Orientation Redux

So I probably forgot the most important part of the entire orientation experience: Meeting your Host Family. My host family consists of a Host Mother, her husband (I never see him), her son (rarely see him), and her granddaughter, who is visiting for a semester before going back home. So on the last day of orientation, they loaded us onto a bus and away we went. I was part of the last group to get dropped off and while they said the bus would be ready for us at 5, it didn't pick us up until 7ish due to 'dacha traffic'. Dacha traffic is a wonderful phenomenon that happens on Friday as people get off work. Basically everyone who has a dacha in the country gets the hell out of Piter at the same time. This causes all major and even minor roads jam up. So 7-ish rolls around, and off we go. There were around 25-30 people on our bus with luggage; it was a tight fit. We dropped off some people who lived close to the hotel first and then made our way to Petrogradskaya Storona. I do not live here so I settled in for the long haul, little did I know how long it would actually be.
It took us a while to realize that this process of dropping people off was taking far longer than it should. We also started noticing the same businesses and streets moving past us. As it turns out, we had been driving in circles for at least 3 hours. By this point we had just about finished dropping off half the group. After a few more trips around the same city block, we made our way back to the city center to drop off the rest of us. Luckily for us, we had a heritage speaker on board and she filled us in on what was happening. Apparently the bus driver had no idea where he was going, hence the circles. Also, the bus we were on was scheduled to go to Finland at midnight (yes it was that late).
A little before midnight, we pull in behind the October Hotel and the driver kicks us off. After 20 or so minutes of waiting street-side with our luggage, a replacement bus shows up. As a group, we were all still quite jet-lagged and the 6 hour bus ride was not helping things. We were all pretty delirious near the end; laughing at just about anything, most likely stupid things.
I was third from the last to get dropped off at a reasonable 1:30am. Upon entrance to the apartment, my host mother promptly fed me, which was greatly appreciated as I hadn't eaten dinner before the hell-on-wheels fiasco. Dinner consisted of soup--mmmmm. And after I had eaten everything, she then made (read: force fed) me 8 blini with black current jam. Those were delicious and I now have the privilege of saying that I have double-fisted pancakes.