Farewell to St. Pete

You will all be pleased to know that I passed my Russian grammer and conversation classes. No big surprise there, but I was pleased at how well I did given how little I studied. Though maybe the breakfast and dinner conversations with my host mom count as "studying." Going to try not to let this get to my head, and remember to study a bit at Virginia next fall...

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Today's my last day in St. Petersburg. Tomorrow night, I take a train to Moscow. I'll arrive somwhere around 9am and be dropped off at my new host family. I'm a bit sad to leave my current family - they've been great. It's going to be hard for the next family to beat 'em (not like it's a competition or anything :))... The second set of classes start on Monday - yeah for a 4 day weekend!

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Gender in Russia: two quite observations. I just visited the Museum of Russian Political History - quite an awesome place - recently restored; lots of great exhibits. (Only "Russian Political History" as this museum defins it includes Stalin to Peristroika. Nothing before; nothing after) But, they offered author's names, in typical russian format: С.Ф. Федовон Fist inital. Middle Initial. Last name. But it entirley hids the gender of the author. And though I feel it might provide a bit of annomitiy. I was kind of interested in knowing the gender of the authors - who was doing to research, who was doing the writing? Because:

In Russia, I've noticed that most jobs are incredibly gendered. All the people who work in museums (except security guards) are women. All people who work at cash registers are women (with the exception of music and book stores, where there are some men). All bus/marshrutki drivers are men (Saw an employment advertisement once for a bus driver "Russian Male between the 25-50y.o.) This has been humoring me for awhile. No deeper thoughts than the (clearly not so deep ones, by definition) that you've already thought of... Just an observation.

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To Moscow!

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C Днем Рожденйя Мама! (and you thought'd I'd forget...)

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to be continued...