what is "things i normally do for myself but have not done since i showed up"
i would not make a good celebrity/rich person. it kinda bothers me when people wait on me. i'd rather carry my own bag and open my own doors. but i don't want to be a jerk about it. "no, you can't carry my bag!" at the hotel, they have bus boys and the concierge to take care of any needs you might have. nuts to that.
gripe, gripe, gripe......you're in freaking russia and you let good service drag you down. i know, i know. i just wanted to get it off my chest.
anywho, we took the st. petersburg metro to the st. petersburg electrotechnical institute today. the metro is raw as hell....and efficient! It's super underground, reminiscent of the DC metro in that your ride the escalator for like 5 hours before to make it to the bottom. And the platform was instense! The trains came every 3 minutes - exactly. There was even a clock that counted down the arrival of the next train to the second.
Septa patron #1: "i'm tryin' to hit this train. you tryin' to hit this train?"
Septa patron #2: "uh-huhhhh"
Septa patron #1: "come yet?"
Septa patron #2: "uh-aaaahh"
Septa patron #1: "cause i'm tryin' to stand in front of the door when it opens so everyone else can't get off. then me and my 4 6-10 year old children are all going to take up half the car and ride to the next stop 2 blocks away, you know?"
Septa patron #2: "uh-hmmm"
[ 16 minutes later ]
Septa patron #1: "girl, i ain't tryin' to not catch this train"
Septa patron #2: "word........"
there were literally a thousand people in the station. and, the trains were loaded. but, the most amazing thing ever happen. all 5 million people waiting on the platform parted as the new train arrived and allowed everyone to stream out of the train before packing in. I mean packing. The next time the door opened i almost got carried out of the train by the flood of people flowing past me. and on the escalator, everyone not actively walking up the escalator stood against the right side so people could past on the left if necessary. that's awesome! It was about 10 minutes total from the time we walked into the station till the time we walked out at the destination like 3 miles away. simply amazing.
we met the professor at LETI who arranged our visit who was quite nice and very excited to be with us. the school was not in the best shape. after talking with the professor for a while, it became quite apparent that the school was in a desperate financial state. we talked with him for a while and went over what we were going to do tomorrow. afterwards we went to the Popov museum on LETI's campus. Alexander Stepanovich Popov was a professor at this university around the turn of the 20th century and he basically invented the wireless communication via radio waves. We then took lunch, and I assumed our business at the school had completed for the day. but, instead of being turned loose on the streets of Leningrad we were taken to see the vice-rector. i'm still not entirely sure what a vice-rector is but he had a nice office and his own secretary (which is considerably more than i had seen previously on campus). and, because i had assumed at the onset of the day that we were only going for an informal meeting and then touring around, i wore comfortable clothes, which happen to be my default attire consisting of:
sneakers + swat shirt + hoodie = classy
so what if all the other 6 people at the meeting had suits and business cards? so what if they took pictures to commemorate our visit?
afterwards, we went with our super nice and super cute student guide, Milana, to two cathedrals which were epic on a bad day. and, as we were walking around to them we got to see lots of the city. there are canals and bridges all over the place, and the canals have ducks! i'm pretty sure i would like the schuylkill a lot more if it had ducks in it.
once we returned to the hotel, the concierge made reservations for us at a restaurant around the corner. it was probably the classiest place i have ever ate. The average plate was about 1400-1500 rubles (which translates to about $60). i ordered orange juice and they squeezed it fresh. the menu came in russian and english. i still didn't know any of the words on it. so, i randomly picked one of the dishes under the label - pasta. it was pretty good, and i never did find out what it was.
and, so ends the first! full day in leningrad. presentation tomorrow. maybe i'll remember a tie this time............doubtful.
stats and such:
time:
23.11.2007
St. Petersburg - 2310 GMT+03
Frankfurt - 2110 GMT+01
Philadelphia - 1510 GMT-05
start time - 1430 GMT-05 21.11.2007 (i just realized that i f'd up the start time in the first two, my bad)
time elapsed - 48h 40m
# of hours spent sleeping - 6h (out of 48h) (out of 52h if you count what time i got up on wednesday)
# of hours spent playing ds - 10h (in soviet russia, ds plays you!)
# of hot girls i've seen - 108 (we were on a college campus. about 60% that i saw were hot. but, drexel is hanging in there strong with -4%.)
Current Song:
let's play a game. guess the last place in the world you except to hear the song "kiss kiss" by chris brown and t-pain. if you said "the teacher's lounge at the St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University", you were wrong. i also most feel out of my chair laughing when i heard this come on during lunch today.
points - the world:
raining instead of snowing because the temperature is 2 degrees celius = 1
points - ryan:
talking with Milana about the music scene in russia = 1
wearing a swat shirt and hoodie to a meeting with the vice-rector of LETI and a candlelit dinner with Moshe = 1 (for being hardcore)
score:
the world - 4
ryan - 4
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