Sick in St. Petersburg

It’s ironic because I actually wrote my Moscow post 3 days ago. But as soon as I got back from Paris, my internet seems to have ceased working. And this is also the time that I started to get sick. I took the last two days off from school, and went to the apteka (pharmacy) last night and struggled to explained my symptoms to the pharmacist, and was able to get across that I wanted Vitamin C (pretty much the same thing in Russian only with a heavy accent). She loaded me up with all sorts of goodies, such as Vitamin C tablets, powder for tea, as well as some other pills that I don’t know what they are but my babushka says they are good. Hmm, I hope my $20 worth of medicine will help me get over my illness fast.

It wouldn’t be so bad except that my phone keeps running out of minutes and in order to buy more I have to walk fifteen minutes to the machine at the metro. Problem is, is that I’ve been getting around by Marshuka lately (private vans that drive around as public busses) and I’m not in the best spirits to go walk half an hour total just to use my phone. And my internet doesn’t work anymore, which means tomorrow (Saturday), I’ll probably go to the internet cafe to publish my posts and pictures and get some messages out. Another funny circumstance is very often I can read things online, but not respond. I guess this is what happens when you steal someone else’s internet.

So as for being sick in St. Petersburg? It’s not so terrible. Though I wish I were sipping hot chocolate in the big room at home and watching movies and tv, it’s not that different here. Instead I’m drinking tea, lying under the blankets of my double bed, watching movies, and reading novels (I just finished Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey – but I wasn’t too impressed). But it is annoying that I cannot just hop into my car, turn up the heat and drive to wherever I have to go. Tonight I’m going to visit my sobesednicki’s parent’s house for dinner tonight (I hope they don’t think I have the plague. A sobesednicki is a person that you meet to practice your language in. So Genya wants to practice her English, and I, my Russian. She’s very nice and we get along very well, so her mom asked me over a couple of weeks ago, but I had my vacation. I just wish I weren’t so sick right now, but I am very excited.

It’s funny because this post might get published before Moscow’s, because I don’t want to put that one up until I can add pictures, it’s not the same.

Mhmm, it’s snowing outside.