Well, I've been quite lousy at keeping up with my blog so far in 2009 and i'm hoping to change that soon.

New Year's Eve in Petersburg was worth the early flight home. After a feast and games at Olga's house we took our party group to the streets where everyone was out- there was a girl in a Father Frost costume handing out clementines, groups of people dancing, setting off fireworks-all of petersburg was running around on Nevsky shouting "С НОВЫМ ГОДОМ!" to each other.
I posted some pictures from the night here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurichka/

and then everyone was on holiday until yesterday.

I met with Yuri a few days ago and we outlined goals for the rest of the year. He and Pyotr pulled out a bunch of printmaking journals and suggested i submit the article that I wrote to more specialized journals.

On Friday some of my fellow fulbright friends arrived: Abbie, Jason and Matt. The four of us plus Olga (five total) are heading out on a trip throough parts of Europe tomorrow. I've already been to the countries we're visiting- the netherlands, germany and czech republic- but it'll be just as exciting to go back and spend more time in these places and nothing beats wonderful travel company.

We've been having a great time together so far- seeing places like the Nabakov museuem (complete with his butterfly collection!), the Hermitage, an opera: The Magic Flute, and the Russian Museum. The opera, as it turns out, was not in the Marinskii, but the music hall of the marinsky. We were worried that we were going to be late when we got to the theatre and rushed to buy tickets without realizing that they were tickets to Swan Lake. Oh no!
Luckily, our fluent friend Olga was able to save us all. She told the lady at the ticket window that her friends don't speak Russian and that we wanted to see the magic flute. She switched our tickets and we got seats for the Magic Flute right on the stage!

so much more i want to write, but so much needs to get done today. I'll catch up soon!