Eleven suitcases showed up at 8pm; only one of our group is still missing his-- turns out it was sent to the wrong hotel (part of the mix-up that was the bureaucratic Gordian knot we tried to unravel after our arrival to St. Petersburg), but it should be here today....
Last night some of us got out for a bit with Cornelius for an abbreviated "walking tour" in the heart of St. Petersburg (he said he was going to read us some Pushkin under the Pushkin statue in a little park in town-- I thought he was kidding; he wasn't). He cracks me up-- while he was going on about Pushkin and his wet nurse (you had to be there), I laughed so hard that I almost had an accident. After our short "tour" we were rained on. It had to have been in the low 50s, and it was windy and wet. Not the best weather in which to wander the city.
Yesterday during the day, we went on a city tour and then to the Hermitage museum, both went by kind of quickly-- there's just so much to see in a short amount of time! I did, however, learn how to say "hitchhike" in Russian after a conversation with our bus driver, Konstantin. The most fun I have here is listening to how everyday Russian is spoken!
I think our kids in the group especially are starting to see the cultural differences (and oddities) a little more clearly-- this is much better than my prattling on in class...
Gotta run for the bus now. More later!
