Hello, hope everyone’s doing well. Everything is going good here in Russia. It’s Victory Day (День победы;dyen pobedy) today, so no work, classes, etc. I have three finals next week and I am not worried. That’s a victory for me, an inveterate stress-bot and control freak. Maybe it is having only one final each day, maybe it is not being surrounded by cramming students (Russian finals are not until later), maybe it is that I am leaving here in less than a week. I don’t know and frankly don’t care. I am thoroughly enjoying feeling slightly more relaxed than during regular classes. The extra time and energy has allowed me to hang out with all the new friends I have made here and also to check the last items off of my St. Petersburg to-do list. Today I crossed out “Visit the Memorial to the Siege of Leningrad,” a fitting day to do so. After studying several hours, my friend and I ventured out of our study-hole and into sunny, 70-degrees weather. We came upon the memorial in a roundabout way, opting to walk through the nearby cemetery of WWII casualties rather than pass through the main entrance. Most of my previous walks through cemeteries where I knew no one who was buried there were tranquil, but this one gave me a somber feeling. “1921-1941” or similar heart-rending dates marked most graves. I imagined being sent to war at age twenty (which would have been last year for me) and how I would have felt, a sobering thought. My friend and I walked in reverent silence and soon began to hear classical music reverberating through the quiet. My friend, having visited the memorial before, informed me that the piece was Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, part of which he composed during the siege to help raise the morale of helpless citizens. Following the sounds of violins, we eventually came upon an open area with a wide concrete path stretching between a statue of Mother Russia to an eternal flame. People crowded the path, most bearing commemorative flowers, making their way either to or from the giant statue that loomed over the scene. Reaching the statue, we saw five four-foot mounds of flowers at the base and all along the short wall behind the statue people added more to a floral wall already a few feet high. People have not forgotten about this tragic episode in the city’s history. The visit pained even myself, a person with no familial connection to the victims of the Siege and having not lived through the war itself. As my friend said, no political or national ties can make one immune to this tragic moment in Petersburg’s history. We made our way out of the memorial in silence, each of us aware of the awful specter of war made so real to us by this unassuming monument. Until next time, adios.