Why me?

The flight to St. Petersburg was surprisingly smooth. Amsterdam's airport is sweet. Russian customs didn't take that long and it wasn't that scary from what I remember in 2003. We immediately saw two people with a sign with our names on it - Natasha and Nickolai - both speak English VERY well. They drove us to our host families right away and explained things/answered our questions on the car ride there. I was the first to be dropped off. My apartment building is very typical of Russia, slightly run-down but nonetheless cozy. I live next to a beautiful park and right by the water (Gulf of Finland and some canal) because we're on an island (check out google maps). The building is VERY scary and I have to walk up about 5 or 6 flights of stairs to get to my apartment. There are 3 dead-bolt doors with crazy keys (I have my own set) to get inside. I have a small cot to sleep on and no dresser. The bath tub (no shower) is in the kitchen - it also serves as the kitchen table when a board is on top of it. The toilet is in the smallest room I've ever seen (my knees barely fit inside the door). My host mom is a nice, short old lady named Raya. She speaks no English but we've had really lengthy conversations with minimal problems with language (I'm that awesome). Yesterday, when I got there, she showed me around VERY quick; I had to jump right into Russian (AHHH!), fed me, and took me to where we were supposed to meet my group. We took a bus and Raya wrote down her address, phone numbers and possible buses to take for me. All was good. We met the group, the students and leaders went to a sweet coffee/bar/cafe to sit and talk for a while (I had amazing ice cream and Kvas which was just ok). I went to wait at the bus stop on the way home, caught a bus that Raya said would work, talked to the bus driver and he let me off at what he THOUGHT was my neighborhood. WRONG. I had NO idea where I was. It was 11pm and totally light out, luckily. I started to freak out and asked a group of young nice Russians to help me. I of course started crying (why me?!) and they just smiled and told me to stop crying, it was gonna be ok. They called Raya and we agreed on a meeting place. They sent me in a minivan taxi thing to the stop I was supposed to meet Raya at and I got out of the van. Raya was nowhere to be seen. I waited about 20 minutes, and walked back to the apartment - Raya wasn't there. So, I left to go search for her. After another 15 minutes or so, I gave up because it started to get dark. I went back to the apartment and called her cell from her land line. Raya came back and we talked for about the next hour or so about what happened while she fed me (Russians like food a lot). She said that she told the people I was with to have me meet her at a slightly different spot about a block away. Oops. I felt bad but she said it was fine and that I would get to know the area soon. She explained the layout of the city and drew me a map. Finally, at about 1:30am, I went to bed. I was EXHAUSTED. This morning, I got up late, but it was fine. I attempted to take a bath (in brown water...) - what an experience. I got to the meeting spot today just fine by myself (early, in fact!) and had time to go to the grocery store, which was fun and very different. We went on a tour of the city today which was AMAZING. St. Petersburg is unbelievable. After the tour, Natasha and Nickolai helped me get a phone, which is great. It's MUCH cheaper than the U.S. and I can call Natasha and Raya for REALLY cheap, which is great. Overall, I've had a great experience in my first day or so here. I love Russia and I feel very independent and self-sufficient; I feel like I'm mostly prepared on the language end of things. I'm going out tonight with the group and start school tomorrow (yay!). I hope to put some pictures on here as well so you can all see what life is like here. I'll try to blog every couple days or so, so keep up! Jess will have different experiences, so this blog page should be quite interesting. I love you all, please keep in touch! Uvidyemcya!