Our Beloved Gostinitsa

Leah and I (yes this is Ross writing this blog to all those people *cough* Jeana *cough* who tell me that I'm lazy and never write blogs...) have had a very busy and slightly stressful last few weeks. To start with, as you all know, Leah and I tried out a homestay. We had always wondered since the begining of the program if it would be possible to find a homestay for a couple, and what it would be like. Since I had such a great experience in Quebec City with my homestay (Merci beaucoup Madame Belanger) we decided to give it a try and contacted our coordinator and asked if it was possible. Within less than a week she told us that she had found us a homestay, and we were eager to try it out. Leah and I ventured to a different region of St. Petersburg which we really loved (near metro stop tekhnologicheski institut), and found what was to be our new residence in a nice, but old apartment block. The new homestay consisted of a middle aged woman (probably around 40-50) and her elderly and "sick" mother. The apartment itself was quite nice and big, our room there was at least twice the size of our room at the Gostinitsa and was quite nicely decorated with hardwood floors, plants, and a big rug on the wall. The apartment had three big bedrooms, a small but clean bathroom and a small kitchen. It was conveniently located less than five minutes from a Metro stop that directly went to the school, and was also within walking distance of downtown. Everything was perfect except the homestay itself. We soon found out that the situation was less than ideal as our host people never really talked to us. The whole reason that we decided to give the homestay a try was to have the opportunity to practice speaking Russian more. Our host "mother" worked later then we had to go to school, so we would wake up and go to school and she would still be in her bedroom asleep. When she would come home in the evening she would usually make a quick dinner and then spent the rest of the night in her bedroom watching tv with the door closed. Neither of us felt particularly comfortable knocking on the bedroom door of a complete stranger and trying to make small talk with her, and as she didn't really make any effort to communicate with us, the situation was less than ideal. The agreement with the school for homestays was also that breakfast would be provided to us, and Leah and I were quite excited to not have to get up and try to make breakfast for ourselves. However, as she didn't need to get up when we did, she simply bought us some breakfast foods to make for ourselves. This was unfortunate as what she brought us was eggs, and making them in the morning would mean having to get up about an hour earlier than usual to make breakfast as well as to wash our dishes and then head out to school, whereas in the Gostinitsa we would roll out of bed, have a quick bite to eat (yoghurt, cereal etc) and then get driven to the school. The final determining factor was the cost. Despite Leah and I taking up the space of one person, because there was two of us the school wanted us to pay the equivalent of two people on the homestay. This worked out to 17.6 Euros each per night, which would mean around $60 Canadian for the two of us. The cost for the two of us to stay in the homestay for the rest of program would have cost us around $3600! Once we realized that the cost of the homestay far outweighed its benefits we decided to leave as soon as possible and contacted our coordinator. We explained the situation and paid for the time that we had already spent in the homestay. Today, after school Leah and I returned to the homestay, packed all of our stuff up again (we're experts now), called a taxi and moved back to the Gostnitsa. For some reason, despite all its faults, returning to the Gostinitsa was like a breath of fresh air, and Leah and I both breathed a big sigh of relief when we stepped through the doors.