The weekend

My weekend got off to a good start, came to a screeching halt Friday night, and then picked up again. I went to a blues bar with some people from the Center friday night. It was surprisingly good. They played all American songs, even threw in a little Alicia Keys. Then we went to another bar and mingled with some Russians, but they wanted to practice their English, which I can't say I really opposed...But then, I got back around 2am to my apartment (disclaimer: that's not actually that late here, since its daylight all the time people stay up all the time). And try to sneak quietly to my room. Nope, my host comes in to yell at me! When I left the power had been off at the apartment for 3 hours, and apparently I left my lights "on" even though they weren't on when I left, they came on when the power came back on, you get me? Anyway, instead of being a little accident, this was the biggest problem in ALL of history. Magdelena was to say the least. I was very unhappy with her reaction and had it all planned out in my mind how I would go to the school and demand to be switched to a nicer lady.

However, in the morning, I get up still in a bad mood and go into breakfast. Magdelena pulls out her English/Russian dictionary (who knew she had this the whole time?) and tells me "not to take offense" at last night (clearly she has to show me this verb in said dictionary). Ha! And then she said my Russian is so much better and made me snacks in the afternoon and soup for dinner! Maybe she's chemically unstable?? Anyway, I'll try to remember in the future to not "take offense" when she's being rude. We'll see. I guess I just don't have thick Russian skin.

So Saturday, I had planned to go to the Peter and Paul Fortress, but I was slow getting ready after my run and lunch, etc. that I didn't have much time. So instead I went to the Museum of the Defense of Leningrad - about the 900 day siege during WWII (called the "Blockade" to Russians), when about (depending on who you ask) 600,000-1 million people died. The museum was pretty small, but really interesting. A docent woman talked to me when I got there in a very weird mix of Russian/English, but then I roamed around on my own - there were placards in English. They had a lot of cool propaganda posters, in which the Nazis looked remarkably like these guys:
It was a good museum though and did a good job of mixing the military goings-on with the tragedy of life of the average folk in Leningrad. I did notice one thing a bit off: A lot of historians fault Stalin for not being prepared to the war even though he knew it was coming. Same with the siege of Leningrad. Hilter was not quiet about wanting to take the city, but Stalin did not start to prepare the city until just a few days before the Nazis were almost there! There was one placard that pretty well glossed over that whole fact and just said "they weren't that prepared...." Some historians add the deaths during the Siege to Stalin's tally, making him a much worse guy than Hilter in final count.
On a lighter note.... after the museum, I went to this market area where they sell all kinds of crafts and souvenirs to check things out. I now know what I'm going to get everyone. Matryoshka dolls. But not matryoshka dolls like you'd think.
One like this:
Or this:Don't worry. I will customize based on personal preference.
For instance, Brian is getting one of Osama Bin Laden that says "Wanted: Dead or Alive." Classy.

Harry Potter count: 3 (also can we talk about how Harry, Ron, and Hermione have the wrong colors on! Freaking Amateurs!)

I didn't really take many pictures this weekend, but here's one of the Fontanka (a river that runs through the city)

Also - my friend and former roommate Lauren, from DC, (also Tom's girlfriend) arrived last night to visit for a week! Yay!