First Day of School!

Today was the first day of school. In Russia, September 1 is a holiday. On this day all of the school children bring flowers to their teachers. So I saw a lot of flowers on the metro.

My campus is beautiful. I will try to put pictures up once I have a camera that works. My classes are in the Smolny Campus of St. Petersburg State University. Next to my building is the beautiful Smolny Cathedral.

Riding the metro to the campus was crazy! I thought I knew how to handle city rush hour, I have been in New York's rush hour and I take the train every day during Chicago's rush hour. But Russia's rush hour is insane. There were probably 500 people pushing hard to get down one tiny escalator. I thought I was going to be trampled! It was like that at every station that I had to transfer at. The other interesting thing about the metro is how deep it is. When you get into the metro, you ride the escalator down to the train. The escalator goes so fast and is extremely steep. It probably takes about 10 minutes to ride the escalator down, whereas in Chicago it takes maybe one or two minutes to walk down the stairs.

The other thing that has surprised me is how cold it is. Everyday it gets colder and colder. From the day I got here it was chilly. Everyday since then has been getting progressively colder. Today I believe it was 0 degress Celsius in the morning. In other words, very cold. And it is only just September!

The women here all look like supermodels (the young women that is). All the women wear very heels, tight and revealing clothing, a lot of makeup, and most have very very long straight hair. I have heard the women dress up more because they feel there is a small number of good men in their city and they must do as much as they can to attract men.

Tomorrow I will go to the Peter and Paul Fortress.