1st day of СРбГУ

Today was the first day of St. Petersburg State University. Well, not really. Yesterday was, but yesterday consisted of a long and brutal placement test, oral, and filling out visa forms.

Today was the first day of class. My typical school day starts at about 7:30am. I wake up and eat breakfast. I have to leave the apartment by 8:15 am.

Between 8:15 and 8:30 I catch the trolley. The trolley is the slowest method of transportation to school, but it is the easiest, the cheapest, and the least dangerous. The trolley takes about an hour and 15min. (Longer during rush hour, час-пик). The fastest method of transportation is really to take a variety of methods… walk to the trolley stop, take the trolley to the metro stop, take the metro #3 to metro #1, Take M1 to a stop, then walk to the bus stop, take the bus as close as possible to the University, then walk. This takes about 45 min, but it is complicated and there are so many people on the metro, this is when one is most likely to get pick-pocketed (which is the most popular form of crime in St. Petersburg).

Today, I only have one class. I am actually done already, but I’m waiting for my friends who have class, so we can go home together. Plus, I get to use the internet for the first time in a week! Apparently all of the McDonald’s have Wi-Fi… We’re going to test that out tonight after dinner.

On the plus side… Russian schools give very little homework. They also don’t expect you to carry books back and forth since the commute is so long from one side of the city to the other and theft is so common. Therefore, no books to buy and very little homework. Yay!

I hope everything is going well… feel free to comment. I read them and will answer questions in a future post.

Good Morning, and Good Night.
~Лидия