First real day of school...

So, to avoid such lengthy blog posts as last night's, I think I should update this as often as possible... Here is the overview of my first day of school :P

We left the house at 9am in order to walk to the school by 10 and still have time to spare. It took about 35-40 mins to walk, which isn't bad. I think I'll be walking every day unless the weather is truly awful, it's much less hassle than the Metro and there always seems to be something interesting happening en route... Today that happened to be some Asian-looking men getting their passports closely examined by some Militsia. We walked past hurriedly, in silence of course! Eek. Despite being in the country legally, I'm really scared about the prospect of the police asking to check my passport.

Upon arrival at the school, we found our class lists on the wall of the corridor. I am in class 3, though I'm not sure how the classes are ordered, so I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I'm with 3 other Manchester students, though, which is nice, and there are also 3 post-A level students in the class, so I guess it can't be a particularly bad class. Our first lesson was supposed to be on vocabulary, but a lot of it was taken up introducing ourselves. The lecturer was nice and I enjoyed the lesson. It wasn't too difficult, but it was the first day, so I'm assuming they'll start pushing us a bit more later on. My second lesson was oral, which was spent 'presenting' ourselves to the class, telling everyone a little about ourselves followed by questions from the lecturer, who was lovely. I now know all about my classmates, which is nice. The other students come from Edinburgh, St Andrews, Nottingham and Exeter universities. It'll be interesting to see which universities teach which things!

After university, we went for lunch near Nevsky then went on a hunt for the statue of the Bronze Horseman, on a bank of the river Neva. It was nice to see the statue I'd heard so much about in person, and seeing all the wedding parties having photos taken with it was entertaining. Russians seem to place so much importance in their wedding photos, it seems they'll happily trek around for hours all dressed up in order to ensure they get the best photos possible! Crazy. After seeing the statue, we walked along the Neva for a bit, and discovered a restaurant and night club on a pirate ship. I clearly need to visit this place, it looks immense! And it's right behind the Hermitage, which we went and had a look at again. It's so pretty it's unreal! Such a lovely colour and so much detail in the decoration... I'll take some photos when it's sunny again!

Then we walked back to Nevsky and visited Дом Книги (house of books), a popular chain of book stores in Russia. I found the English section and had a field day... They have hundreds of different Russian-English dictionaries for a fraction of the price they would be at home! And they had loads of Russian learners' story books and English novels, it was awesome. I'm definitely going back there when I have more money... After this we went for one drink in Дача and headed for home - via H&M. I managed to buy 4 lovely new tops, which were obviously necessary... No, really. I hardly brought any clothes with me :( Luckily, Russian H&M isn't much more expensive than English H&M, so it wasn't too bad.

I don't have any homework for tomorrow, but I might try and learn some of the new vocabulary I've encountered since arriving here... Then again, I may just go to bed! So tired!