Водка и пиво

So I woke up at 7:00 or 7:30am to a very quiet apartment. I went
online and talked to some people, while eating some peach Dannon
yogurt and a piece of bread. At 9, my host mother woke up and prepared
me breakfast. I think it was buckwheat porridge. It was really bland
and I didn't like the texture of the buckwheat whatsoever. I made
myself some green tea with milk and sugar which was nice, but the
porridge was a downer. I HAD to throw the rest of my plate away,
otherwise it was just gonna sit there and get grosser what with it
being all cold. My host mother also poured wheat yogurt over the small
stick of cream+sugar (apparently it's a type of cheese), and let it
sit. I was very...confused as how to eat it. So I didn't really touch
it.
At about noon we had some tea together, and I had a cup of green tea
with sugar and nibbled on the pieces of hard raisin bread covered in
sugar and a few pieces of mint chocolates. It was nice.

I met the others on Liteny and Nekrasova (at the Mexican restaurant
haha) and Eric, Jonathan, and Victoria told me to go nonchalantly
across the street and look at the billboard, but really look at the
two guys sitting on a bench near the sign. I go over and it's two guys
dressed in traditional outfits of a certain ethnic group (I didn't get
a great look but it looked an awful lot like trepak costumes), and the
guy in the blue was holding a.....black pig. Really cute black pig,
but...a black pig. It was awesome.

When we met up with Olga and her boyfriend Maxim we walked over to an
electronics store called Рик to get Eric a new netbook, which was
interesting since the layout of the store was really..convoluted. But
apparently what you do is go to the cash register, tell them what you
want, pay for it, then go one floor down with your receipt and wait
for your number to be called to pick it up. Lots of security haha.

After that, we went over to the University so we could recognize which
entrance to go into and which building it was. It was nice and we met
a grad student named Scott from San Diego who was also checking out
the University since tomorrow is our orientation. Olga left us to our
devices and so we walked along the Neva until we were almost at the
Hermitage. We found a small tavern that had cheap (but good) beer and
let us bring our own vodka, so Victoria bought a $6 bottle which was
pretty sizable and was about 20 shots worth. I had about 3 and was
feeling good. After two hours of conversing with each other and Scott,
we parted ways and all of us went to the palace square to just hang
out. Sitting in the palace square, we watched a guy doing wheelies on
his little Suzuki motorcycle. Then we got up and went through the
square to Nevsky Prospekt to grab a small bite. We found a very busy
McDonalds and had a pleasant late lunch at Mickey Ds. I had the "Биг
Мак," which I actually ordered successfully.

Post-McDonalds, our little slice of home, we parted ways to go back
home and I actually navigated my way back home really well without
getting lost or anything! :D! When I got back, it was about 7pm and I
had dinner with my host mother. I had my first taste of borscht and I
was surprisingly into it. It was red but not like a totally scary
red--but once I added sour cream it became pink and that's when I
started feeling iffy looking at it, but I still drank the entire thing
it was pretty great. She also made me rice with pork and sauteed
onions and carrots, which was yummy, but I was so full from McDonalds
that I could only eat about half my plate. I'm saving the other half
for tomorrow's dinner.

And....now I'm here. Tomorrow is EU's orientation, whoo.