The past few days have been a whirlwind of events, and let me tell you that life has been FUN.

We have quite a few holidays off in May, which is wonderful because everyone has spring fever after surviving a Russian winter and working with kids nine hours a day. The weather is absolutely beautiful outside, and there is a whole new atmosphere in Petersburg. There are tons of people on the streets, the markets are open, kids are playing in the park, and the trees are just about to bloom. Basically, people seem much happier.

On Saturday, it was the great holiday of Cinco de Mayo and we had a bash at my fellow Texan and dear friend Angela’s apartment. She even made tamales out of masa flown to her from TEXAS. Whoa. Commitment. We had guacamole, salsa, and tortilla chips (as close as you can get to tortilla chips in Russia). A ton of people came and it was all around lovely. I also committed to a very passionate rendition of Across the Universe’s gospel rendition of Let it Be (SHOUT OUT TO KEA!). Not only does it combine my love of gospel plus Aretha Franklin influenced singing, but it is also a song that you can belt at the top of your lungs. That I did. I had my hands in the air, eyes closed, and was just yell-singing. Because I sound like a tranquilized Aretha Franklin who smoked too many cigarettes and can’t reach the top notes, and it was not too positively received. Also I don’t smoke, which is saying something.

I wanted to capitalize on my holidays, so a group of us took a little trip to Vyborg. Vyborg is an old, small city on the border between Russia and Finland. It is not particularly thriving, but it has St. Olaf’s Tower (WHOOO ST.OLAF!) and an old castle which was pretty neat. You could even shoot a crossbow that had absolutely ZERO safety precautions. COOL!

Well, we were able to see the city in under three hours. We decided to go to a pub and make friends with a very cool bartender. We knew we had LOOOOADS of hours until the last train, which was supposed to depart at 10:30 p.m. No problem. This was at about 4pm in the afternoon. We decided to head out at about 945, you know JUST TO BE SAFE. We got to the station and the attendant was rather perturbed by our presence. “What are you doing? You may not enter through here!” We were a little surprised because we just wanted to get on our train. HMMMMM. We were rather befuddled as to why we were so strongly rejected from getting on our train. As it turns out, we missed the last train back to Petersburg by about oh….two hours. Whooooops.

Mind you, the group of us had really just met a couple days before. There were two new guys who a few of us had met literally less than 48 hours prior to our little adventure. Luckily, everyone had an awesome attitude and we found the Vyborg hostel after a few rounds of asking for rooms in places where they needed all of our passports/the Luxe room was the only one left. We finally made it to our hostel, and continued the bonding session of our newly formed adventure crew. We met some people from Moscow, one who was a rather drunk man wearing a tall furry hat. He talked to us for a while, and then finally settled down into watching some tv. The Thomas Crowne Affair was on, which is a wonderful movie. Katie, one of the wonderful ladies on our trip, was rather keen on watching it. They changed the channel and Katie asked if they could possibly keep it on The Thomas Crowne Affair. The furry hat guy responded by taking the ENTIRE TV out of the socket and dragging it out of the room. He really didn’t want to watch The Thomas Crowne Affair apparently.

We were able to leave the next day with lots of hilarious memories about our one accidental night in Vyborg. We looked a little disheveled, a little dirty, and a little greasy but man was it FUN.

ALSO LISTEN UP EVERYONE, BIG NEWS!

I, Lindsay Berg, am a grown up. I mean not in all ways quite yet, but I just made the largest purchase ever in my life. I bought a spanking new laptop after the keyboard broke on my old one. I walked in, paid for it in CASH MONEY, and walked out with a brand new laptop that works! I felt very proud of myself, I did it in Russian, and I paid for it with my own money. Whoo! I am pretty proud of myself.

I am pretty excited about the Petersburg spring. The city is alive and throbbing with joy. AND I will see my parents next month, whooooooa. Life is wonderful! I hope yours is too. Do a cart wheel and have a dance party, and throw glitter on someone!