Rain

St. Petersburg seems to have decided to show me its true colors (or, at the very least, its usual self)- the weather has turned gray and rainy. I saw my first St. Petersburg raindrops while I was lying in bed (and enjoying some chocolate) on Sunday morning. Later on Sunday, I was rained upon for the first time after another storm rolled in. (I had elected not to go outside earlier in the day and had thus avoided getting wet the first time).

I generally don't mind rain. I grew up with the mindset that more rain now means a less severe drought next summer, and I never got rained upon frequently enough to annoy me, so raindrops and I have remained on good terms. My daily routine here doesn't involve spending much time outside, usually just a few short walks between the school and the dorms, so I don't have much time to get rained on. This means that, so far, my relationship with the rain has yet to sour.

The rain brought with it much cooler temperatures than we had been having previously. They're not low enough to qualify as actually being cold, but it is chilly enough inside the school to make me wish that the heat had been turned on. Still, it's definitely not unbearable. I feel my body protesting as I shed my sweaters and leg warmers at the start of class, but once we get through our first several barre exercises, I have been moving around enough to warm up to a comfortable temperature.

The beautiful studio with the portrait of Vaganova hung in the back is my favorite studio, but class is especially chilly when it is in there.

Part of the beauty of the studio is that it is lit almost entirely by natural light. During the day, the chandeliers hung from the ceiling serve a decorative purpose far more than a functional one. Since the studio is sandwiched between two courtyards (one on the left and one on the right), is deeper than it is wide, and is three stories tall, there is a lot of space for windows, the source of the natural lighting. 

The windows are one of my favorite things about this studio, but their presence and numerousness (there are twenty-four in total) means that there is a lot of exterior-wall area surrounding the room. That makes the it particularly sensitive to the fluctuations in the temperature outside, so it ends up being much colder than the other studios, which are all surrounded primarily by interior walls. 

This was where we had class this morning, so I started my day feeling a bit more like an ice cube than I would have preferred. My teacher understood how cold we were and didn't protest to us wearing our sweaters and whatnot for the first few combinations, which was good, because I'm not sure it would have been possible for me to start class while wearing just a leotard and tights. It didn't take much longer before I was warmed up enough to focus on dancing instead of on being cold, but I'm still really looking forwards to the day when the heat is turned on!