How about them apples?

I found the perfect class to take for interim!  It's something about Indonesian music, and involves playing in a gamelan ensemble.  Finally!  I can fulfill my requirements for my minor in Ethnic Instrument Playing!  If anyone here remembers my old profile on Myspace, I said I was minoring in Ethnic Instrument Playing.  Now my dream can come true!  This whole thing came about because of the slideshow I saw at St. Olaf on Accepted Students Day, which consisted of a great many pictures of students playing ethnic instruments.  It's unfortunate that St. Olaf does not have a major in this.  I would LOVE to be a Nykelharpa (however that's spelled) major!  Maybe even a double major in Bagpipe as well.  I would be so rich!

Today I had an interesting array of breakfast choices: spaghetti, egg with hot dog, and prepackaged fried blinichki with meat and potatoes.  I wasn't sure what I was supposed to eat, so I chose some of all of them.

We had a fire drill today!  It was the silliest fire drill ever!  We weren't supposed to know the time when the alarm would sound, but the teachers tend to gossip, and they told us it would be at 12.  So instead of hanging around inside waiting for an annoying bell to ring, we went outside early.  We knew the drill had started when everyone else joined us.  We weren't allowed to actually walk away a safe distance from the building though, we had to stand right in front of the doors.  We all would have died in the event of a real fire.  And then it took us forever to get back inside, because the teacher with the key to our floor didn't go in first.  What I thought was most amusing was how they were giving announcements that I assume were connected with the fire drill through a loudspeaker, or megaphone, to a huge group of foreign students.  Have you noticed how hard it is to hear from a megaphone?  All I heard was "Mwop, mwo, mwowo."  Just like in Charlie Brown.

We're going to Peter again this weekend!  I'm not sure how to write that in English.  People here call St. Petersburg just "Peter" but spell it with an "i."  Piter.  Maybe Peter the Great should have named his city something his countrymen recognized better, like Pyoterberg, or even better, Petyaberg.  This time we're going to the Russian Museum, which is full of Russian art.  I sure have been to a lot of art museums in Russia. You'd think I really love them!  I like the Russian Museum because it has some Aivazovsky paintings that are HUGE.  Very nice.  I wonder if they'll have any of my new favorite Russian artist Grabar?

Fun Fact: Fruit flies don't like grapefruit.  Or pomegranate.