Oh, but as a sidenote, for those interested, family members and whatnot, I'm currently in Berlin and will be traveling around Germany for the next two weeks. After a little over 4 months abroad, I will finally be back home on December 30.

In less than an hour, we're getting an a bus to the airport and, in 4 hours, will be leaving Russia. Regardless of the fact that I know I'll be back in Russia soon, this is the official end to my study abroad blog. Thanks for reading.

If I have time, I might have one or two more final videos to post of my time in Russia before we leave on Wednesday morning. But if that doesn't happen, here are the last videos I will post. The first shows the birthday celebration with my professor at her apartment. The second, summing up my experiences trying to visually document the past semester.

Yesterday, we went to my professor's apartment to celebrate my birthday, Gina's birthday and Brandy's birthday. We took the opportunity to introduce her to some typical American birthday traditions: lighting candles on a cake, singing "Happy Birthday", lighting fireworks in the living room, drinking vodka and cutting the eye out of a dead fish's head with hands wet from its gushing blood. She gave me a book of Anna Akhmatova's poetry and we got home at 5 in the morning. Right now I should be researching the global sex trade and its connection to Russian Organized Crime for a 3-page paper and presentation due on Tuesday (my birthday) but instead I have opted to not do that.

I don't know how to sum up everything I've done since I stopped writing. We're leaving so soon, and getting to that point of the semester where you have to think "this is probably the last time I'm ever gonna do this" every time you do anything. It's very depressing. I found a Nazi lighter at a market. It's probably fake, I guess. But interesting. Alycia came and went. Thanksgiving too. My host mom observed the 1-year anniversary of her husband's death, and I helped her prepare by chopping up vegetables for a few hours. It was a nice experience to share.

Strange, right? A Ukrainian woman living in Murmansk falls in love and marries a man. They love each other madly and have a wonderful marriage until he dies of throat cancer (from smoking). And out of all her friends, relatives that she has amassed over the course of her entire life, her only company and help on the evening of the day she commemorates the one-year anniversary of his death, a very important day according to Russian tradition, is me. And thus I end up playing a somewhat important role on a somewhat important day in the history of this woman's life. Someone I didn't know 4 months ago and will likely never see again. The next day at dinner we drank wine while she told me about how wonderful he was (though I'd heard it many times before) and I proposed a toast "to Garik".

I miss home and have many reasons to be excited and pleased about returning, but I will miss Russia terribly and will do everything within my power to return whenever life presents the slightest opportunity to do so.

The last videos of the cruise! I got tired of editing them so just threw some of my favorite moments together and that's all you get to see for now. I have other footage of other stuff and the cruise happened an entire month ago, so we're moving on.





Today was no school! Gina is sick! On Friday we're going as a class to see the opera La Traviata. Halloween was great! We made food, mostly under Gina's instruction, while Stacy made decorations and Nathan offered supplies and a venue. Swine flu is apparently raging in the US? Have any of you gotten it?

It's snowed a few times here but hasn't stuck. Here's a picture of my host mom listening to music on my iPod.



















Here is a picture of a Kalashnikov rifle-shaped vodka bottle.















Here's a picture of a kitten.

Move over God, because there's a new God in town, and her name is Nastya Vasilieva. I don't know about your God, but my God got me a free ticket to see Swan Lake at the Mariinsky Theater. Does it really get any better than that? Not to mention, she swung us by this beautiful synagogue nearby, as I have not yet been to a synagogue in Peter, so that I could catch one last glimpse at my old God. JK, of course, I love all Gods equally. Anyway, a lovely experience, to put it mildly. She's such a cool person, and conversation comes so easily with her. She treats me like a younger sister, spending all of first intermission trying to hunt down an English program and buy it for me so I could understand the plot of the ballet. I kept telling her not to worry about it, but she persisted and eventually found one in the hands of the elderly woman sitting beside us. Granted I don't know much about ballet, but everyone knows beauty when they see it. It was amazing.

I saw my first dead body in Russia on Wednesday. Finally! Everyone's got their own dead body story in Russia, really it's the strangest thing. Walking by the metro on our way to the excursion at the Museum of Political History, we see a body on the ground covered in a sheet that does not cover all. Two men, perhaps police, were standing idly by doing nothing, maybe waiting for transport, but acting strikingly nonchalant. I would assume it was a homeless man, died perhaps of the cold or hunger, not too "exciting" but all the same... it would surely have attracted more of a crowd in the US. Especially in such a crowded place. Maybe not? Either way, interesting stuff! Dead bodies!

Speaking of which, Halloween! I am part of a team that has been tasked with arranging a party at our resident director's apartment. Tomorrow I'll hunt down some sort of costume. Keep your fingers crossed for some quality fake blood!

On Saturday I had one of the best experiences of Russia. My tutor invited me to her apartment for a dinner party. It wasn't until after I arrived at her apartment that I discovered she wanted me to spend the night. My Russian was horrible enough on Saturday that I apparently missed the telephone conversation wherein she asked and I accepted the invitation. I decided to roll with it. My tutor, Nastya, and her fiance Yuri were the hosts, and their guests were Lena, Lena and Dima. They made the entire dinner, like good little хозяйкаs in training, and then we preceding to drink a lot and have great conversations. It's the first time I've been a part of something like this as the only American, and that's probably why it was so amazing. After a while, especially after the drinks, and after I got to know and like them all so much, words started running together and it didn't matter that I didn't understand them all the time. I forgot we were speaking in Russian and it felt like we were just talking. It was just so fun.

С днём рождения кому-нибудь, который родился в этот день!