Wintertime, and the living is ... normal

It's been a while since I have written.  No excuse except lack of dedication.  What can I say, you are getting your money's worth (the time spent reading, you will never get back). Anyway, here I am.

About 2 weeks ago, I had a serious crisis of intention.  As in what am I doing?  Not really so much what am I doing here in Russia, but what am I doing overall.  Is this what I want to be doing (teaching english, living in strange cities)?  Even if it is should I be doing it somewhere warm with better fruit selections (hello Brasil)?  I was on the verge of packing up and returning home to think about it.  I finally decided that I could think about it just as well here and that by actually doing it for a while longer, I might actually answer some of those questions.  At least if the answer is no, I will have eliminated one possibility.

So, here I am, living in Saint Petersburg, Russia.  I work as an english teacher.  Damn is this glamourous.  One reason I haven't written is because life here is the same as it is anywhere.  Get up, go to work. Go home. Shop for food. Cook. Eat. Do laundry.  If you are reading this and you are alive, I expect you know the drill.

Ok, so I have an apartment in the middle of the city.  The apartment is fine although the kitchen is ridiculously small.  Here are some pictures:

This is the main room.  All the pictures except this one are taken from that door over there on the far left.

This is the same room with a picture taken from that door.  Those windows look out on Fontanki canal (see the map I will link after the pictures) and the entrance to the building is on Kryukova canal, the little canal that meets it at my corner.

Here is the "kitchen".  It's actually something like an entrance hallway.  The front door, which you can't see, is to the right of the door you can see which leads to the bathroom.  Yes, this is the whole kitchen.  The small fridge with the microwave on top is just inside the door.  Just behind the butter you can almost see my stove.  Ok, it's a plug in electrical burner.  It's a damn good thing I can't cook.

The bathroom is just fine.  It has a nice shower and even a washing machine.  You can't really tell, but the washing machine can only be called cute.  It's about 20" deep and has room for about 1.5 changes of clothes. I didn't think you would miss seeing the toilet which is around the corner to the right.  It works.  There is no dryer.  You can kind of see the lines strung from the wall above the washing machine to over the toilet for drying clothes.

Here is a link to a google map showing where it is located:

My place in SPb

If you look at the street view, you should see the corner of the building and you will see the entrance down the right side.  My place actually looks at the big canal.  My windows are down the left side just above and past the door you can see there.  Of course all these pictures were taken in summer.  At the moment there is ice and snow all over the place and the canal is frozen over.

I had an interesting international gathering of friends here last sunday.  I will write about it in the next post.