Of Food, and other things...

So things around here have been pretty busy since my last update. We've been spending a lot of time away from the dorms seeing things. But today is a free day for those of us who don't have afternoon classes, and I'm taking advantage of that by updating my blog and doing laundry. :-)

Today I thought I'd talk a little bit about life at IMOP. Merci asked me the other day about coffee here and I thought y'all might be interested in hearing some about the food.

On the coffee thing, truth is I haven't had coffee here yet. Unless you call that nasty brown instant stuff I had the other morning coffee. And personally, I don't. Tea is a big thing here, so every morning we have a large pot of hot water for instant coffee or tea. I have been drinking the tea most mornings, but the other day they were out and so I braved the coffee. It was nasty stuff. I do not recommend it.

Our meals at IMOP do not vary much. So this shouldn't be too hard.
Breakfast consists of cereal, usually a type of corn flakes. Sometimes sweet, sometimes not. As well as a type of hot cereal (not very popular at all) eggs, either fried or hard boiled, yogurt, and jucie. Jucie is very popular over here, so we have it every morning and at lunch. The jucie is either apple, pinapple, orange and a couple times we had peach. I tend to like the apple or orange best. On the food side, I usually only eat the cereal. Sometimes I'm brave enough to try the yogurt, but not always. All the flavors are in Russian, and I've tried a couple that have been pretty bad.

Lunch always comes with soup. The Russians like their soup, and so we get it for lunch. Sometimes its good, and sometimes it isn't. For example, the other day we had Borscht, that is beet soup. It was awful. Tasted just like beets. Which I now realize I don't like. But for the most part, I have enjoyed the soup. At lunch we also have some kind of meat (mystery meat as we say), cold vegtables (ie cor, peas, cabbage), bread (with every meal) and some sort of pastry dessert.

On some days however, we have a sack lunch. Our first sack lunch was awful as I think I mentioned. Thankfully though, it has gotten progressively better. Last week it was a ham and cheese with waaaay to much mayonasie. After that day, I made my own lunch with some bread from breakfast and peanut butter. Yesterday our sack lunch was peanut butter and jelly with a Kit Kat bar. That was good. We also get a piece of fruit with our lunch. Mainly this is an apple, but Saturday it was a pear. A really good pear. Not every one likes pears, so I've managed to snag a couple extras. Yay!

Dinner is sometimes the best meal of the day. That is when dinner isn't a mystery meat (either chicken meatballs, pork, or other hard to indentify meats). Lately, dinner has been a little better. Chicken and rice one night, Chicken last night. Mashed potatoes, potatoes or fries have also come with dinner and sometimes lunch. The fries were wonderful, but we've only gotten them once. Vegtables with dinner are rare, except for "cold cuts" such as tomatoes, cucumbers or red or green peppers. Corn or peas are also served a lot for meals, but they are always cold. Not very good at all.

The other day at lunch they served green beans and califlower and that was really good. I'm really hoping that they will serve that some more.
One day for lunch they served fish, which everyone was excited about until they tasted it... It was very fishy fish. That was not a good day for me. It was the day we went to the Hermitage, and since I didn't hardly eat anything at lunch and no protien. So about halfway through our tour, I had a horrible sugar crash. It was hot, I was hungry and my feet were killing me. Not a good combination. I really wasn't sure I was going to make it out! But thankfully I did. It would have helped if I could have had some water, but no water is allowed inside the Hermitage. And you know why? Because one time, some guy came in and asked where the famous Rembrant painting was, pulled out a bottle and threw acid on the painting... yeah. So no water allowed in.

But I did make it out. Then Stephanie, April and I went looking for a restaurant. The one we wanted required reservations, so that set us off on a hunt for a different place. We finally found a nice little place called daVinci which served Italian food and the server spoke English. The food there was divine... of course part of the reason it tasted so good could have been the fact that it is pretty easy to get tired of the food here at the dorms. I had a Coke (that came in a glass bottle), Penne with tomato sauce, and chocolate ice cream for dessert. :-)

So this is already a long blog so I'll try and wrap it up.

Since I last posted I have been to the Hermitage (Friday), the Gulf of Finland (Saturday) and Peterhof (Sunday). I think if I hadn't been starving, the Hermitage would have been more enjoyable. And if my feet hadn't been killing me as well. But students get in for free, so I know I'll be back. It is the second largest museum in the world, so I'm sure you can imagine how big it is! While I was there I saw works by DaVinci, Rembrant, Monet and Michalangelo. I'm looking forward to going back.

The Gulf of Finland ended up not being near as exciting as it should have been. We had to wait for a bus for two hours, and that was all standing. It was awful. Then we ended up being at the beach only about 2 hours (not much to do there), and on the way home had to stand on the bus for another hour and a half. I cannot remember a day when my feet have ever hurt so badly. It is a day I really could have missed. I also got a sunburn on my arms that day.

Sunday was much more enjoyable. Peterhoff was built by Peter the Great and is a truly beautiful palace and grounds. The sad thing is that the palace was pretty much destroyed durring WW II when a bomb landed in the center of the palace and burnt it to the ground. So hardly anything there is orginal. Though some of the people who were there at the time were able to save about 50% of the artifacts there and took pictures of everything. The restoration to the palace is amazing. And I think it shows a true dedication to the history of Russia with as much as they have done to it.

There is a huge souviouner market outside of Peterhoff, so yesterday I bought quite a few things! So far I'm very happy with them. At the museum shop, I bought four books. One of Peterhoff, one about Nicolas II and his family, one in Russian but with a bunch of pictures of Alexi Romanov that I hadn't seen before and a little one about all the Russian Czars. They are very neat.

Again, I've posted some pics here http://www.flickr.com/photos/lils_photos/
Sorry, but I don't have time at the moment to post them up on the blog. But as a sign off, here is me at Peterhoff...



Love to you all...