I Wish Becomes I Will

Russia- on the way to Russia we passed under a bridge that connected Sweden and Norway. It was quite a big deal even though I nor anyone else could tell you the name of it. Everyone was out on the decks yelling and taking pictures as we went under it. It was our first “land mark” type thing we had seen as a ship. I guess that’s why we were so excited 🙂
The first day in Russia I had a field lab. (Field labs are something we have for every class. I’m taking four classes so through the trip there are four different occasions where I will spend a whole day with my class and professors doing whatever it is that the professor has planned out for us. One of the main reasons they do this is because of our amount if in-class time does not meet that of a regular college so we spend and 8 hour day “learning” to make up for 8 days of class.) Field labs are very enjoyable though so it’s hard to call it class. The class was comparative politics and We went to a couple places including the home of a Russian politician, a big beautiful church and a very tasty lunch. All the women had to cover our heads while being in the church so we all brought scarfs to do that. It was kind of my first cultural experience of the trip. I was really excited about wearing it 🙂 the lunch was a 3 course meal and aside from desert, was all vegetables and light sauces. As soon as I got back to the ship I grabbed my bag for my first hostel and headed out for what was the remainder or Russia… All in one small bag. Such a hippie 😉 the hostel was quite nice considering we had our own room with a lock on it. The second day when getting breakfast we got orange juice. Best decision ever! We literally watched the machine squeeze the orange juice. That’s pretty normal we found out. We went to the Hermitage and I realized I had left my card in the ATM a couple hours earlier. That was quite a hassle over the next couple days but some how I got it back! We also went to a russian market and it was like being in Grandmoms kitchen, women were trying to get us to sample anything and everything. 65% of things were pickled, apparently thats a thing.  We ate seaweed, eggplant, white stuff, purple stuff, anything and although we left with tummy aches it was quite enjoyable.  That night we ….. Cruised on a boat with Russians in rabbit suits, missed the bridge going up, got stuck on the wrong side, slept in Burger King.
We went to the hermitage again the next day and actually went in. I like museums and in London I went to a million, but after 20 min I sat down and realized I could go the rest of my life without seeing all of that so me and one other friend left. We ran into an artist from dance who draws for the Olympics and he drew me to add to his collection of random people on the side of the street in Russian. He was very interesting to talk to. We bought tickets for the Russian ballet, Swan Lake. It was a huge beautiful theatre and our seats we 5 stories (literally) high, basically in the lights. Quite humorous, we moved to the first floor half way through though 🙂 the dancers were incredible and it really was quite the event. Everything was so classic and everyone was dressed so nice. (There were only a hundred times I saw a perfect turn on pointe doing at least 8.) That was definitely the high light of my Russia trip. The next day we went to a market to get food to attempt to replace or horrific ship food.
Russians really didn’t like us much and they weren’t very pleasant. Not to say that I didn’t have an amazing time their way of functioning as a society was just very blah. I ask our tour guide the first day what his thoughts were on Putin. He immediately redirected the question to me and then followed one if my statements with “you think you are the most free country but are you really free.” He honestly thought their communist society had more freedom. He attempted to bring up an example of protesting. I informed him that we are allowed to protest whenever and he was surprised. He thought they were lucky to be able to protest with one single person and if it was anymore they had to inform their government and get an ok. Which normally didn’t happened. I think it was also relevant that we were Americans and we also didn’t speak their language.
IMPORTANT- to all my Disney family whom dislikes Brazilians, I have a new found understanding for them. I use to get so mad when all they said was “Brazil” but all I could say in Russian was “English.” We picked up things like hello and thank you but I have never felt more Brazilian in my life. Poor things.
Russian Ballet-check!