Buddy System: My First Experience as a Buddy

My name is Kirill Trezubov and I am a Master’s student at ITMO University. My major is programming engineering. Today, I will tell you about my first Buddy system experience.

"Buddy System" is one of the best clubs at ITMO. The main purpose of the club is providing assistance for international students who arrive from abroad. Club members' are called "buddies". If you’ve ever wanted to join the "Buddy system" club, you must make sure you are ready for the following steps and, of course, you must speak English. At first, as a "buddy" you are to meet your international student at the airport. The next step is to get to the place where he/she is planning to live. After that, you have to do a registration certificate. The final steps are to get your person under care xrayed and given a certificate and then to bring your student to the international office at ITMO at Lomonosova, 9. All in all, you must make sure you have enough free time from your job or studying because sometimes situations can become unpredictably time-consuming.

So I was trying to follow all the instructions I got at the orientation meeting of "Buddy System" and was ready to meet a guy from Venezuela at Pulkovo airport. His name was Allan Zea, the purpose of his visit to St Petersburg is participating in ITMO’s Summer Camp in Programming for the whole of July. At the moment he lives in Germany because of political and economical issues in Venezuela. Allan was quite talkative and we hit it off straight away. He can even speak and read Russian a little bit. Allan is an amazing person. It was great to hear a lot about his life in Venezuela and in Germany and his great future plans.

Let me go back to Allan’s arrival day. His plane was to land in St.Petersburg on the 1st of July at 12:35 am. Unfortunately, his flight was half an hour delayed and I met him only at 1 am. He wanted to buy a sim card for his mobile at the airport, but the price was 500 rubles, so my advice is not to let foreigners buy anything at the airport, as prices are ridiculously high. By the way, we helped French tourists as, they didn’t know how to get to the city from the airport. I ordered an Uber taxi for them, but Allan and I lost a bit of time. When we were trying to order a taxi for ourselves it was nearly 2 am. It was too late, or too early, as the drawn bridges made it impossible to get any taxi at all. Eventually, I found a taxi driver, who agreed to give us ride, at the point it was already 3 am. I knew in advance that it would be too late to go to my student dormitory so I reserved a bed at the same hostel as he did.

My mission for the next day was to help Allan with his documents. We got up at 7 o’clock as we had to appear at ITMO international office at 8.30. Before going there Allan needed to do an xray. Unfortunately, Vosstaniya 1 X-ray examination center was crowded by a group of Chinese and took much more time than I had expected. We were waiting in a very long queue and we were about to be late. When we finally arrived at the international office, we in all of Allan’s documents including his student ID. Now I had to help him to get a place in a student dormitory and after that take him to Kronversky, 49 for his first classes at 11 o’clock.

First of all, we bought a sim card for him in the city centre, then we made our way to the student dormitory on Alpine Lane, 15. We were waiting for a long time again because there were lots of Chinese people who wanted to get accommodated as well. There we met a dorm supervisor, who asked me to explain to Allan all the dorm rules and documents he was to sign. She gave me bills which Allan had to pay at the. So we visited the nearest Bank St Petersburg and paid off all of Allan’s cheques. Finally, I visited Allan’s room in the dormitory and showed Allan around the place. First of all, I wanted to meet Allan’s roommate to make sure that he was a good guy and then I showed Allan places where he could buy some necessary stuff such as food and essential goods. Of course, the process of settling Allan in the dorm took ages and he was late for his first ITMO classes. I must admit, both of us were very tired and exhausted because we hadn’t slept much the previous day.

So that was my first experience as a "buddy". All in all, it was great for me to help him and to communicate with him. As you can see my first experience didn’t go as planned. Now, I am ready for unexpected situations that may happen. I would like to say only one last thing. If you read this article and you would like to join our "Buddy system", you need to know you have to prove you can be "a buddy" taking an entrance test and giving a presentation on the history, customs and traditions of St. Petersburg.