there is soooo much to say and i haven't been keeping up with this! let me see if i can say it all as briefly as possible. first of all, i am writing from the hermitage museum in saint petersburg, a museum to rival the louvre. we've been here for many hours- the perfect rainy day activity- and every day has been rainy and cool (but last night, when the clouds cleared for a spell, it felt distinctly autumnish, oh joy). yesterdy we saw peterhof palace (this is where one finds all those golden fountains you always see in pictures of st. P) and the day before that we saw the church of the saviour of the spilled blood (st petersburg's one moscow style onion-domed cathedral, covered floor to ceiling inside with splendid mosaics) and we've probably spent as much time or more riding or getting lost on public transportation, trying to decipher cyrillic, ordering completely the wrong food (feeling like big bird lost in tokyo), and dealing with the general headache of being a foreigner in russia. it is incredibly, amazingly beautiful here, however, and i am loving it.
we are couchsurfing with a girl our age named maria (masha) who is a celltologist and her mom tamara who speaks no english in their small, old soviet flat in a little suburb about forty minutes outside st petersburg by mashrutka (minibus with a fixed route but without fixed stops, so that you can exit wherever you'd like). all the pipes in the area are dug up fro reconstruction, so the neighborhood looks like one big excavation site. needless to say, there is no hot water, but there is always a pot on the stove waiting to be turned into tea or mixed with cold water for a bucket bath. they give us their sofa, and soup and bread and pickles and tea, and in the morning muesli and yogurt, and they give us so much more than that...a real sweet pair they are. last night we all watched jesus christ superstar together, after they welcomed us with open arms of thankfulness when we finally arrived home later that we had planned. this is why couchsurfing is the best thing on earth.
ok, sorry this post sucks. i hope to be able to write more ( and better) later!