So, uh, how 'bout that weather...

It got cold. Not spit-and-it-freezes, have-to-amputate-your-frostbitten-extremities, cut-open-an-animal-to-stay-alive cold—at least not yet—but pretty damn cold. It snowed once back in October, but that melted in a couple days and it continued to be fall. Incidentally, this fall was the warmest fall St. Petersburg had seen in over 140 years. Which made it even more devastating when, this week, the weather decided to stop screwing around and get back to the business of kicking all of our asses.
Yes, there’s snow. In the parks it’s pretty, but on the streets it turns into disgusting brown slush when it’s not blowing directly into your face. And that’s another thing: the wind. It’s indecisive. One minute it’s coming at you from behind, one minute from the side, and the next minute you could lean forward with all your weight and the wind would keep you from falling down.
The city, though, is totally in its element in this weather. The buildings seem more elegant, the metro seems more welcoming, and the streets and apartment buildings seem more…shall we say, Dostoevskian. Even the natives have a kind of spring in their stiletto-heeled step when treading on the freshly fallen snow.
Another sign of winter: the not-so-gradual disappearance of the sun. Every day now, the sun rises three minutes later and sets three minutes earlier than it did the previous day. Yes, the sight of the sun rising over the Kazansky Cathedral is both beautiful and awe-inspiring, but this should not be happening at nine-fucking-fifteen in the morning! It's getting to the point where I can literally say I spend all my daylight hours in class. Makes a pretty good case for human hibernation.
In an effort to stay warm and possibly burn off some of those blini, I went to my tutor’s “aerobics and shaping” class--that would be the class my tutor teaches, not just one that she goes to. All I can say is, I now know why Russian girls are so skinny. Aside from the cryptic, impossible-to-repeat aerobic steps that made me feel even more clumsy and awkward than I normally do in this country, there were a lot of exercises that involved large wooden sticks. Honestly, what is it with Russians and sticks, and the presumption that the latter is always good for your health?
On a more positive note regarding classes, I now have a new goal for the semester: convince the teacher of my “Muzikalniye Proizvodeniye i Ispolnitel” class to give up teaching Russians and come live at Pomona. Seriously, he’s that good. I've only been twice, but as far as I can tell it consists of him talking about whatever music-related things come to his mind, and they’re always really interesting and—here’s the key—understandable. It helps that he’s just so incredibly enthusiastic and interested in everything music-related, especially music perception. It’s a welcome change from my conversation, phonetics and grammar teachers. Not that I can blame them, of course—if I had to teach English to a bunch of Russian students who only got excited about learning when the vocabulary had to do with drinking, enthusiasm would be the last thing on my mind.