Saturday, May 07, 2011
I’M ALIVE!!! Passport control went smoothly and my bag was waiting for me. I walked through customs and immediately saw my name on a waiting driver’s sign. Though I had a brief moment of panic when I didn’t see Sarah, the driver indicated that she was in the car already. Apparently he didn’t speak a word of English, but after a brief check by the police, we were off to the dorms and I was feeling much safer (especially when I noticed the driver had a cross and some pictures of Jesus hanging off the mirror). This wasn’t as scary after all…heck, I even saw people running!
The driver pulled up to a gate around our dorm, and after talking to someone inside a guard house, gave us some official looking papers and showed us how to get through the gate. That’s when we realized he was not following us. Suddenly a guard swooped in on us, demanding to know who we were and why we were there, and though he glanced at our papers, I truly believe it was our repeated Ya ne ponyimayu’s that eventually got him exasperated (perhaps even slightly amused) enough to let us through. He pointed to a building and said something about how he didn’t know what to do with us, so off we went, in search of…something…
Sarah noticed that the papers we had received assigned us to dorm 10, but where was dorm 10?! In our search, I did get to try out my new Oxford Russian-English dictionary! And the first word was…Laundry…which was not at all helpful in finding dorm 10. We also noticed a sign proudly announcing that the dorms were 45 years old…now that’s an accomplishment. After wandering around for an uncomfortably long time, pathetically dragging our luggage behind us like homeless victims of some disaster, we eventually managed to get to the dorm and gave our papers to a lady behind a counter. Following some confusion due to the language barrier, she led us to her office where we had a textbook conversation: Introductions and nice-to-meet-you’s all around. She then showed us a room and the bathroom…welcome to Russia!
So, after literally being abandoned in Russia, Sarah and I have managed to hole ourselves up in our room. We have no internet, no money, and no fob/IDs, so we cannot even leave our corner of the hall, let alone buy food. We also have no bottled water (foreigners can’t drink St. Petersburg water) and…SURPRISE… toilet paper is not provided. Thankfully, we are in the same room and I have enough M&Ms and nut bars to stave off starvation. Plus, we will be eating my muffin from Boston for breakfast. I also foresaw the uncertainty of this whole situation and made a point to fill up a water bottle in London. Thus, we also have half a bottle of water. All we have to do now is wait for our rescue (i.e. orientation). We meet a Volodya at around 11:30 tomorrow, in the ‘lobby.’ I really hope he speaks English because no one has been able to communicate with us, save some girl who simply told us it must be difficult not knowing Russian.
It’s 18:50 (6:50pm) here and Sarah’s asleep. I guess I’ll just sleep until morning, or until I dream up what to use as toilet paper…This might be more difficult than I thought….
I’M ALIVE!!! Passport control went smoothly and my bag was waiting for me. I walked through customs and immediately saw my name on a waiting driver’s sign. Though I had a brief moment of panic when I didn’t see Sarah, the driver indicated that she was in the car already. Apparently he didn’t speak a word of English, but after a brief check by the police, we were off to the dorms and I was feeling much safer (especially when I noticed the driver had a cross and some pictures of Jesus hanging off the mirror). This wasn’t as scary after all…heck, I even saw people running!
The driver pulled up to a gate around our dorm, and after talking to someone inside a guard house, gave us some official looking papers and showed us how to get through the gate. That’s when we realized he was not following us. Suddenly a guard swooped in on us, demanding to know who we were and why we were there, and though he glanced at our papers, I truly believe it was our repeated Ya ne ponyimayu’s that eventually got him exasperated (perhaps even slightly amused) enough to let us through. He pointed to a building and said something about how he didn’t know what to do with us, so off we went, in search of…something…
Sarah noticed that the papers we had received assigned us to dorm 10, but where was dorm 10?! In our search, I did get to try out my new Oxford Russian-English dictionary! And the first word was…Laundry…which was not at all helpful in finding dorm 10. We also noticed a sign proudly announcing that the dorms were 45 years old…now that’s an accomplishment. After wandering around for an uncomfortably long time, pathetically dragging our luggage behind us like homeless victims of some disaster, we eventually managed to get to the dorm and gave our papers to a lady behind a counter. Following some confusion due to the language barrier, she led us to her office where we had a textbook conversation: Introductions and nice-to-meet-you’s all around. She then showed us a room and the bathroom…welcome to Russia!
So, after literally being abandoned in Russia, Sarah and I have managed to hole ourselves up in our room. We have no internet, no money, and no fob/IDs, so we cannot even leave our corner of the hall, let alone buy food. We also have no bottled water (foreigners can’t drink St. Petersburg water) and…SURPRISE… toilet paper is not provided. Thankfully, we are in the same room and I have enough M&Ms and nut bars to stave off starvation. Plus, we will be eating my muffin from Boston for breakfast. I also foresaw the uncertainty of this whole situation and made a point to fill up a water bottle in London. Thus, we also have half a bottle of water. All we have to do now is wait for our rescue (i.e. orientation). We meet a Volodya at around 11:30 tomorrow, in the ‘lobby.’ I really hope he speaks English because no one has been able to communicate with us, save some girl who simply told us it must be difficult not knowing Russian.
It’s 18:50 (6:50pm) here and Sarah’s asleep. I guess I’ll just sleep until morning, or until I dream up what to use as toilet paper…This might be more difficult than I thought….
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