Yesterday (Wednesday), I finally made it to Aшан. Since I had stayed 11 hours the day before at the lab and knew we wouldn't be starting anything til 2pm on Wednesday, I made an executive choice to sleep later and go grocery shopping (it was necessary, trust me). There aren't many Aшан's in Petersburg, but I had heard that they were large and like a Costco, so I asked some people where the best one was located, and that morning, hopped on the metro to Leninsky Prospekt. I was also able to buy a metro card at that time -- the card I bought was for 60 rides at 1400 rubles, which roughly turns out to be 23 rubles per ride, which is ~50 cents. Not bad.
The store was 4 metro stops away in a(nother) mall/cinema/etc complex. It was easy to find, and as soon as I entered, I found myself greeted by a million people and signs saying "скидка" (sales). I had a list with a few items, but of course as soon as I started walking around, I found other things that I had forgotten were here.... there is so much deliciousness! I got a few dinner items, russian gummies, eggs, grechka, chocolate (the kind Roza used to give me!) and more. Unfortunately, I didn't have very long to stay since I had to be back at 2pm for the meeting (or so I thought). I hurried back to my apartment, dropped the groceries off, changed my shoes, and then headed out again.
When I got to the lab, I realized that they had said 16:00, not 14:00... oops. So, I had tea and talked with people. The discussion evolved into a conversation about books and movies and they asked me what kind of movies I had seen in Russian. In that moment, I was VERY happy that I had just finished two semesters of Soviet and Russian film classes, respectively. I had a lot of say, and they knew and loved most of the movies I had listed. They especially loved ирония судьбы ("Irony of Fate"), which my professor had told us that Russians watch every New Years (and the two lab people said that too!). They also said that they love Breaking Bad and Friends. We all bonded over Friends, it was great. Then one of them said that she didn't understand why it was so bad for friends to have sex, and that she didn't understand why anyone would want to do it with a stranger. I replied that friends who have sex are usually worried that their friendship will disspate. It was an interesting comment -- reflective of the closed Russian mindset towards strangers. She does have a point though.... Americans are weird.
At 4pm, everyone went downstairs to one of the many large offices to talk about what to do with me. It was very intimidating to have ~15 scientists talk in Russian about you... I didn't say much except for a few words about my background. Since I'm here for only 8 weeks, if I followed only one project, there might not be enough to do or learn. Therefore, I'll have two main projects (two different people) and then maybe bop around depending on if these projects obtain significant results. If there are significant results and if they are ready to publish, then I'll be authored! But if not, then I won't. Either way I think it works out -- to be a coauthor would just be an added bonus. It might be possible since the lab is supposed to turn out 20 papers per year..... you'd think one might be happening in the two months I'm here. We shall see.
After the meeting, I went back upstairs to the group I've been working with and made some buffers for the experiment today. It was quick and the calculations had already been done so I just had to follow the protocol.
Earlier in the week, I had contacted a girl from Conn who does Russian with me and who was here studying abroad this semester. We decided to get Georgian food and catch up. It was sooo nice seeing her -- not only because I hadn't seen her in 12 months (we went abroad different semesters) -- but because she was a lovely American piece of home. We chatted about the department, Russia, our experiences abroad, school, life in general... it was all so nice and the food was delicious. We stayed about 2.5 hours, and then left to go our separate ways. She's going back home on Friday.... my oh my how the time goes by... soon we'll all be back for our last year of school....
I got home around 10 and jumped in the shower (per usual), ate some sour Russian gummies, Skyped with Alec, watched Grey's, and went to sleeeeeeep. What a lovely day.
The next morning (this morning), I made eggs! I got to the lab, edited more of that paper, and then we started round 2 of experiments. After decapitating rats (this time under anesthesia), we put their hyppocampi and cortices in buffers, obtained a pellet, centrifuged and resuspended the pellet, and started immunochemistry with blocking and staining. Unfortunately I had to leave around 6pm (experiments were not done at that point) in order to go with Dr. Balaban to register my visa.
Maybe this is obvious to some, but Moscow is huge. 12 million people live here and the city is spread out. I live on the edge, and it takes forever to get anywhere. It took almost 5 times as long to GET to the visa place than it did to actually obtain the thing. Sigh. Some Americans would say Moscow is the NYC of Russia and that Petersburg is Boston. I've always enjoyed Boston.
Anyways, after getting the visa (which took all of 10 mins), we headed back onto the metro. I got off at Leninsky Prospekt in order to stop at Aшан to get ingredients for muffins. One of the lab people had made delicious lemon bread, and it inspired me to bake lemon poppyseed muffins. I found all the ingredients necessary minus baking powder/baking soda. I asked 2349230 people and they all pointed me in different directions, and even after 20 minutes of looking, all I could find were little packets of порошок для выпечки (still don't know if that's baking soda or baking powder.... there may not be a difference here).
I got home around 9:30, and after 3.5 hours of walking and traveling and grocery shopping, was too tired to do anything more than eat food. Soooooo muffins will have to wait until after I return from St. Petersburg (WEEEEE!).
I'll do a short post about Friday, and then I'll be off to my favorite city in the world! Until then.
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