Last Day of Classes!

And I'm sort of excited. But also not, because I know I was learning a lot, and getting more comfortable listening and talking, and learning really -useful- things.

But class is over, and since they didn't warn us we have to go back at weird times and try to find all of our teachers before Wednesday so we can get their signatures and things. Because as much as there's a bureaucracy, nobody talks to each other. Teachers go and sign in, but it's at the snack bar, and not the office. So they probably only see them on payday. There's no central place to leave a note, or ask them to sign things. So we have to go and be stalkers - which wouldn't be so bad if we only had one teacher, but we all have at least two - and I think John has a different one for every day of the week. Dumb.

So after class yesterday we went over to Nevsky to do some shopping for gifts and trinkets. The boys got what they wanted and left, which left Alexandra and I free to wander and not worry about them being bored - hooray! So we shopped and shopped and compared prices and shopped, and then hopped on the bus and came back here. The boys took the wrong bus (it was a trolley bus, I'm not sure how they missed that it was attached to wires), and then the metro to get back, and got back just a few minutes after we did. Only we had to go up the stairs, because there was like...a tour group or something downstairs waiting to take the elevators in carefully separated groups. Totally dumb. I can't really complain about all those 18 flights of stairs, because Alexandra is off running them four or five times right now. Yikes.

Last night for dinner we made crazy ramen-chicken-BROCCOLI-garlic noodle extravaganza. It was amazing, because Hello, broccoli, where have you been all my life? How have I lived without you? It was frozen (once, not when we ate it), and it was amazing.
And then we got the cakes, of which there are pictures where the pictures live. The cakes were amazing. And John got some vodka, which tastes like burning and makes my throat itchy, but is delicious if you chase it with a shortbread cookie drenched in honey. Alexandra and I were demure and only had a bit, but I got a phone call from the boys at three in the morning asking if we knew where the secret way out of the dorm was, and I could hear them talking through the hall door. I am certain they were not so restrained as we ladies.

We went for a walk on the beach after watching the end of Dirty Dancing (even funnier in Russian!) and some Bewitched (because TV here is way better than at home). And a drunk guy in a sombrero told us to take our drunk friend (Charlie) home in terrible, halting drunken English, because he told us the cops were right across the street and that would be "a lot of bull shit." And then he wandered away and peed off a hill. And we ran off in the other direction and came back upstairs. Where we talked about spiders (who were watching us eat these shortbread cookies jealously through the window), and listened to music (with that neat little speaker you lent me, mum! it works strangely well!) until John distracted Charlie back to their room so we could go to sleep.

And now it is morning and sleeping in was nice even though the sun woke me up by being toasty. And in the mornings here, they still play Looney Tunes and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as should be the case with all respectable channels. But they're also playing some weird anthropomorphic mouse biker show that looks way to furry for me to be comfortable with. Rachel tells me it's Mouse Bikers from Mars, because she is wise in the ways of all things animated.

And now I must go wake up the boys so we can eat the second cake. But I suspect I should try to be very, very quiet. It may not go well.