I'm Writing to You From the Future

7:30 am Wednesday 8-30-06 = 8:30 pm Tuesday 8-29-06


Hello Mountain Standard Time citizens! I'm writing from my new favorite city in the whole world, St. Petersburg, Russia. It is GORGEOUS here! This is the most European-feeling city I've ever been to and I love it! The buildings here are so ornate and there are statues and carved figures and monuments everywhere. Plus, everything is done in beautiful pastels with different shades of oranges, yellows, blues, and greens. It is mah-velous. This city was built on a swamp so there are canals and rivers throughout, which mean bridges and fabulous water everywhere. I could spend so much time here! Unfortunately, we only have 2 days. So, while Adam is making the most of his time by participating in his fantasy football draft (those Utah rugby boys are such dorks!), I'll fill you in on some things I've noticed on my trip.

Kari's Observations of Russia & the Russian People

1. Mullets= cool to Russians. For some unfathomable reason they think the mullet is something to be proud of & they are seen in large numbers in all cities. I've even started to make classifications for the vast styles of this horrible 'do: the Pixie Mullet; Gothic Mullet; Faux-Hawk Mullet; Cat Mullet (this one was probably the best one we saw--hair cut short all the way around a ponytail--oh wait, it was a banana clip!. Hilarious!); Baby/Young Child Mullet; She-Mullet (a classic); and Businessman Mullet.

2. Russian girls are very skinny. Their thighs don't even touch (yes, Katie would fit in well here). And, they wear high heels everywhere & at all times...on the plane, on rainy days, walking a million miles all across the city...

3. Smelling good? Not a priority. Smelling bad? Very common...one might even venture to say it's the norm.

4. Nothing in Russia opens until 10:00 am...probably because everyone is too hung over from the night before to get out of bed any earlier. On weekends, it's 12:00 instead of 10:00.

5. Light switches are low on the wall instead of higher like in America. They are at hand height when your arms are at your side. Makes some sense I guess.

6. Lots of people go by shorter forms of their names, even if they're not shorter. Here are some examples (given name first, shorter more commonly used name second):
-Olga= Olya
-Daria= Dasha
-George= Gosha
-Maria= Masha
-Natalia= Natasha
-Sergei=Seriosha

There's also about a 60% chance that any given male is named Alexander (shorter name Sasha--how they came up with that from Alexander??) and any given female is Olga or Lena.

7. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as emissions testing.

8. There are no set prices. Oh wait, yes there are, it's just that Americans get charged 2 or 3 times more than Russians. Some places will even have it listed: "Russian Price" and "Foreigner Price". It makes me very mad because in America, we don't discriminate like that and screw over all travellers. They even come and live in our country and we end up paying for it! This issue really makes me mad, but I digress.

I'm sure there will be more, but for now I am done. I've written 38 pages in my journal so far and I haven't even journaled past last Saturday. I will be home on Thursday so I'll try to give a little summary of highlights from the trip sometime after that.

Paca!