I survived..

One port down and I managed to survive. I'm completely exhausted right now but we have to recover super quick because we get to Poland on Friday. We port in Gdansk then plan to travel to Krakow on Saturday to visit Auschwitz theeeeeeen we're hopping the border to Germany and going to Berlin then meeting up with the ship in Rostock. This is our plan. Whether or not this is what will actually occur is beyond me. If anyone is feeling wealthy and wants to donate like $1000 to me that's totally cool and maybe even tax deductible? Probably not though I don't really know I'm not an accounting major.

Anywho

Russia Day 1:
    I had a field lab which is like a field trip you go on with one of your classes, we have one for each class and they're worth 20% of our grade. We went to Peterhof in the morning which is this huge palace with a bunch of gardens and stuff. It was so beautiful. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures in the palace but everything was so intricate and gold. I could totally be down to live there (so if you know any single kings or princes let me know). After that we went to this fancy restaurant/banquet hall place and had a really really delicious meal consisting of a salad, this chicken thing, and some pastry/cake that we all decided was rhubarb. We couldn't ask because none of the wait staff spoke English.
    After the palace and lunch we traveled to the apartment of Dostoyevsky (?sp) the author of Crime and Punishment. It was really interesting to see the history in Russia and hearing how important these historical figures are to them.
    Our professor made the bus we were riding pass some of the main tourist sites in Russia on our way so we got to see the Bronze Horseman, St. Isaac's Cathedral and a few other cool things.
    That night me and a couple of my friends were going into the city to meet up with our other friends who hadn't had field labs. Thanks to a lack of internet access we could never find them so we ended up going back to the boat. Thankfully, although we had no idea where we were and couldn't ask people for help, my extensive Russian knowledge got us back to the ship before 1.
    Fun fact: All the drawbridges in St. Petersburg go up at around 1:30 and our boat was on the side opposite all of the attractions and fun stuff. So if you miss it you are fuuuuuu...screwed.

Russia Day 2:
    Nothing too exciting just basic sightseeing and stuff. I also did some homework on the ship before we went out. Some of our friends made friends with a local Russian girl the prior day so she and her friends were really helpful for us to get around and know where the best places to go were. We decided to book a hostel so that we could stay out late. It was really cheap and very very clean so we were happy with it. We also had six of us to a six person room so it was private. We went out to a couple bars and a club with our new Russian friend, since it was Sunday there weren't many people out. We were with a lot of other SAS kids so it was cool to get to know some of them better. Russian vodka is really great, I would suggest it to anyone. We stayed out really late, I think we got back around 4 or 4:30 (sorry fam). Some of our friends had stayed out until 7:30 the night before so not bad in comparison.

Russia Day 3:
    We got to get some of our shopping done, I didn't end up getting a ton of stuff. We went to breakfast at this cafe. I got quiche lorraine....it had a lot of fish in it and was covered in caviar so it was definitely not my favorite meal but I was desperate for any form of food. We were all struggling quite a bit, probably just the food because I can't imagine why else we would have not felt well. We went back to the ship by around 3 in the afternoon and watched a movie and tried to catch up on all of our work. I was passed out by a little after ten.

Overall Russia was so cool and the people were a lot different than I had originally expected. Most of the buildings were really brightly colored and it was just so different than anything I had ever seen. There were also about 5000 weddings while we were there. I'm really glad to have gotten the chance to go to St. Petersburg and am getting really excited for Poland and Germany!