Muse back!
July 17, 2008 / Thursday
Good News, I Haven't Fallen Into A Hole In The Ground Yet!
Day three of my stay here in St. Petersburg. I'm learning a lot about the city. First, let me address a few things I read about the city before I arrived. I mentioned them in my Mt. Whitney post.
Tap water - My first day here, I boiled the water before drinking it. They have handy little super fast electric boiler teapot things, which made it super easy. Even so, water at the apartment tastes kind of funny. Aaron was right; you can't fix the taste with heat. I've been drinking bottled water ever since. I did ask my boss if the water was drinkable here, and she said, "Sure, I've been drinking it." Then, after a pause, she said, "But I drank the tap water in Egypt, too." Brave woman.
Mosquitoes - It's not anywhere near bad enough to need 98% DEET, but I definitely have a small army of mosquitoes at the apartment. I caught a few of the stupid ones when I first arrived, but the rest are smart and stealthy. I'd hoped that I could deny them food and they'd die off, but I'm losing the battle and they're feasting on me at night. I think they're ganging up on me. Last night, I spent half an hour smacking at a buzzing sound near my head (this involves smacking my head, which all the other stealthy mosquitoes are probably watching and laughing at), and when I got up I found three adjacent mosquito bites on my hip. Wasn't that under the blanket? I am confused. In any case, I also have a bump on my nose today that looks like a pimple but doesn't behave like one. I suspect it's a mosquito bite. Score another one for them.
[ Update: I just noticed I have two bites on my stomach and four on my back. How did it get under the blanket? I am totally confused. Mosquito bite count now at 11: 1 on each arm, 3 on my hip, 2 front, 4 back. Phoo. ]
[ Update to update: Survived Thursday night without any new bites. I spent my time on the computer out in the living room, then went into the bedroom and shut the door. I hope that'll do the trick. ]
[ Update to update to update: I spoke too soon. They got me on my hands Thursday night. One left, one right. Phoo. ]
Random uncovered holes in the ground - I've been looking, but still haven't found any holes to fall into, and it's not for a lack of walking. I did come across a weird little cover thing that had a one inch wide hole (for drainage?), but it was pretty obvious that I wasn't going to fall through it into the depths of the city. Sorry, people who asked for pictures from above and below.
[ Update: I found some non-random uncovered holes in the ground a few days later. ]
Another thing I'd read about (but didn't mention here previously) was that the city goes through month-long spells of no hot water (it's municipally controlled). The good news for me is my apartment has its own hot water heater next to the bathtub. It's a little hard to control, but better than nothing. As for the hot water shutdown, it's true, although it's by neighborhood, not the entire city. One of the folks at the office said they just lost theirs this week. If they're lucky, it'll be back in three weeks. If not, they'll have to wait two months.
One thing I hadn't read about is the fact that deodorant use is not as prevalent here as it is back home. My temporary office is the large conference room, and today they needed it for a seminar. I hung around during the seminar, and was soon feeling ill from the smell of body odor. No one else seemed bothered. I guess they're used to it.
Finally, I'm making progress on reading Cyrillic. It has a lot more letters than we have in English, and the letters that look like English letters often map to a different English letter. Confusing? Yes. But I started with some easy words (СТОП - STOP, КАФЕ - CAFE), recognized those letters, and used those to piece together slightly longer words with one or two new letters (РЕСТОРАН - RESTAURANT, БИСТРО - BISTRO). I'm learning several letters a day now, and today figured out КАППУЧИНО - CAPPUCCINO and РУССКИЙ МУЗЕЙ - RUSSIAN MUSEUM. My goal is to be able to pronounce anything by the time I leave. The difficult letters with no English letter mappings are left: Ж, Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ, etc.
The jet lag has subsided a bit. I still get sleepy in the afternoon, but at least it's tolerable. I'm not so tired that I can't eat, and I'm able to sleep soundly at night as long as the mosquitoes aren't dive bombing my head. A vast improvement over day one. :)
July 17, 2008 01:43 PM | St. Petersburg
Comments
what is with the mosquitos? why so many?
you are having a *very* special trip, i can tell! thanks for the updates! also i am glad my stroganoff does not include leather.
Posted by: heather at July 18, 2008 01:33 PM
St. Petersburg has water, water, everywhere, and mosquitoes love hump near water...
Posted by: Viv at July 18, 2008 01:44 PM