The weather is getting warmer!

Finally, it seems that the snow has stopped. My host mother says you can never be too sure -- it could snow in June here! But, I'm hoping for the best. It's been so nice to wear light jackets, sneakers instead of boots, etc. The downside is that the weather is great that I spend entire days walking around the city. Which isn't so bad, except it takes a lot of time away from doing homework and stuff like that. Also, the fact that it stays light so late at night has not helped my sense of time. I walk around until 9 pm and don't notice because it looks like 4:00 outside! And that's only going to get worse...soon it will be light at 2 am!

This past week, the orchestra I've been playing with had a concert. We had mostly been practicing tango music, but it sounded pretty empty, so I was a little confused. At the dress rehearsal (which was also the first time I heard that we were playing a concert), the conductor came out with an accordion. I guess he's a semi-famous accordionist and all the music we were playing was for him to solo with. My friends insisted on coming to my concert even though I told them it probably wasn't worth it. We were all in for a surprise because I didn't realize that the concert was a tribute to the accordion and had about 20 different groups performing. There were more accordions there than I had ever seen in my life. My friends had to sit through about 2 hours of listening to groups of accordions playing all kinds of music. I was shocked backstage as I watched 30 people walk in a line past me with accordions and balalaikas (Russian traditional instruments).

Another exciting moment of this week was that the olympic torch relay came through St. Petersburg! I went out to a corner where it was supposed to pass and waited for hours with hundreds of people. All in all, the torch went by very quickly, but it was worth the shared experience. It's not every olympic season that I'm in a city where the torch is going to pass through. It was interesting to see so much enthusiasm for the Olympics that are being held in China, when most Russians have such strong prejudices against the Chinese.

Yesterday, we had a group trip to see the opera "Ruslan and Lyudmila" with music by Glinka. It's based on a Pushkin poem, which is supposed to be enjoyable, but the opera was about 5 hours long and extremely boring. It was my first time in the Mariinski theater, though, and I was very impressed.

I'm sorry these entries have been getting shorter...I think I'm just getting busier!