May 4th (sorry it's a week late. I thought it was posted and it wasn't)
So, it is Day 21 of our escapade in Russia and waking up for the traditional Russian breakfast never gets old. Timor who is one of the hostel administrators, is the cutest/nicest/funniest old man ever. As usual, he walked around mumbling to himself this morning and making sure all of us ate what we were supposed to, he's the best. After breakfast, we had 9:30 class with Heather, where we reviewed the political history and people of Russia in preparation to go to the Political Science Museum at the other end of St. Petersburg. Once we got to the museum one of our tour guides Mike, walked us through it explaining the Soviet Union history leading up to, and through the Stalin Era. Some of the most interesting things we saw were the propaganda posters, which were printed by both the red and white armies in response to the warfare going on during that time. Mike read a few of his favorites to us, one of which is the first picture posted in this blog. Besides war remnants of the red and white armies like uniforms, pictures, paintings and posters, the museum had rooms that modeled the set-up of communal homes. These homes were built after Stalin's reign in an effort to deStalinize the hardships Russia had previously faced, as instated by Khrushchev (photo 2). The housing situations we saw reminded me of our current living situations. Everything from toilet paper to food had to be labeled to show it was theirs and even then it didn’t mean it would be there when you wanted or needed it. At the end of our tour, we watched a few documentaries before leaving to look in the tiny museum souvenir shop. Some people left on their own after this, including Angela, Jill, Jess, Shannon and I who decided we wanted to take the metro back to the opposite end of Nevskiy in an effort to avoid the mass number of people currently in the city. We got our DK guidebooks out and found the nearest one and walked there only to find out that it was not in use…in fact probably had not been in use for years by the looks of it. So then after reevaluating our situation we hopped on a tram to get to the next nearest metro, which was a ways away. When we got on I had a flashback to the museum we had just gotten out of. This tram looked and smelled like it was from Peter the Great’s era, well okay, maybe not Peter I, because the Railway Museum we went to a few weeks ago says that’s not possible. But, this was at least from Stalin’s reign by the looks of it, although it did somehow manage to get us to the metro station in one piece. Other people left the museum to go shopping behind Spilled Blood and on Nevskiy Prospekt. Everyone had a very successful day, filled with a good combination of education and fun free time.
…So to recap since we've arrived in Russia we have learned how to get ourselves unlost, how to successfully dodge cars while running across at least five lanes of traffic, how NOT to get the Swine Flu, and how to get hair cuts apparently (ask Ryan about his Russian salon experience :/)
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