хзппи мил!

Clearly a comprehensive update is never going to happen... so here's a snapshot.

Since my last real update, I've been traveling a bit:

Besides Kiev, we took a weekend trip to Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan; it's largely Muslim, so we saw some amazing mosques in addition to other fascinating ancient buildings and artifacts. We also met some American students studying at the University of Kazan (which is where Lenin studied for a few months before being expelled) and hung out with them all weekend. Also, I got an EXCELLENT hat, which was described by my professor as a Lenin hat and by our Russian friend Nastya as a Britney Spears hat. Not sure what to think about that except that it is EXCELLENT.



This combines the EXCELLENCE of the hat with a huge huge nasty fish that was caught in 1902 and which has been preserved since that time.



The famous mosque in Kazan--this is kind of the symbol of Kazan, inexplicably built in 2003.



Last stop in Kazan. Yes, that is what you think it is. Please examine this picture closely as it is worth it.

Helen Bing is the main sponsor of Stanford's overseas program, and one of the many nice things she does for us is organize one really cool trip to some other part of the country, and it's totally free for us. For us, that meant St. Petersburg! They put us up in a nice hotel and got us a bus and a tour guide and delicious food. All in all a fantastic trip. And since we had a few extra days after the Bing trip to spend as we pleased, a few of us decided to do a whirlwind tour through the Baltics, which turned into a day in Helsinki and a day in Tallinn, Estonia. Everything about this trip was awesome. Petersburg is gorgeous and so many interesting things happened there! Helsinki and Tallinn were worlds unto themselves. I can't even begin to summarize so I'll probably do that later with a photo album.

Life in Russia, contrary to everything everyone else has ever said about it, is fabulous. I really do love it here; there is just an incomprehensibly large amount of things to do and places to go and people to meet. I've been spending a lot of time with a Russian friend of ours named Nastya; we are at her house at least once a week, if not more. She is the sweetest person, and her English is ridiculously good so we can communicate and also learn some Russian. Here she is:



We baked cookies :) She said it was the thing she missed the most about America.

Other things I've done: been to see creepy creepy dead Lenin (seriously, disturbing); been to a Russian bath house, called a banya, which is a wet sauna and a swimming pool, and you beat each other with branches to increase circulation; watched election results (still can't get over how awesome this is!) at a diner with dozens of cheering expats; read some fascinating books on the Soviets, who, I can now confirm, were totally insane; and generally had a WONDERFUL TIME.

Today it snowed for the first time here. I foresee snowball fights and tea by my window. I'll be home in just over a month, so I'm going to try my best to squeeze every last bit of fun out of this country. I know, I know, it's not supposed to be fun in Russia. But it is.