. As we were just staring at its magnificence I see these people dressed up in the corner of my eye and just have to look at what is going on. One of the weddings we stumbled upon was getting their picture taking. It is Russian tradition to have a newly married couple go all over town and take pictures in front of famous monuments. I was just so happy to witness these strangers wedding and after-wedding bliss.
Of course I eventually have to have my first human interaction in Russia. What better way to do that then at a drugstore. So Jessica decides she needs Vitamin C. So anyways we get the pills rather fast. It isn't really hard to find an orange box that say "vitamin C" in cyrillic letters. The funny part happens at the counter. Russians (a note to anyone potentially going to Russia) hate to break bills. They LOVE exact change. Jessica only has big bills because she went to the ATM and ironically they only give you big bills. Where you break these bills I don't know. SO anyways this lady is yelling at us. We barely know what is going on and refuses to take the money or give us the pills. So this worker near by points to some candy and Jessica picks one out at random. Finally we get the Vitamin C! yey! The candy tasted like a pez, a large circular pez. Not a bad choice for not knowing what was going on I must admit.
Random fact of the day: The Church of Spilt blood, in all its glory, is a copy. Not because there is an identical one somewhere else in the world, but because it was made to impersonate St. Basils in Moscow. St. Basils was built in the 17th century, and because St. Petersburg loved it so much, they replicated the style it in the 19th century.

First day- revamped

I have come to realize that airplanes are synonymous with death; you come out of there half broken and half emotionally disturbed. There is nothing else to it. I slept quite a lot on all 3 flights but it was by no means comfortable. I woke up a few times with a bad back and an overly sore neck. Also, ironically, vegetarians have it bad on planes. You would think that because there is no meat my meal would be gourmet, but no. While the meat eaters had chicken and shrimp pasta and a chocolate cake, I had an over cooked pasta dish with barely any sauce and a dried fresh fruit dish. Better yet, I got a cold-roasted-pepper and zucchini-bean salad while the meat eats got a fresh green salad, how ironic.
I started to get sick on the plane, not swine flu sick (I have been religiously checking my temperature), but my body hates me with a passion sick. It was probably from the bad food and high altitude. After awhile my body just wouldn't let me eat. It lasted the last leg of the trip as well as a couple of days after.
I am ecstatic about my host family, although they do not speak much English (and by much English I mean they only know a few words like walk, swim, wow, and very little), they are amazingly nice. Ludmilla/Luda (my host mother) first greeted me with a smile, surprisingly, and gave me slippers for the apartment. We attempted small talk right away and succeeded to an extent. Igor (my host father) made his first appearance at dinner. He loves telling stories and is very animated. It is easier to understand him than Luda because I can follow the stories with his hands and voice.
My room is fantastic. I have a wardrobe that fits all my things and even some, a table with a chair and a recliner. Best thing about my room: I have a balcony. Actually it is my own balcony because it doesn't connect to any room but mine. I am also on the 21st floor so the view is amazing. It doesn't overlook any famous monuments, because I am not by the main part of St. Pete, but it overlooks the water. I think I can even see Finland from where I am at.
Random fact of the day: If you want to get from Helsinki, Finland to St. Petersburg, Russia it take all of 35 minutes in a plane.

Welcome All

To all my readers,

I am going to take a journey of a life time to St. Petersburg, Russia where I will be studying international business (at the Graduate School of Management) and Russian language. I hope you will enjoy reading about this journey and help me through it when I have my downs and laugh at me when I have my crazy ups. I love you all and please stay tuned for the enjoying stories of my life!

Feel free to contact me at any time on this blog, by e-mail: Clocker@stetson.edu, on Facebook, or through Skype: Claire.Locker.