Memoirs of First Week Fellows

It's Monday and that means that we've officially been here in St. Petersburg for one full week. I have to admit that the week was one of the hardest of my life. I cried daily for the first three days, but after that, my homesickness tapered off as we submersed ourselves in our new city. Days one through three were occupied with the Hillel seminar that Matt described and I will revisit below. After that, we had no mission other than to familiarize ourselves with St. Petersburg. Fortuitously, Katie and Dov were here and I thank heavens for their visit. It was exactly the distraction I needed -- familiar faces with a desire to go sightseeing! Since last Thursday, all we've done is sightseeing. It's kind of odd to not have an office or a 9-5 job, but at the same time, it's refreshing to be able to focus on discovering what surrounds us. There are a few successes that I'd like to reflect upon from this past week.

Triumph at the Hillel Conference

Reading over Matt's last blog post, I am saddened that he chose to portray our experience at the Hillel conference in a negative light. While the first session was slow and difficult, the afternoon session proved anything but. We tackled the topic of fundraising -- explaining why it's so important to the Russian Jewish community, the fundamentals of asking for a gift, and some lessons from the American Jewish lay leadership model that can be applied in loose terms in Russia. The group, who proved to be quite immature during the morning, was riveted and engaged. They did practice solicitation phone calls without any resistance; in fact, one of them mentioned in their evaluation that it was the most valuable part of our training seminar and that we should have spent more time honing their solicitation skills. We concluded the training with a goal-setting excercise. Each Hillel director had to set a goal and three tactics to reach that goal; we intend to check in with them at their mid-year seminar in February to see if they have achieved or started working towards achieving their goal. For us, the afternoon session erased the pain of the morning session. It gave us one quick success to place under our belt early in the year. And it gave us some confidence to tackle the as-of-yet-undetermined next project.

Slowly, Slowly Making Friends

Last night, Matt dragged me to the under-20 Women's World FIFA Championship soccer game between the US and Germany. Turns out it was a 20-minute walk from our house to the stadium and tickets were less than $5 for both of us. How could I complain? And through an expat listserv, Matt had successfully arranged to meet up with another expat couple at the game. The stadium was nearly empty, sadly, so we sat with the parents of the US team. To be surrounded by Americans was so incredibly comforting. The US team beat Germany 4-1. And afterwards, we went out for coffee with the other American expat couple. They are a little older than we are (with two small children) and have lived here for 5 years, doing missionary work. It was so nice to get insights and tips from "near-locals." I am so delighted that we have already begun to make friends. I think it will help smooth our transition tremendously.

No Sandwiches for Dinner

One of the hardest thing about a new country is grocery shopping. It's especially hard when you keep kosher and don't know Russian. Russia seems to operate on a similar system as Israel: there are grocery stores spread out across the city and on nearly every corner, there is a small "mikolet" or "productoy" in Russian. They seem to have a superb selection of three items -- bread, meat and cheese. Everything else is limited. Only a few items are cheap or reasonably priced -- cabbage, potatoes, beets, bread, tomatoes, apples, eggs and cheese. All else is imported, so it costs a small fortune. Needless to say, we've been eating a ton of sandwiches. At least I've been good about the variety, from tuna melts to egg salad and cheese sandwiches. But today was the breaking point. I realized that we just couldn't have one more sandwich-based meal! So tonight, I officially broke the mold and made rice noodles with Asian veggies as a stirfry. Coming from someone who prides herself on creative cooking, this year is going to push the limits of my creativity. But now that I've broken free of the endless sandwich cycle, I think we're off to a good start.