411. 179.

Aaaand we're back. Sorry for being a bit behind --- As most of you know, I am already in Samara, which is about a bajillion times better than being in St. Petersburg (in my opinion). While I am totally loving it here, we are extremely busy, and I haven't even finished writing about our work in St. Pete! I gave myself an ultimatum to write about it before I fall asleep tonight, so here goes :)

Our last two visits in St. Petersburg were to School 411 and Lyceum 179. Russian schools are usually referred to by number, instead of by name --- although school 411 is called "Harmony," everyone refers to it as 411. In fact, I'm not even positive about the name of Lyceum 179, I don't think anyone bothered to mention it (or perhaps they don't even have one).

School 411 is located in Peterhof, just outside of St. Petersburg, which is also the home of Peter the Great's fabulous summer palace. It's famous for it's spectacular fountains, although this isn't really fountain season, so we enjoyed it in the snow. We spoke with a representative from the Peterhof Museum, and she told us about their special school for museum tour guides. Highschool-aged students can apply to take special courses once a week in the many museums around Peterhof. They are trained as guides, lead tours for local schoolchildren, and graduate high-school with a sort of "excursion license" which allows them to work in St. Petersburg and Peterhof museums. At Peterhof they lead special themed tours for children, where they dress up as historical characters and lead them to a royal ball!

Our friends from school 411 took us for a stroll around the palace grounds and then brought us back to visit "Harmony." The Students study English and German, and are part of a special league of Petersbug schools who coordinate on projects like "NanoCity," a special camp dedicated to studying nanotechnology.

Friends from School 411 at Peterhof

School 411, "Harmony"

A Kindergarten play-room/performance area

I wish I had taken more pictures inside the school, but the students were already gone, and the most interesting room was this carpeted space for kindergarteners to run, play, and occasionally perform. Kindergarten programs in Russia are like day-care in the sense that young children of different ages (2-6yrs) stay with their peers and teacher all day, usually in a facility that has beds for each child to nap in, meals during the day, and plenty of toys and games for all. In any case, it was fun to see the school, and it sounds like they might have students who are interested in taking part in our International cyberfair project.

Our last school visit was Lyceum 179. While Lyceums are still public schools (students don't have to pay tuition), they usually have a special focus and sometimes require that perspective pupils take entrance exams and/or apply for a space. This particular lyceum had a partnership with medical and physics universities, and focused on medical and technological sciences.

Physics Classroom

Students test water quality based on plant indicators

Salt therapy room - yeah, those walls are salt.

Of course at every meeting in Russia, there is always tea. At this meeting we had a special treat, Russian chocolates. Moscow and St. Petersburg (as well as many other cities in Russia, mind you) each have their own brands of candies. The chocolates come wrapped in paper just like in this photo, folded except for the tips of paper on each long end. They use this paper as a canvas to display a character or animal instead of a written name for the chocolate. This one is a Petersburg chocolate called "Little Red Riding Hood," or in Russian "Красная Шапочка"

"Krasnaya Shapochka"

We had a great time in St. Petersburg, but have a lot of work ahead of us. Just a little hint: The Samara region has over 4,000 NGOs, and we are visiting as many as humanly possible to see how they work with local schools. Get ready, get set, go!

Sarah