Merry Christmas!

I am here safe in London with my family, enjoying a wonderful and blessed Christmas.

I wanted to share with you all some photos:

1.A sunset near my house that I thought was cool but kind of apocalyptic
2.My host sister Polina and her mother
3.Some of the little kids at Dom Miloserdia and I at our St. Nicholas Day Party that I arranged

Getting close to the end!

I can't believe almost the whole semester has passed.

Now I need to study for exams - I have one in every class - and start packing! I have an orchestra concert tomorrow and then all sorts of activities. I'll try to post more pictures soon!

I hope to see all of you when I go home to TX.

Working at Dom Miloserdia

I feel really grateful for the experience to help out at Dom Miloserdia, the "institutionalized foster care" for children who have been taken away from their families due to alcoholism or other bad situations. There are about 50 girls and boys that live there, ranging from age three to age eighteen.

Usually I help the kids with their homework, which I feel odd doing because it is all in Russian and the little nine year olds know Russian better than I do. Sometimes I help the older kids with their English homework.

Two weeks ago, right as soon as I arrived, one of the little girls, Marina, came right up to me and immediately announced that Yulia, this little 7 year old girl that latched on to me especially and wouldn't let me leave and always begged me to come back the next day, "went to the ORPHANAGE because her mom didn't want her any more."

Then Marina started to really latch on to me that day. Also, Marina definitely looks like she could be an Israel. She has the Israel dirty-brown hair, is small for her age, and has brown eyes. I also always thought that Marina seemed to be more mentally stable than the other children, some of whom are clearly psychologically disturbed, but Marina never seemed that way. But one day she pulled up her sleeves and I saw scars that could only be scars of abuse on her arms and I was really sad, because she seems psychologically normal, and looks like she could be my sister! I will have to take pictures of all of the kids and bring them in sometime.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the children who come to Dom Miloserdia in the first place end up in the orphanage, but all of the children are convinced that any day now they are going to get to go back home to their moms. And their parents are allowed to visit once a week, but most of the time the parents don't show up but the children nevertheless wait and wait around for them and then make excuses for their parents.

Last summer I babysat for these three little girls in Irving, and one of their favorite games was playing doctor, and by far the favorite game for the kids at Dom Miloserdia is playing doctor. Well, actually, there are so many of them that they play "hospital." And when you are playing "hostpital," each one of the patients needs a mother to pat their heads and help them recover. And of course there are the doctors, and they usually just go around giving lots of shots and telling their patients how long they have to live. I, naturally, get asked to be the "mother" to the little kids, but every so often I am the doctor and have to perform surgeries. What is also interesting is that the play set of medical instruments is exactly the same set that I played with with the girls in Irving!

Unfortunately, only three students on our program have been interested in volunteering there, which I think is a real shame, because not is it an excellent opportunity to serve, but the children get so excited and feel important that Americans are visiting them, and I get more language practice spending 30 minutes with them than in my 90 minute lectures at St. Petersburg State University. But, the three of us are putting together a "toys for tots" program for the kids there. We are trying to involve all of the foreign students studying at St. Petersburg State University.

Weather in Petersburg

This winter in St. Petersburg has been ridiculously warm. I mean ridiculously. But I really can't complain though....I am just feeling the global warming and am worried about our planet....

It has been in the late thirties early forties for days.

On Friday I checked the weather in Irving, and it was 12 degrees warmer in St. Petersburg than it was in Irving, Texas!! It is also warmer here in Petersburg right now - Monday afternoon - than it is in Irving.

So, I have not frozen at ALL. And I really haven't seen very much snow either. The hill across from my apartment building is apparently where children go sledding in the winter, and I would really like to go sledding, but there is no snow!

I'm sure I will get my fair share of cold weather next semester though...

Dream of A ridiculous Man

Last Friday night I saw the best play that I have ever seen in my entire life.

It was a special production of Dostoevsky's short story "Dream of a Ridiculous Man," and it didn't take place in a theater.

Two of my friends and I met with the other audience members and the director of the theater at this big building (that was actually a production studio), and then the theater director - a 70 year old babushka who was actually dressed like a gangster with a huge Tommy Hilfiger jacket and black pleather pants - walked us a few blocks to the apartment where the play was staged, in an old St. Petersburg apartment that the theater uses just to show this one play. We walked up the narrow staircase to the fifth floor, where we were greeted by one of the actresses who stayed in character the whole time.

The night was also just like the night in the Dostoevsky story - cold, damp, drizzling, not many people on the streets...it was just perfect...

Stepping into the apartment was stepping into the world of Dostoevsky. There was no electricity - only candles - and all of the things in the apartment were genuine artifacts from the 19th century. The 15 audience members sat down in old rickety chairs along the three walls of the room, and then waited in silence for the play to start. It was essentially a monologue, and it was the best acting I have ever seen. When I showed my host mother the programme afterwards she knew exactly who the actor was and was shocked the I was able to get a ticket to see him because he is that fantastic and well known.

The show lasted about an hour and a half. It was a flawless performance. The main character sometimes got really close to the audience members and looked them straight in the eye. At the beginning of the play, we were expecting for him to walk into the room and start, but he emerged from a large old trunk that was sitting in the corner of the room and just started right off with Dostoevsky's words.

Of course, it was all in Russian, but I had read the English text that day and had little problems understanding it.

After the play, the same actress that sometimes emerged as the landlady of the ridiculous man, still in character - ushered us out of the apartment and then my friends and I walked back to the metro station through the streets of old St. Petersburg, raving about the experience. It was really more of an experience than a play. We were thinking about we could get more students in our program to go see one of those performances. Because we also have the phone number of the director of the theater, and if we get 15 people together we could have a special performance just for us.

But, of course, many of the students didn't go because of the price of the tickets, but actually it was only $16 and I would pay $60 at least to see it again, especially because the Russian "Patrick Stewart" was the actor. I also think students were worried that they would not understand it because it is Dostoevsky and all in Russian...