First week of School!

Wednesday - second real day of class.  Class is kind of annoying right now because I started with the beginning group with kids who had never taken Russian before.  Hopefully I can move up to the next group, the problem is that I haven't taken Russian in two years and my grammar is a little rusty! Regardless, I'll be in Russia for a year and I'm sure I'll learn a lot.  It's just frustrating right now because the kids in my group are just now learning the alphabet.  I thought I was gonna get put in an international group and just take Russian language classes, but that didn't work out.  So I guess I'm gonna have to stay where I am with the area studies program.  I'm sure things are gonna change in the next week, at least hopefully!  

My babushka (means grandmother, but its what I call my host mother) is really nice and sweet.  She cooks really well, which is important! She has a husband i think, but it has only been there one night so far so I'm not really sure what's up with that! She also has a daughter and a granddaughter who lives in Moscow, but for some reason they are somewhere in Africa right now, for vacation I guess.  Nevertheless, they are coming to visit us sometime in September.  It's really hard to understand my babushka, but its getting better by the day.  She usually has repeat things about five times before I understand the gist of what she's trying to say.  Her husband, my dadushka, seemed like a cool guy.  The one night he was home we drank beer and watched the St. Petersburg football team beat Manchester United.  It was a lot of fun! He is a HUGE fan! He was going crazy every time they almost scored, it was interesting!  

Technically we are still in our orientation for the program, but class has already started so we're starting to get in a groove.  So far I just get up around 7:00 and walk down the street to catch the number 46 bus to campus.  Traffic is crazy in the mornings, it takes around 30-45 min. on the bus to get to campus.  It's always a fun trip though, you never know what's gonna happen on the way.  The past two days after school we just walked around and explored the city.  It's a big city and we are finding new and interesting places to hang out each time we go out. It's cool because most of the other students in our group are really cool people.  

There will be much more later.