Zolotaya Osen'

The title means “golden autumn,” for those of you keeping track. That’s how they refer to this time of year ‘round here.To celebrate the end of the first round of exams, a few of the other students and I went to Pavlovsk on Saturday. It’s a town about a half hour away from St. Petersburg with a beautiful park—the former estate of Grand Duke Pavel, Catherine the Great’s son. It was great to get out of the city and see some foilage (sic).Foilage (sic), yay!From left: Alex, Swathi, me, Jenn (hiding, for some reason), and Hilary. We ran into some students from Hogwarts, who were there on a field trip. The locals got into the spirit of the season by making crowns out of the leaves. We were lucky enough to find some crowns that were left behind. Here’s Hilary, modeling one of the crowns: I tried to make a crown of my own, but it was hard, so I gave up. Alex apparently thinks we’re posing for a Calvin Klein ad in this pic:Even the statues were getting into the spirit of the season! We found a lovely bridgeSuch a good-looking bunch: Melissa, Jenn, Hilary, Alex, and me. That night, we traded Alex for Carrie (hee!), and the six of us girls had a fun impromptu Ladies’ Night in Swathi’s apartment. Her host family was away at their dacha for the weekend, so we had the place to ourselves. We stopped by a grocery store on the way to her place and bought a splendorific assortment of food and beverages—complete with three bottles of Soviet champagne! I love that stuff. I just love that it exists—oxymoronic in a way. Cristal for the Proletariat.Anyway, it ended up being a fabulous evening of delicious food, drink, and girl talk. It’s really cool how all of us in this fellowship group hit it off and became friends automatically. We don’t have classes during the last week of October, so a few of us are planning a boat trip to Scandinavia! I’m sooo excited!Oh, and I do have great pics from Novgorod, and I will post them once I figure out how to resize them. I’m still a bit of a greenhorn at this stuff. Do vstrecha!