First Day of Classes :)

Woke up at 8:40, not feeling so great, but I had breakfast. Bread with cheese, black tea with milk and sugar, as usual at this point.

Walking to class took me a little less than an hour, so I was 5 minutes late =/ Next week I'll try using the metro but I suspect it'll still take me the same amount of time since the metro isn't the most accessible form of transportation here.

The class at the Hermitage was great, Professor Gregorievich is very intelligent and interesting. He has a British accent when he speaks English, which makes sense since most Russians learn English English, not American English.

We had a half hour break, which I took the time to get kind of ripped off at the Hermitage cafeteria for an orange and a piece of chocolate, but whatever. Those 3 hours of class went by really quickly, which was nice. Our final assignment is a 2 to 19 page paper on any object we'll be looking at (anything from ancient Egyptian to Russian icons to contemporary art), due before we leave Russia. Oh, studying abroad is great.

After class everyone decided to walk to Gostiny Dvor and walk around the shopping center, which was interesting, I'll have to go back to certain stores and see if I can get some shirts or something. Apraxin Dvor, the cheaper shopping center, is really really sketchy and I just...kind of never want to go back there without someone who knows what they're doing.

I wasn't feeling that great today, and I just didn't feel like trying so hard to fit in with the others today so I kept to myself and listened to my iPod while walking with them =/

Dropped by a produkti (convenience store) for "lunch," which was a bottle of peach yogurt and three of Eric's small pretzels. At 4 I had a lecture at the University, with Prof. Kolonitsky, on Russian history. I seriously am the least experienced in the entire group and the poor guy doesn't have the best grasp on English and I can tell he's tempted to just use Cyrillic and Russian but because of me everything has to be translated =/ The lecture was okay, not awesome, but interesting enough. He kind of rushed through a lot and didn't contextualize much...but whatever.

Got back home, had some dinner, which was noodles and pork and mushrooms, and mushroom soup with sour cream. Yummy as usual.

I don't think I'll be posting as much anymore, since I'll be having a routine schedule now, but I'll update a bit now and then.

More classes tomorrow, starting at noon, which isn't so bad.