Rotary Trip to Russia

Wow. St. Petersburg was amazing.

On Saturday May 2nd, I went on the Rotary trip to St. Petersburg, Russia with about 70 other exchange students. We spent 2 full days (Sunday, Monday) in downtown St. Petersburg and it was one of the best times of my exchange year. There are still MANY pictures I'm waiting to find on Facebook from my friends, so I will definitely be posting more later but here is a fun photo. It's a bunch of us (exchange students) with a Russian performer from a Cossack (traditional Russian) show we saw.

We got a fantastic taste of Russian culture. On Sunday we toured the Hermitage museum, home to over 3 million pieces of art, including creations from Picasso, Da Vinci and Van Gogh. Below, I pull a footbag stall next to a Da Vinci painting.



After the Hermitage museum we visited "Kunstkamera - Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography". I don't have any pictures yet, but this was actually REALLY interesting. In the evening on Sunday was the incredible "Nutcracker" ballet! (photo credit to Sibylle Morel from France)

Actually, at intermission, my friends and I went into the city and found some footbag players on the street! We ended playing for awhile and exchanging contact information and it felt really cool to play with Russians. Of course we got in lots of hacky on this trip, here we are playing outside the ballet theatre. (not with the Russians - photo credit to Sibylle)

On Monday morning, we had a guided bus tour through the city and had over 4 hours of free time for shopping in the afternoon. There were lots of interesting markets selling all sorts of Russian items (mostly for the tourists). Below is one of the stands selling matryoshka dolls. (credit to Sibylle)



There are many beautiful churches in St. Petersburg, like the one below. (credit to Sibylle)

I found this trip to be considerably more enjoyable than the Lapland trip but it really comes down to spending time with the other exchange students. The other exchange students in Finland are like family, and when we're together, we have some seriously good times. For example, the photo below (Sibylle again!) is from the Canada-Finland hockey game. A group of us watched the game in the hotel lobby on the projector screen there. I'm the one standing! I think this was during the shootout, so everyone was on edge! Canada lost, for those who don't already know :/

Like I said, more pictures are on the way from this trip, and from Vappu. I'm going to be very busy again this week: I am playing piano at my host dad's fancy restaurant on Friday and Sunday, and I will be visiting the Fazer chocolate factory in Helsinki next Monday. My schedule is almost full until Eurotour, starting May 31st.