Alvaro's Blog

Today I woke up around 7am as usual. I showered and had breakfast as usual. I went down to the bus stop and almost got into the wrong bus. I forgot I had to go straight to work, and I was getting on the one to school.

I arrived to work around 8:40am, and since work starts at 9am, I had some time to relax.
I worked until 1pm (With 10 minute breaks every hour) and went to lunch with some friends. We got back around 2:30pm to start work again. I didn’t find anything very interesting today, most of the time I spent cleaning for pictures. During the last few hours, when I got to dig, I found several animal jaws, with the teeth still in them, and other cool animal bones. We also dug many pieces of ceramic pots, but those are very common.

Now I’m back home and I am exhausted, time to rest!

Today I went to school and took my final exam. I’m not sure how I did, but I don’t think it was bad.
After class I went to work and arrived around 12pm. I worked for an hour and then had the lunch break. I went with some of my Russian co-workers to some underground cafeteria in a government building. I don’t know how they found it, but the food is good and not expensive. After lunch, we went back to work.

Around 6pm we got out of work. I headed to a restaurant where we had the dinner with all the people that came to study here. Most of them are leaving on Friday. I had some stuffed chicken (At least that’s what I think it was.) and other good stuff. We finished around 9:30pm I believe.

When I got home, I was invited to eat some apple pie and something else. The apple pie looked like a pizza from far away, I learned it was a big mistake to actually say what I saw. I hope I didn’t offend my sister too bad…

I later found out that the ladies from Sweden spoke English very well and one of them a little Spanish. We spent a few hours learning Swedish/Spanish/Russian and figuring out what we were all saying, it was a lot of fun. I ended up going to bed around 12am, which wasn’t too bad.

This morning I was faced with the same problem as before, I wanted a 21 ruble water bottle but only had a 500 bill. Instead of making the lady have to go get tons of change, I bought a bottle of vodka and a water bottle so that I would get less change. I wanted to get some Russian vodka to take home as a gift, so it really was not a waste of money, not to mention it is very cheap here.

After school today I went to the same restaurant from yesterday. This time I had two things that seemed a lot like empanadas. One filled with cheese and the other with meat, they were delicious. I also had a margarita for no reason at all and it was very good. My friend had some macaroni and cheese, which I thought was pretty funny.

When I got to the dig, I had to look for the supervisor so he could assign some location to me, and I also had to ask me to put me with Russian students. There is an American student from my program that is also working there, and they wanted to put us together, so I told them that we want to learn Russian and they split us up. I met more people from the Moscow group, they were very nice and talkative, so I got to practice a lot.

Also, two of my host sister’s friends from Sweeden are here, which is pretty cool, except that I don’t undertstand a thing they say…

Tomorrow I have a final exam, so I guess I should be studying…

After Russian class today, I headed straight to work. I got there around 12:45pm so they told me to come back at 2:30pm. There is an hour and a half break at 1pm, so it was pointless to start working then. I walked around the kremlin and then decided to get some food at a small restaurant near the dig. I was there for a while and around 2:15pm, I headed back to work.

When I got there, I saw a large group of people arrive, one of the supervisors said they were a group of students from Moscow. We didn’t start working right away because they had to explain what to do to the new people, so they told me to start working alone. After a few minutes a guy and a girl from the group walked over and introduced themselves in English. I introduced myself in Russian, and they said they understood English just fine. I explained that the only reason I’m there is to learn the language, so after that we only used English when I didn’t know how to say something or when the supervisors spoke very fast. Unfortunately, I forgot their names, I guess I can ask them again tomorrow. They will be here for two weeks, so hopefully I’ll meet some more.

I worked until about 6:15pm and headed home. I was given an insane amount of food for dinner, which I initially refused, but later came to an agreement and ate it. My host family always gives me too much to eat, always more than they eat themselves, and since I don’t like being rude, I eat it, but enough is enough. I hope they understand that I don’t want to eat massive amounts of food, and if they don’t, I guess I’ll have to stop eating it.

Yesterday I forgot to take my allergy suppressing medicine (Claritin) and, as expected, I woke up around 6:15am sneezing and with an itchy nose. I have really bad dust allergies, and just sitting in my room, I can see the particles float around. It’s very dusty, but when I take claritin, I can manage.

After showering, I stayed in my room for an hour or two so I wouldn’t wake the family up. Around 9, we had breakfast. After breakfast I went to my room and took out my map of the city. I found some streets that looked interesting and planned a small walk to get there. I left the house around 10am. The streets were pretty empty, but as I got further away I started seeing more people. I walked into a movie theater and saw the posters of the movies they are playing. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place because I only saw two Harry Potter posters and another one advertising some sort of zombie-horror film in 3D, which should be interesting.
I kept walking, saw several stores, walked in to all the open markets I could find. Some of the fruit stands have things I have never seen before, but not a single one of them has mango. For some reason I decided to look for mangoes everywhere, I guess I was bored. I still haven’t asked any of the fruit vendors if they know where to get them, I might try that next week. I later managed to go to some interesting neighborhoods, the kind that makes me feel uneasy to walk through. I ran into a train station and decided to go the other way. I got back to the main street I was on before and went into a pharmacy to buy some latex gloves for work.
I forgot how to say gloves in Russian, so tried describing them to the sales lady. After I realized it was pointless, I took out the ones I used last week, they were full of dirt and ripped, she laughed. I then decided to head home, while looking for mangoes in other markets of course… I ended up buying some marshmallow-like things that looked good, but only after a few minutes of misunderstanding with the salesperson. She put them on the scale and pointed at the price, it said 2.55 p., So I took out a few coins to pay her. She said no and repeated the price. I heard twenty something this time, but the price on the scale said 2.55 p., so I tried to explain to the lady. She ended up writing down the number manually, apparently the decimal point was wrong on the machine, but how was I supposed to know?

I got back around 11:30am. I read another chapter of my Russian history book, went on the computer for a little, and later took about an hour long nap. After I woke up, we had some stuffed peppers for lunch (I would have never guessed that they taste good!) and some other things. Next I went to another store to buy sunblock for work. You may think that the sun is not strong here, but after seeing that my feet have lines because of the sunburn and my sandals, I decided to take care. I’m going to be working from 9-6 in the sun every day, I hate when my skin peels. I also bought another movie, and this time I did get the real, not pirated version. I asked to see it, but the sales lady took out another one that was half the price, and told me I should get that one. I tried to explain I want the legitimate version, but I have no idea how to say that, so I just kept saying I wanted the other one until she understood.

I think I have test tomorrow, but I’m not quite sure what it is on. I’m going to check my notebook to see if I wrote it down somewhere. So that’s it for today.

Today (Saturday) was a very interesting day. I woke up about 10 times from 6am to 9am, when I finally decided to get out of bed. I showered and had breakfast with the family. After that, I went on the computer for a little and read some emails. Around 11am I left and got on a bus to go to work.

Since someone asked me how long it takes me to get to work, I timed myself each step of the way. I waited for the bus for about 15 minutes. I arrived to the final stop in another 15 and walked the rest of the way. The bus timings may not be accurate because it is Saturday, but the walking should not change a lot from day to day. I walked at a fast pace and it took me almost 20 minutes to get to the dig.

Now to the interesting stuff…
When I got there, I saw the people I met yesterday working and said hi. I then went to the supervisor and asked him where I could work for the day. He told me to work with a girl that was working alone. As soon as I sat down to work, we were given a 10 minute break. The people from yesterday came over to talk, and so did a few others. As usual, they interrogated me about many things, where I’m from, why am I in Russia, why I work at the archaeological dig, what do Americans think of Russians, do I like the pyramids in Mexico, do I like Russia, and many more… I love when this happens because I get to practice my Russian and meet people while doing it. During the next two breaks, I met more people and had more [very] short conversations. I learned that most of that group is from a big city [whose name I didn't get] near the Ural mountains. This was their last day of work and they are all heading back home tomorrow. I hope the next set of people I meet are just as nice.

Once we finished, they did all sorts of strange things. Since it was the last day, they carried out some archaeological dig traditions. They all covered their eyes with shirts and other things and held hands. Some of the local people guided them through a small path with lots of plants, trees, and rocks. In the end they arrived back to the dig, where they had hidden some sort of chocolates [with wrappers] in some dirt boxes, so they dug them up and ate them. Then they gave everyone apples and proceeded to sing the archeologist’s hymn. The only reason I know what they were singing is because I saw a piece of paper that said “archeologist’s hymn” (in Russian of course) while they were singing. They also did some sort of pledge that they were now Novgorodian archaeologists and received some pretty cool antique nails to take with them. After that we all headed home.

I didn’t time my trip back home, but I think it took longer because that bus took forever to arrive. When I got home, I read a chapter of a book I have and later had lunch. Since I was a little bored, I decided to go take a walk, so I what I thought to be a small shopping center near where I live. Being my curious self, I went up stairs, into strange hallways, and got myself semi-lost. Apparently there are four floors in a building I thought was not part of the shopping place. I also found a small market under everything else. They sell fruits, fish, meat, clothes, cheese, and many other things.

I forgot to write about the title! The reason I chose that title is because over the last two days, I have seen many newlyweds. Yesterday I was walking around the kremlin and saw several brides taking pictures near some of the monuments. Later I saw two groups of cars all nice and decorated with flowers and balloons. The first or second car had the newlyweds (one was a limousine) and then there were about ten more cars behind them. Whenever I saw them drive by, everyone was honking their horns. Today I saw a few more, I heard them coming from far away.

So that’s it for today, I wonder what I will do tomorrow…

This morning, the sky was cloudy and the forecast said there was going to be rain throughout the day. I put on my jacket and went to school. After two hours or so, I looked out the window and the sky was blue and the sun was out. After Russian class, we went to some stores looking for a flag or something and later went to a museum with a lot of golden artifacts. They were mostly church related, like gold covered bibles, crosses, and other similar things.

When we finished walking through the museum, I headed to work, since the weather was so nice. Apparently I arrived in the middle of a break, because the site was empty, except for three people. I asked one of them if there was work today and he said yes, so I waited until everyone else arrived. After some of the supervisors arrived, one told me to go talk to another one and ask him what I could do. So I went and he told me to work with some other guy that was standing there. Unfortunately, this other guy doesn’t seem to enjoy talking, so we just worked quietly. We found many bones, pieces of ceramic, and other interesting things, much more than last time I worked. In one of the 10 minute breaks we get every hour, some people came over to ask me questions, so I was very happy. They first asked me if I spoke Russian, so I said I speak a little. They knew some English as well, so it was fairly easy to communicate. Unfortunately, this was their last day of work and they are all going back to their home towns next week, just my luck. Hopefully next week I will meet more people. Actually, one of them said that they might work tomorrow, and since I don’t ever do anything on Saturday, I think I will go and see who is there.

So this morning I woke up and headed to the kitchen to heat up some water for my shower.
Once I had it, I headed to the bathroom to shower. Being strange as I am, I decided to open the hot water just to see what happened. Cold water started to come out, but it wasn’t quite as cold as the cold water, so I decided to use that. I started with my hair, and after a few seconds, the water didn’t seem too cold, so I opened it all the way. A few seconds later hot water was burning me, but I was so happy, I didn’t really care.
I think they had just turned it on because the hot water pipe, which is out in the open and usually very hot, was cold when I touched it before.

Anyway… The rest of my day was not quite as exiting (if you consider the hot water to be). My history teacher had to go to St. Peterburg so I went home right after Russian class, and since it was raining, no work again today.

I hope again and again that it doesn’t rain tomorrow. If I go to work, I get to meet new people and practice my Russian, if I don’t, I get to sit here at home for most of the day.

Today was pretty uneventful. We still have no hot water, but this time, I got a small bucket with hot water from the kitchen in order to shower. I shaved and showered without suffering too much. After that, I had breakfast and went to school.

During class, it was raining outside, which pretty much meant no work for the day. After history class, I got on the bus and headed home. When I arrived, I had to explain to the grandmother why I didn’t go to work. I don’t think she quite understood because she had an unhappy/disappointed look on her face. How do I explain that if it rains, the earth is moist, and therefore they don’t do archaeological digging? I had lunch, did some homework, programmed a little, and then felt a need to go out. I went to the movie place and bought two DVDs. They were only about $4 each and this time, I made sure they were legit, unlike the last ones I got.

During dinner I drank a shot of vodka with my host dad and now I’m here. The interesting thing is that it happened after the discussion about me not liking beer and other alcoholic beverages. It was a funny series of events that led there. It wasn’t too bad, I have had worse, this one didn’t burn my throat. Now I still have nothing to do, so I think I’m going to sleep early today. I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow so I can work…

So today I woke up as usual and headed to the shower. When I opened the hot water, nothing came out, and I heard this very strange noise coming from the shower head. I thought for a few seconds and then decided to shower anyway. I still don’t know if that was a good idea. The cold water here is extremely cold! After a few minutes, I was done showering, but I was also trembling like crazy. I then decided not to shave with cold water; maybe later I’ll heat some on the stove and use that. I later found out that we will not be getting any hot water for three days, oh well… (In this building the hot water is supplied everyone. People don’t have their own heater in each apartment.)

I went to school, then to an art museum, the St. Sofia cathedral, and finally took a boat ride along the river. I saw some pretty cool churches and monasteries, an unfinished bridge from the 1910′s, and other interesting things. Once we got back, we went to a restaurant to have dinner because one guy from the group is leaving early. I had some very good food there. I’m not sure what it was, the dish was called “Pink Flamingo” and didn’t exactly say what the meat was. I doubt it was flamingo, but they did have some ostrich like pictures on a brochure on the table, which was sort of weird.

Now I’m going to go to sleep…