The update...

OK, here I am in the internet cafe with my laptop (wireless is SO much cheaper than using the computers here; the only price I pay is having to carry my laptop through a pretty sketchy area after dark...) and I have no idea where to start. Let's see.
I'm living with a host family consisting of a middle-aged physics professor and her 95-year-old mother. I'm in the Narvskaya region of St. Petersburg, otherwise known as Stalinland. I'm not kidding. This is the view from my window:

Not to mention the huge statue of Kirov right next to my apartment building, the bas-relief in the metro station of a group of happy workers holding up a banner that reads "Glory to Labor" and the enormous mural across from the metro station that contains the slogan "Proletarians of all countries unite!"
My apartment, too, recalls the Stalin era, maybe because there are very few things in it that are less than 50 years old. Not that I'm complaining...much. The location sucks--I pretty much have to find someone who lives in the center and has a couch I can crash on when I go out on weekends. But my family is adorable, especially the babushka. She survived the Communist revolution, and now here she is in 2005, telling me to take another cookie and then complaining about how greedy Americans are.
School is interesting. This, by the way, is why I'll never get lost on the way to school:


I love how totally nonchalant Russians are about these things. If I were asked the way to the Russky Gosudarstvenny Pedagogichesky Institut imeni Gertzena (that's my university) I'd be like, "Well, you exit the metro, turn left, cross the street, then turn left again. Or maybe you could just find the building right next to the ENORMOUS FUCKING CATHEDRAL!"
Anyway. Whoever placed people into groups presumably did so by skill level, but whoever it was screwed up. The people in my class are all a few years behind me as far as Russian experience is concerned. It makes class and homework ridiculously easy, but that's not why I'm here. Nothing in Russia is supposed to be easy, dammit!
I've been keeping busy enough in my free time. This past weekend, hung out with Stephanie (from Pomona) and my Russian professor Kostya (also from Pomona, on sabbatical) at an ultracool club called Che. This club--and actually, all of St. Petersburg--is a mecca for people-watchers like me. On any given day, Nevsky Prospect has much in common with your average runway: it’s filled with impossibly skinny women wearing things that no sane person in her right mind would even think about calling “clothes.” The other day I passed a woman wearing a skirt with a slit such that passersby could see not only London and France, but also Munich, Stockholm and possibly Lichtenstein. There also seems to be an overabundance of denim, which apparently is an attitude left over from the 80s, when denim was in short supply. The problem is, all these damn Russian girls are so tall and thin and blonde that they can get away with just about any fashion faux pas. If one of then had visible panty lines, a cameltoe and half a roll of toilet paper trailing from her shoe, I’m betting she’d still look more put together than me.
I also went with a group of people to Petergof (Peter the Great's summer palace), where I was treated to sights such as this:

and this:

Seriously, how cool would it be to be Russian royalty? Not only did Peter the Great found St. Petersburg, he got to design at least two or three dream palaces, complete with fountains he engineered himself. And I'm betting he didn't have to pay for it either. Ah, to have serfs...
And to think I haven't even been here for two weeks. More updates, of course, to follow.