Sunday

I spent my first day off with Оля, my friend from Moscow. 

We began our afternoon with a visit to the store where I purchased my SIM card. I had sent Оля a few text messages yesterday, but text messaging to phones with SIM cards from other companies is not included in my monthly plan, so my phone stopped working properly. The problem was resolved by adding one rouble (worth about $0.03) to the account, and now my phone is working properly again.

I am glad that Оля was there to help me, otherwise I would be a very sad person with a dysfunctional cell phone and no way to update my blog. (It is nearly impossible to upload a post using the school wifi, so I use cellular data on my phone to do so, and that had stopped working when my phone got angry at me for texting).

I love visiting Russian cathedrals, so I asked Оля to take me to see some. One was St. Isaac's Cathedral.

We went up to the colonnade, which is just below the bottom of the central dome. You can walk all the way around the cathedral, looking over the edge to see all of St. Petersburg stretching out below.

The taller of the two gold spires on the horizon in the picture above is another cathedral that we visited today, the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Today was a lot cooler and the sky much grayer than it was earlier this week, which made it feel more like autumn. 

Оля told me that it was still surprisingly warm for this time of year, even today. I am getting the feeling that cold weather may be on the way sooner and more intensely than I had anticipated. I hope I brought enough warm clothes... :)