Awful. The neighbor is at it again. I can't figure out if it's the flat above mine or the one next to my bedroom wall, but whoever it is keeps on coming home at around 1:15 am only to blare their horrible russian synth pop/smooth jazz. Cars drive by and honk, others let their car alarms scream out into the dark. The echoes of the bucket-drum circle on the other side of Nevsky penetrates through my windows. To add to this bizarre chorus are the sound of horse hooves as one trots down Karavanaya street every night at around this hour. Every once in a while you'll encounter someone riding a horse through downtown st. petersburg. I'm always tickled by this and laugh about it, especially when it's one of the miniature shetland ponies.

A lot has happened this last week and I've failed to write about any of it. I started an internship with the St. Petersburg Times, and the most exciting part: I get to write reviews of restaurants! This means I get to dine in fabulous spots around the city, write 500 words about the food, atmosphere and experience with the lovely paper footing the bill. Swanky. I treated my friend Kostya to a meal at a place that advertises itself as the "first photo-portrait themed restaurant in petersburg". The first photo-portrait themed restaurant to pop up anywhere as far as I know.

I also spent a good deal of time translating some articles for the Russian and English magazine Pulse. Their usual translator is vacationing in Germany where someone stole his laptop with all his work on it. This happened around 4 or 5 days before the magazine was supposed to go to print, so the people at Pulse were scrambling for help. They share an office with the Times, so I offered to help. The articles they sent me mostly featured restaurant and business news. One article was excruciating to translate, not because of the vocabulary, but because of the subject: ski vacation destinations in Norway. I was practically drooling over my keyboard transfering descriptions of endless slopes of powder from Russian to English.

I'm running out of hair these days. Mine has been chopped short! It's chin length now, and this wasn't quite intentional. One night while out with some friends this guy asked if I wanted a free haircut because he was in search of some hair models. I figured, why not? I love free stuff! He told me that he wouldn't cut very much off, it would look the same just a little shorter. My interpretation of "just a little shorter" is one inch- especially when my locks had just been cropped a fair amount this summer, so there wasn't an excessive amount to work with. Unfortunately, his idea of "just a little shorter" was around three inches. After three hours of labour (i've never seen anyone cut hair so slooooowly) I left the studio in a state of shock just thinking "it'll grow back, it'll grow back."
Sasha reassured me and told me that it looks really great! It's not a bad cut, pretty cute even. I'm just still in shock about it. I'll put a photo up tomorrow so that you can see for yourself.

anyway, the neighbor just turned off the music, so i'm going to get some shuteye.