End of Intensive Russian, beginning of viola

I'm officially done with my intensive Russian program! I just finished my last class (actually one class was canceled today, which made us all extremely thankful). It feels good to be done with this 2 week portion of the program. Now, on Monday, our real semester will begin. Tonight we have a kick-off dinner, which is kind of a mixer to get us to meet some Russian Smolny students. We'll see how that goes. As I'm a vegetarian here, I always have to sit at a certain part of the table, and there are definitely not going to be any vegetarian Russian students, so I'll probably just end up talking to my friends.

Yesterday was a really exciting day -- I had my first viola lesson! I was really scared and nervous about meeting my teacher. I had a vision of Russian music teachers being really strict, totally focused on technique, and kind of not caring about the student at all. I also foresaw a problem because when I called him to confirm, he gave me more precise directions of where to meet him, and I had no clue what he said. All I knew was that I was supposed to go to the Philharmonic hall, and something about the number 3.

So, immediately after class yesterday I got on the metro to go further into town. I realized that it was the first time I had actually traveled anywhere by myself in St. Petersburg, and it felt quite liberating and natural. Not that I've been clinging to my friends or anything, but since my closest ones live a minute away from me, it's generally easier and more fun to do things together.

But, I arrived at the philharmonic hall, and was walking around outside, when I spotted a door marked 3. I was debating whether to enter when some guy came up to me, holding a viola case and said "Are you looking for me?" So, I found Andrei Dogadin, my teacher. We have lessons in a room in that building, and the lesson felt completely normal. I could understand basically everything he said in Russian, and he used a few english words as well. But, generally music lessons involve a lot of gesturing, singing, movement, demonstrations...so it's easy to communicate. It felt different in the sense that studying with any new teacher feels different; you have to adjust to their musical interpretations and how they teach. But, I feel like I got a lot out of it, we connected pretty well, and I'm looking forward to studying with him for the semester. After the lesson, we walked outside and talked while he smoked a cigarette. The conversation consisted mostly of him asking me if Ohio is a nice state (I said no), him asking me to rank music schools in the US (which I did incorrectly after I realized his son was going to one that I had not given the 1st ranking), and him telling me that I play very well, but need to analyze everything.

Other than that, things have been going pretty well. I found a stash of DVDs belonging to my host sister that are all American movies dubbed in Russian. I'm most of the way through "What Women Want" and I'm looking forward to watching them all. It's a nice way to compromise my yearning for American culture with some educational Russian learning.

My friend's boyfriend was commenting that whenever he talks to her, she doesn't rave about how fantastic Russia is, and how she's having the best time of her life, which are comments often heard from people studying abroad. We were thinking about that, and realized that Russia is not a place that people normally rave about. We're having a great time, but it's more of a learning experience than a "best semester ever" kind of thing.

Well, I'm going to go home and get ready for the weekend. Hope everything is great with everyone, and keep sending me e-mails!