By: Gisele Greaux

Здравствуйте (Strasvuytche)! That’s Russian for hello. It’s been awhile since I’ve last written but it has been non-stop action since we took off. It was a long journey, we left Atlanta at 6 p.m. on Friday, June 28 and arrived in St. Petersburg around noon on Saturday (8 p.m. EST). Despite the long flight and layover in Frankfurt, Germany, it was a nice trip.

There’s a huge difference between American airline companies and the German one that we flew on (Lufthansa in case you were wondering). The service provided was friendly, efficient, and we didn’t have to pay any additional fees for anything. Not even headphones. Yes, you read correctly, we got free headphones. We also got free alcoholic beverages (I loved the red wine) and great airline food (another shocker).

As soon as we arrived to our dorm building, though we were tired, we got our first taste of Russian food, which I have already come to love. The dorm room itself is nice in a simple way, and there is a common room that has become the hang out spot before most of us go to sleep. It’s also the only place that has WiFi; its great because our rooms have wired Internet and for the first few days, the room Internet wasn’t working (plus there’s only one Ethernet cord per room so even after the Internet started working, people still went to the common room when their room mates were using the dorm room Internet). I’m not going to bore you with all the details of dorm life though, so here’s where I will say до свидания (dasvildanya)!