Маршрут

Itinerary

I have 11 more days in Russia, and then I'm heading back by a somewhat complicated and roundabout route.

-Sunday, August 9: Travel to Pulkovo Airport, probably by metro. Depart from St. Petersburg, Russia, at 1:00am on...

-Monday, August 10: Arrive at Ben-Gurion Airport Tel-Aviv, Israel, at about 4:40am. Take the train to Tel-Aviv, get picked up by an awesome Israeli friend (thanks, Pri!), put stuff down, spend the day hanging out in Tel Aviv eating falafel (YES), exploring, chilling and swimming at the beach (YES). Spend the night.

-Tuesday, August 11: Travel day. Train back to Ben-Gurion at about 6am. Depart for New York JFK at 10:40am, and arrive the same day in New York at 3:20pm. Take the airport bus to Penn Station. Then, BoltBus to Boston South Station, departing 6:30pm and arriving at 10:45. From there, someone will pick me up and I'll head over to stay with friends near Tufts!

-Wednesday, August 12: Tufts/Boston. Spend time with friends, but also visit the TOL office and the Study Abroad office to clear things up with my flat-lined computer and with the upcoming year abroad. Also get a haircut.

-Thursday, August 13: Tufts/Boston again. More time with friends. At 10:30pm, my bus departs from South Station--an overnight Greyhound to Washington, DC. The joys of living as a student!

-Friday, August 14: Washington, DC: Arrive at 8:40am. Spend lots of time with family. Wave to Obama.

-Saturday, August 15: Washington, DC: more family time.

-Sunday, August 16: DC: more family time.

-Monday, August 17 (probably not the day before): Fly back to California, arriving before Monday afternoon so as to have as much time as possible with friends before everyone heads back to school.

Then, I'll be in California for about six weeks, relaxing and spending time with friends and family and maybe earning some money, and of course preparing for my year abroad. Road trip to Mexico, anyone? (I'm only half-kidding.)


September 30: Flight from Burbank Airport (Los Angeles), through SFO, to Osaka International Airport, Japan, to start my year abroad on October 1. I'll be studying at Kanazawa University with the Tufts-in-Japan program.


Yow. This is real.

HYPERMARKET

That's right--the Lenta I mentioned in the previous post is not simply a superstore, it's quite literally a Hypermarket. Beyond a "super-market" or even a "universal-store" (both also Russian phrases), it's a Hypermarket. Гипермаркет is the Russian, and Hypermarket is exactly what it means. Awesome.

So, I'm well past the halfway point of my whole summer abroad, and I've got a little over four weeks left in Russia. Last night I had an academic epiphany of sorts about what my senior year at Tufts is going to be like, about my major and other activities, and I got really excited for senior year. I'm reading Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground" now (in English, I suppose I should mention), and it's really getting to me in an incredible way. I suppose that when it was assigned in 12th grade I wasn't ready for it, but now I'm at a point in my life where I am really discovering how much I love reading and literature. It may not be the romantic science-technology focus I always seemed to dream about, but right now it really fits. Plus, it was really nice to think about such positive things and to get so excited for the future, and to see how my college career could come together in such a great way. And then Zach called me from England and we discovered that we're both working on Chekhov's "Three Sisters" in our respective programs, and we had a great conversation. I've been talking to loads of people on the phone, and it's great to be able to keep in touch from Russia, even as I'm just walking to class in the morning!

Unfortunately, my laptop is still not working, and something tells me that this time it's not going to inexplicably get better. I'm fairly sure the motherboard / main logic board is failing, though there is a chance it could be some kind of "simple" firmware corruption. Fortunately it's not the new hard drive, so I won't lose any of the pictures and emails and music I had saved on there and had been working on, but that also vastly limits my ability to take more pictures than my memory card can hold, which I suppose isn't too much of a problem, being more than halfway through and all. Supposing it's the logic board, that'll mean $350-$550 for a new one from eBay, plus a very labor-intensive installation. On the other hand, that's about half the price of the new 13" MacBook Pro, and plus I'd get another free iPod and printer. In any case, it's all annoying because I originally bought that computer to last longer than two years, so I'm not happy.

Anyway, about my return, it's sort of starting to come together. I'll spend 1, 2, or 3 nights in Israel (assuming El Al is somewhat cooperative...), fly to New York, and then hop on a plane to Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina, to visit my grandmother (I haven't seen her in almost two years, I think) for two days or so, before flying home to LA. It's very slightly possible, I suppose, that I could stop in Boston for one night first (taking the bus there from NY) and fly to NC from there, so that I could spend an evening with some friends that will be there. Hmm, that's a pretty good idea...

We're going to the Russian Museum tomorrow, and then the Banya (Russian Bath) is on Sunday. Also, the midterm exam (or I guess more accurately, the final for the first month) is on Friday. Still hoping to go see "Up" in a day or two, and then I think next week Harry Potter comes out! yes.


Hope all is well wherever you are reading this blog. My regards to you! More insight later, I suppose.

Россия: Какая Страна!

Russia: What a country!

On Friday, going to see Transformers 2. The fact that it was in Russian probably made it a lot better, because I couldn't understand the heavily affected voices of the evil bad-guy robots at all, and all of their lines were unnecessary history of the robot war anyhow. Plus, the bad parts of annoying stereotypes and stupid dialogue were almost nullified!


A quick word about the title of this post:
Russia has a peculiar way of being very inadvertently funny to foreigners. (What a country!) Examples happen all the time here, but they're very insignificant on their own. More to come on this subject, I think, later.


Still so much to say--I want to talk more about Pskov, my impressions of the excursions, and also especially the very enjoyable night out at a bar/music club there (and the people I met there), but as always, time is short. The excursion to the Dostoevsky Museum yesterday was very short, actually, and I'll admit that because the guides are always difficult to understand and I have unfortunately not really read any Dostoevsky significantly, it was a bit boring. Actually, it reminded me of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam (and also perhaps a bit of the Rembrandt House).

Here's a short video of the tour of a Russian Orthodox monastery near Pskov, so you can see a bit of what it was actually like for us. At the monastery I bought a CD (it was about $4) of the monks that live and work there chanting. I'll listen to it tonight!



I also want to talk a little bit of personal history, such as my feelings on going to college in the first place, rewinding (remember VCRs?) to about exactly two years ago, which I think directly relates to me going abroad, about who I am and where I am in life right now. Unfortunately, that will have to wait until next time. It's a topic that is very close to me.


More dreaming--it's fuzzy, but I remember some new theatre production happening at my high school, and I'm a senior there when this happens. The important thing about the production is that it's contemporary, and that's apparently a very big deal.
Also some other adventure in a dream. Don't remember any details.


I received some information yesterday concerning my travel arrangements to Japan, and for a brief period of time I thought I might be in Boston for a bit at the end of September, but now again that arrangement appears unfeasible. Although it would be a bit awkward to bum around Tufts, I'll miss seeing Tufts friends for another whole year. Doesn't seem like it's going to make any monetary sense for me to go to Boston, though I thought that it would with the stipend for Japan. Hm.


Still thinking about and working on what to do with returning to America in August. I'm returning to Israel on the 10th of August, and I would be really excited, but I have a few problems:

I had been scheduled to return to America that same day, but when I left Israel two weeks ago I was so thrilled with being there that I immediately extended my trip further, all the way until 1am on Tuesday the 18th. So here's the problem--I have no plans to stay anywhere or do anything during that time, except for what I discussed with one new friend there about me staying at his place in Eilat from Friday until Sunday or perhaps Monday (by this plan, I would need to arrive at the airport on Monday evening [the 17th] just after dinner to get on that flight). But that leaves me with nothing from the 10th until the 14th (during that time, I had thought it would be great to go to Bulgaria and hang out with George, another friend, but that's yet another $600 I don't have). Furthermore, I'm not even sure I have enough money to last me almost six more weeks in Russia, let alone another week in Israel (where things cost more, and I'd have to spend more to support myself too). But there's even more to it than that--I'll have large heavy bags with me, and after 10 weeks abroad I'll be anxious to return home, especially since I have friends back home who will be going back to their colleges all over America very soon afterward.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to do. I'm not confident that I'd be able to convince El Al to let me change my flight again for anything less than $100, even though this would be the third time changing it. Bah, I should have waited. I'd love to see some more of Israel, but this is eight whole days and basically it's pretty inconvenient for various reasons. Supposing, then, that I were to change my flight to leave on perhaps the 13th or 14th, that might work too, but even so, I know that's during the week and many of the Israelis I know will be busy. And what would I do with my bags?


On a random note, whenever I have a couple of minutes I read Questionable Content. I don't have much time to read it here, but I'm about a third of the way through the whole thing, going from number one. It's very well done, and it's a fascinating arc to follow (as well as following the author himself in his comments on each strip). Honestly speaking, I feel that I relate to many of the characters, especially Marten, though no one exactly of course.


THE FOLLOWING is MY ADDRESS here in Russia! I should have posted it sooner, but here it is. Fortunately, as long as you're just sending a letter or postcard or something (I wouldn't recommend sending me a parcel/package), it shouldn't take more than a week or two to get here. So, as long as you send something within the next two and a half weeks, I'll be able to get mail from you! That's really good, since I'm told that to send things internationally FROM Russia is, well, unreliable at best. I'm told six weeks is an average time for mail.

Alexander Michaelson
c/o Smolny College / Bryan Billings
St. Petersburg State University
Lt. Schmidt Embankment 11, Office 416
199034, St. Petersburg, RUSSIA


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