It’s snowwwwwwwwwwwwing!!!  Yay!!!

It’s fairly hard to miss that I love the snow, and I love it even more in the city.  Particularly in a city as beautiful as St Petersburg.  I was walking back to the hostel earlier through a couple of inches of snow, and despite the fact that it was only around half midnight there was nobody around.  It was like walking through a snow-globe – a snowy city, completely untouched by any other person, both surreal and wonderful.

Almost every day, I hate this country.  Not even in a love-hate way.  Yesterday, I left uni early so that I could be at work early and get organised for the week ahead.  I got to the metro station though, and my transit card didn’t work (and I had no idea what the message said).  So, I waited in the epic queue for the cashier.  I figured I must have run out of credit or something on my card, so when I got to the front, I gave the lady my metro card, my student card and some cash, and asked for a monthly ticket.  I really didn’t expect her to start yelling at me, ending with her telling me the Russian equivalent of ‘go to hell’.  She then pushed my items back through the slot in the teller window, ejecting me from the line through a combination of sheer rudeness and some kind of psychokinetic willpower.  Of course, then I had no swipe card and no tokens for the metro, so had to line up again in order to buy tokens.  Goodbye, twenty minutes of my day.  I was utterly furious – it’s the complete lack of service and total rudeness with which everybody treats everybody else that really gets to me.  I was fuming on the metro to work, determined that I must leave this wretched place – but then I taught two of my teenage classes (long my favourite age group to teach) and felt much better.  And that’s how it goes: my life here is rage building to a peak, cured only by uni or teaching at the school which I like.

I’m still at the hostel, though Michael and I may be signing a lease tomorrow, fingers crossed.  If not, the hostel’s booked out tomorrow so I’ll have to find somewhere for the night… hopefully it works out.

I’m hoping to write an entry about ‘gay milk‘ in the next couple of days.  In the interim, I’ve put some more photos below.  Also, in the vein of my last entry, immigration and social exclusion, here’s an article written by my friend Dom Prukinski which is absolutely fantastically well written – enjoy 🙂

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My hostel St Petersburg: Apple