Well, I haven't written in a while due to no access to internet. I have to either use a friend's internet or pay money, so I will probably only write two or three times a week. Everything has been going great here.

I moved in with my host family about a week and a half ago. My family is very nice. They are an old couple in their mid 70's. The old lady prepares us breakfast every morning and it is really delicious. We usually have noodles with meat, hot cereal, porridge, torts, and tea. Breakfast is free, but we have the option to pay our babushka (grandma in Russian) for lunch and dinner if we want. I try to pay her for dinner as much as possible just to get a taste of Russian cuisine. The other night she prepared us fish soup. Aside from the occasional bones, it was great. And the other night we had pea soup. It's really interesting because Russians put sour cream in all of their soups, which is what Americans do every now and then. The old man doesn't really do anything. He sleeps all day and then eats, and then sleeps some more…but he is really nice even though he rarely talks. It is usually hard to understand what they say, but we are learning new things every day.

One of my teachers and our group that she teaches celebrated my birthday. It was a surprise to me, so I really enjoyed it. We had cake, tea, and champagne! It was odd, but I thought I would never see the day when I would drink alcohol in my classroom at a university…but it is totally acceptable here. She had the group sing me the birthday song in Russian. It was really nice because she went out of her way to do these nice things.

Tomorrow I take an over-night train at 11:00 pm to Moscow and we should arrive around 6 or 7 in the morning, but I guarantee you that hardly anyone will sleep. I'm excited because Saturday we get to see the Kremlin and the mausoleum where Lenin's body is. I'll be in Moscow until Monday and then our fall break begins which means we get a whole week of doing whatever we want. Some people in our group are going to Ukraine, Slovakia, and Greece…but I'm not going to a different country mainly because I didn't want to mess with getting tickets for everything and toting my entire luggage around. I had enough of that just getting to Russia. But I hope I will go to Novgorod (which I believe is the oldest city in Russia). It's funny because the city is called Novgorod…"Nov" in Russian means "new." But I really want to go to Volgograd, a.k.a. Stalingrad. If any of you have seen the film "Enemy at the Gates," this is where it took place. It was the city where the Russians made the turning point of World War 2 and pushed the Germans out of their country. It's really far away from St. Petersburg, so I don't know if I will do that. If not, there are plenty of things I haven't seen in Saint Petersburg yet.

It is beginning to get quite cold here. Today for the first time it started to hail…which I take as a bad sign that it's only going to get colder. Soon I will probably begin to see snow. Tomorrow I plan to buy a coat and hat before heading to Moscow because it's supposed to be even colder there.

Well I returned from Moscow on Tuesday. The train ride from Saint Petersburg is 8 hours long. It's really not so bad. The beds on the train are a little too small and your feet hang off, but it's very easy to sleep with the train moving and they provide you with some good food.On the way back from Moscow, me and my roommate bunked with a Russian guy who is a businessman and a Russian lady who is a manager. The guy could speak English somewhat well, but the girl couldn't. So, we spent some time conversing with them.

Moscow was very nice. You can definitely tell that it is more modernized….but being that it is the largest city in Europe and the most expensive city in the world behind New York, that's probably not a difficult task to achieve. We didn't have a lot of time to see everything, but my favorite was seeing Red Square and Lenin's body. The mausoleum of Lenin is pretty creepy because you go down into a bunker type building where there are about 4 or 5 guards with machine guns waiting to shoot anyone who tries to cause trouble around the Father of Communism. But it was very interesting. Red Square was very pretty and it was interesting to be in the same square where all of the communist parades take place. Actually, I saw a miniature rally of communist walking around Red Square promoting communism, so that's always interesting to see. The hotel was extremely nice…we took advantage of room service frequently because it was so cheap. We could both eat for about $12 which is insanely cheap for a hotel. Overall, I think I like Moscow a lot better than Saint Petersburg (but you should never tell a Saint Petersburger that or they will probably hit you…and vice versa). Saint Pete is more about architecture…and Moscow appeared to be cleaner (for the most part). While in Moscow, me and my friends went to the black market. These are always interesting places to go and, of course, slightly dangerous. You have no idea where the goods came from that the people are selling. They were most likely stolen or who knows what, but things are extremely cheap. For example, there is a store here in Russia called O'KAY….which is the equivalent of Wal-Mart. At O'KAY you can buy a pair of gloves between $8 and $12. Black Market Price: 75 cents. It's an awesome place. Movies, food, coats, everything you can imagine….just watch your pockets. Well, that's about all for now. Love you all.