"But Charlie Brown! It's Thanksgiving!" "What's that got to do with anything?"

Luckily that's not the case for me today.
I'm headed out to make Banana Bread and square pumpkin pie (there are no pie dishes anywhere in this country! Maybe ikea, but that's a 2 hour trek there and back!)for the TWO thanksgiving dinners today. The first with a group of fellow fulbrighters at 6, then 9:30 at Bryan Billing's annualy Smolny thanksgiving mess. Last time Sam brought a bucket of KFC, we'll see if we're all that lucky this time around.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Good luck to Mom, Dad, Mark and Megan in the Turkey Trot.
Here are some bits of Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving:

kicking it middle school style...

I met up with Vanessa today as she was getting her hair chopped off at the salon Toni and Guy. I sat down and chatted it up with her as the stylist was finishing up. This place was classy- they served an americano as I kept my americanka company during her big chop chop.
On our walk back we went hat shopping- having no hair in snowy petersburg is pretty chilly. We didn't end up finding Vanessa a hat, but we did find Freeman's Cucumber Peel off Mask at Rive Gauche!


We pampered the 6th graders inside of us by treating our faces to this cucmbery delight. I forgot how fun it is to peel this gluey stuff off your face, and how much it sucks when it's stuck in your eyebrows.

Look who's taking after her big sister:

a lazy cozy sunday

Sasha spent the night after missing her marshrutka home last night and we woke up this morning to find the windowsills covered in snow! A real storm this time- a good five inches. We went to the store to stock up on food so that we could hibernate and have a Kill Bill marathon all day. We ate: ham+cheese grilled sandwiches, mandarines, apples, gingerbread cookies covered in chocolate, fresh-baked banana bread, pretzels and tea.
I went out to try to get a webcam tonight but the computer store was already closed. I called Megan last night through Skype and it was so fun to see everyone and give Sasha a tour of our house via skype! By now all the snow has turned into dirty slush. Walking around tonight I was so happy to have my new boots. They were impenetrable! I walked straight through slush puddles and kept warm and dry. All of this for just 1000 rubles (40 bucks!) what a deal after so many days of awful rain and wet feet.

Alarm Will Sound

Last night I went to the Alarm Will Sound concert- the ensemble played two covers of Aphex Twin songs- an electronic group. Pretty incredible show, give it a listen:

, originally uploaded by laurichka.

beautiful.

bubbling over

Petersburg feels smaller and smaller every day. Yesterday Andre invited me to go to the Sound the Alarm concert tonight. Then, Sasha called me earlier today to invite me to the same event! I showed up and ran into Frank, Maria and another Andre I know, after having just run into Piper on the street on the walk over.
There's an American music festival going on right now featuring contemporary classical composers. The show tonight was pretty incredible- a free show at the Hermitage theater, a rather small venue with amazing acoustics. I hadn't heard of Sound the Alarm before and they blew me away. The ensemble will play again Saturday, so I might have to go.
Whenever i talk about Russia and all the time i spend here, I always explain it as a love-hate relationship. It had been an abusive one for a while now, but right now I can genuinely say that I love it here. Superstition is making me pretend to spit over my left shoulder three times now as i type this (the traditional equivalent to knocking on wood here), but these last two weeks have just come up roses and here's why:
First off, I have really amazing friends here, it's humbling to be able to develop really close genuine friendships despite language bariers, and keep those friendships going over these past few years when i've been in and out of Russia.
Also- this week has been full of so many fun things that i've been rocketing off into happy moods in spite of ever shortening dark cold and wet days. The mouse on mars concert and this sound the alarm concert were fabulous, and I've been meeting so many fun people this last week.
Having this article due for the St. Petersburg Times this weekend really made me kick my butt into shape with the research I'm doing. I scoured the articles I'd brought with me and read throught the OT'TiSK print journal that Yuri leant me and typed up a 4 page overview of artist books in Russia from the Futurists to artists working in contemporary Petersburg. I'm really satisfied with how it turned out! i can't wait to see it in print in December. I didn't realize how much I actually missed working on my thesis until I started writing up this report. I love nerding out over a research project. Anyway, I learned Monday that I'd have to turn in any images to go along with the article on Wednesday (yesterday), so Tuesday I had to scramble around finding what I could. Tuesdays I meet with Yuri at the printmaking studio to work on my own book project, but this time we just discussed the Petersburg art scene. He gave me some Jpg's of his works to include with the article and let me photograph a bunch of books that he has on hand. The art community in St. Petersburg is really wonderful because it truly is a community. Yuri has a rich collection of hand-bound books from contemporary book-making artists which were all given to him because all these artists know each other and collaborate together. We were looking at "book object" works by Pushnitskii on his website and I said they'd be great for the article, Yuri just popped open his phone and his cell number handy. Yuri has just been a magnificent help in working on this project. From the first time I discussed it with him he has been nothing but enthusiastic and excited to talk about artist books and arrange for me to meet with everyone working in the field and always encourages me to grab books of the shelf "anything you need" he offers, to read and write away. He even assembled a light for me after Piotr refused to let us borrow his worklamp for 10 minutes so i could shoot pictures of artist books for the magazine. By assemble don't mean that he just screwed in a lightbulb, but he actually assmebled a light- hooking up wires and all!

alright, i know i'm gushing and sounding overly sentimental, but I have to overindulge in feeling so much at home here because it's been so rocky for so long. Things didn't start out so great when i was bumming around for the first month waiting for Yuri to get back in town and wondering how to work out my project. I hung out with friends a lot, i caught up on a good chunk of the TV that i missed out on over the last four years (having internet at home acts as such a vacuum sometimes) and I wondered how these next ten months would look.

also, i'm extremely thankful to have wonderful supporting parents who are willing to lend me some money via western union as I wait for my bank stuff to get sorted out. It took me three trips to Western Union before i got the money (the first time i didn't have the code i needed, the second they had just closed 15 minutes before) but if it were effortless and convenient, it wouldn't be Russia.

Quite a get-up for the grocery store...

Quite a get-up for the grocery store..., originally uploaded by laurichka.

So hard to stay fashionable in this town.

Season of Giving:

Hey everyone! As we approach the end of the year, even in the recession, it's nice to look for those tax-deductible donations. Here's a great one where even 5 bucks will make a huge difference.

My friend Devin is working for Teach for America and looking to create a graphic novel library to channel the enthusiasm of his students into reading material they'll dive right in to. If you'd like to chip in, click HERE.

Sticking snow!- the sidewalks and rooftops and trimmed in white this morning! I'm drinking my morning coffee and after reading a quick roundup of the news on NYtimes, i find myself indulging in some thanksgiving food porn: that is, looking at recipes and photos of delicious Thanksgiving dishes. Thanksgiving is a hard holiday to miss; i remember during my year abroad that was one glum day until Bryan's late-night Thanksgiving get together. I guess I should probably be set after enjoying two Thanksgiving feasts last year- one Denver style, starting with the turkey trot and ending with our annual get-together with the Kinsellas, and a second one Kansas style- featuring my first fried turkey and getting to see relatives i hadn't seen in a good long while.
This year I'll join a group of fellow Fulbrighters for turkey day. I've promised to bring a pumpkin pie so I'll be baking away next Thursday.
Yesterday I met with Yuri to talk about contemporary Artist books in Petersburg. He introduced me to the book object works of Pushnitsky, and let me photograph and flip through a bunch of the books in his collection. I've gotten a lot done in this past week for my research and it's opening up more questions and ideas of topics to write about while I'm here.
Now I'm off to edit down these images I took yesterday so I can submit them, along with my final article, to the editor at the st. petersburg times. Oh! While editing the Times on Monday Politkovskaya's name popped up in the news again. They'll allow journalists to the trial of the suspected murderers- originally the journalists had been denied access because one of the suspects has some kind of military rank and the military court is a closed court. Read more here.

first snow.

This morning i woke up early, made some coffee, and looked out the window to see little flakes falling from the sky. It's too warm still for anything to stick around, but exciting to finally see some snow!

warm holiday wishes from st. pete

"Merry Christmas!!" shouted Frank, a German friend studying film here in st pete, as I answered the phone on Thursday. He invited me over to his Christmas Party- Christmas on the 13th of November.Frank decided that since the Russians celebrate Christmas on a seemingly arbitrary day- the 7th of January- that he would follow in suite and throw a party in November. Everyone came in their holiday finest. We listened to horrible rock-renditions of Christmas songs until we were fed up with pop-punk covers of White Christmas. Catch up America! I hear that they're not even playing carols in the supermarkets yet. Russia has already started putting up fake trees all over for the New Year. I guess we could use the extra holiday cheer since the sun sets at around 4:15 these days.
I heard there was a beautiful snow storm in Denver yesterday. I'm jealous- we haven't had any out here yet. According to Google weather we'll see flakes on Monday! I'll be sure to snap pictures and put them up on Flickr with everything else that I'm soon going to put up.
I'm still sorting things out with the bank, but I'll be getting a new ATM card soon. Good news as my money stash is dwindling.

... plus I gotta keep enough lettuce to support your shoe fetish!

I decided in my time of trouble to listen to the sage advice offered from beloved Fergie, formerly of the Black Eyed Peas: "If you ain't got no money take your broke ass home."
I'll be flying home December 16th to visit the family for Christmas. I'll fly back on the 28th, just in time to ring in the New Year in St. Pete. And hopefully my money will be returned to me soon. For those of you who don't already know- I must have used an ATM with a virus in it because after I withdrew money for rent some crooked thieves decided to withdraw all the rest of my money after stealing my account information. At first I thought it was a computer error- I was checking up on my account and noticed that it was about 400 below what I had predicted. The statement said that I had drawn out 400 two times when i had just done it the once. The bank had to wait till the next day to clear it up because the charges were still "pending". After learning that Obama will be our next president (yay!!) I decided to make sure that my account was back in shape. To my horror- I had a negative balance. Thieves.
Luckily I had set aside some extra cash at the start of my trip "just in case". Turns out this is that case- i'll have to wait at least another week to get a new ATM card, which is a pain because Petersburg is mostly a cash-and-carry city. It's going to be a thrifty couple of weeks.

In other news- I'm finishing up my article on artist books for the St. Petersburg Time's winter magazine! I'll be sure to post the link and save copies when it's published.

This morning is filled with relief, happiness, pride for my country and hope for the future.
I woke up this morning after a restless night of unsatisfying sleep; between coughing fits and election nerves it was hard to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time. I would wake up every few hours and reload CNN and Pollster to catch bits of progress as the results were tallied up. This morning I fixed myself a cup of coffee and settled down to watch Obama's victory speech on CNN and was tickled when two minutes into it there was Aunt Tracy nodding along to what Obama was saying!
I've been thinking back to my experience at the DNC throughout these final days of the election. It is so satisfying that Obama will take the office. It feels like finally hope is going to be restored to a post-911 apathetic America. Pedicabbing for the DNC was an amazing experience. It kept me in the thick of down town crowds where I got to watch protesters, the iraq veterans against the war demonstrations, art projects, lobbyists working away, and even drive newscasters in full make-up to their camera-shot destinations. I was able to get in to the private Death Cab for Cutie concert for enviromental lobbyists, and a free Rage Against the Machine concert- never had their music felt more relevant than it did during the concert which turned into a march in support of Iraq Veterans against the war. The entire week stirred up an energy and passion for activism that had been subdued in the midst of college apathy. Obama and this election has brought that back, and brought back hope that change can and must happen in America.

***
on an entirely different note- my bank is getting me down. Yesterday i noticed that i was charged twice for an ATM withdrawal i made when i took out money for rent. I can't afford to pay rent twice!! The orders were still pending on my online account status, and I thought everything would be fixed up by today, but to my horror things have only taken a turn for the worse. I currently have a negative balance on my account because somehow there are 3 or 4 false withdraws from my account! I have to wait a few hours before i can call my bank to sort these things out. I have my debit card, so it wasn't stolen and I don't understand how anyone could have access to my account.
ugh. this is so stressful.

Adventures in sickness continue

Halloween was Friday, an unremarkable holiday for Russia that is not really celebrated in places other than Americanized clubs. My friend Olga organized a party at a cafe (I was feeling to under the weather to try to go out that night) and said that the common misconception of halloween here is that it's suppoed to be a very dark and goth holiday. The DJ wanted to play Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson all night and Olga's Russian friend was confused when Olga put on the halloween classic Thriller.
I spent most of the weekend sleeping, watching movies, drinking tea and cooking up soups and stir frys in an attempt to fight this cold off. Today was surprisingly sunny so i bundled up and went for a walk through the parks behind the Russian musuem and ate sweet cinnamon roasted almonds while watching kids run around bundled up like little cabbages.
Sasha called me last night and invited me to go with her and Elya to the Michael Nyman concert today at the philharmonia. We got there and found out that ticket prices were pretty steep. Usually tickets are around 300 roubles, but for tonights affair they were running from 800-2,000 rubles ($32-80), with no chance of cheap student tickets. We waited until all three of the bells had sounded and the crowd had shuffled off to their seats to try to plead with the Babushka checking tickets to let us in to stand in the back and listen. Our first attempt was thwarted, not by the Babushka who was kindly going to let us in if we bought two tickets for 300 rubles (12 bucks) each, but by a man with a clipboard and a guestlist, who grabbed my arm and told us sternly that we would have to pick which TWO of us were going to go. Sasha kindly avoided a "sophie's choice" situation by stating that either we were all going to go, or none at all. We waited out near the coat check hoping that the man with the clipboard would disapear. After about ten minutes we mustered up our courage to try again... and success! The Babushka sold us one ticket for 300 rubles and let us all in!
The philharmonia building was beautiful- large chandeliers and marble posts making up for the gloom of most grey Petersburg days. For the first half we sat on the top level and i was immediatly drawn in by the music: wonderful horn sections! beautiful piano notes tinkering above low saxaphone notes blown until the musicians face couldn't turn any redder- I was so happy that Babushka let us through! and also happy that i had picked up some cough drops on the way so as to not add a hacking percusion section coming from offstage left.
After the intermission we snuck down to the first level because we had spied so many empty chairs there. We sat in the second row and were able to see the composers goofy striped socks as he played the piano. Nyman was joined by an Australian opera singer who accompanied her vocals with dramatic face and arm gestures that were too overwhelming to watch at times.
At the end everyone bowed several times, walked off stage and back on, and after it all Michael Nyman came back out and played a piano solo. He was very nice, bowed and stood and posed a moment while a girl in the front row took his picture. He stayed around and signed autographs, so i had him sign a page in my planbook. (That's him in the photo to the left, you can read an interview with him and the SPB times here)

A great night for 100 rubles a piece.
Now i'm back to tea, a movie and some sleeping, and hoping this cough goes away soon.