"And I saw his little paws trying to climb out of the toilet..."

Hey Guys!

Sorry these two blogs are in one week, but I had saved the previous one on my computer and didn't get a chance to get to an internet cafe until this week. The life of a busy student, I guess. Well, to quickly update, the cute boy was not at the club meeting this week, so I didn't get to talk to him. This week we don't have Russian-American club because on Thursday we are going on a cruise of the Volga river for a week, stopping at a bunch of historical cities along the way. It's going to be pretty crazy, living on a boat for a week in the freezing October weather, with a bunch of American students, Jon Smith, our geography teacher, and a bunch of Russian students. I imagine it's going to be a lot like the booze cruise on Lake Wallenpaupack from the wonderful TV show, The Office, with Jon Smith playing the part of Michael Scott. I will definitely take stellar notes so I can update you all when I get back. Ahoy!

So last Sunday I met up with my new tutor. I'm pretty sure her name is Alisa, but she speaks really fast, so I can't be sure. She is from Russian-American club. She brought her boyfriend, Ivan, with her. Usually I am really anti-PDA, but they were so cute together, picking on each other or holding hands or him playing with her hair. Ivan is the tutor of Kyle, of my classmates who basically speaks perfect Russian, so I'm sure they thought I was a moron, but most of the people I've encountered in Moscow probably think that, so it's all good. My tutor took me around Red Square and showed me all the fountains they have with statues of fairytale characters in them. Oh, I also should mention that she can only speak Russian to me, or sometimes an english word or two if I really don't understand something. She and Ivan don't really know English that well, so we are both kind of learning from each other. Anyway, she explained to me in Russian what each of the statues represented, so I learned a lot about Russian fairy tales. Then, and I don't remember how we got on the subject, but I as trying to explain that something was tacky, and she didn't know what tacky ment, and of course it's not in the dictionary, as it's slang, so we spent a good 5 minutes figuring out it's eqiuvalent in Russian (bezvakysnee, literally "tasteless"). She was really excited to learn the word tacky and used it a couple of times that day. She was also trying to explain they Russian word for cotton to me, but kept saying "in english, it is Katone (putting the emphasis on the second syllable)." And I couldn't understand her until she finally pulled out her dictionary and showed me. And then I said, "Ohhhhh, COT-en." We laughed about that for a while. While this was all going on, her boyfriend, Ivan, stood in line to get us tickets to go inside the Kremlin. As we walked around the Kremlin, both of them explained various aspects of it to me, with Ivan telling me historical facts and Alisa explaining new words to me. It was so great. I got to see a ton of relics from the middle ages and about 4 old Russian-Orthodox churches, with icons painted all over the walls. In the churches were tombs of czars, with Ivan explaining who each of them were. Thank god I took two semesters of Russian History at Georgetown. After the churches, we walked back into Red Square and I told them I'd never been into St. Basil's cathedral, so we went in there. It's more of a museum/tourist trap now than a church, but it was still pretty cool. The whole time we were navigating these crazy cobblestones and old, windy stone stairs, my tutor was wearing stilletto heels. Like all Russian women, she's a champ. When we left St. Basil's, Ivan was talking about the Russian Nouveau-Riche, and he did this weird hand gesture with both his hands, kind of like the "rock out" hand symbol, but with hand in front of you and your palm facing the ground. He said it's what people do when they see them to make fun of them, because the fingers that are sticking out, the index finger and pinkie, are where the men wear their flashy rings, so the gesture is acting like "oh look at me, have a better look at my rings (wealth)." He also told me the slang term for these people, but of course I forgot it. Then my tutors invited me to a concert they were going to that night, an organ music concert in a Catholic church. They seemed like they really wanted me to come, so I agreed. Of course, we couldn't figure out where this church was, so we spent 2 hours walking around the Georgian part of town, with Ivan asking strangers for directions. Ivan told me that in Russia, everyone will give you directions regardless of whether they actually know where the place is, so if someone starts out their answer with an "um" or doesn't give specifics, just say thank you and move on to another person. We were also getting really hungry as we'd been hanging out since 2:00 and it was now 6:00, but we couldnt find anywhere good for dinner. We finally made it to the church with 20 minutes to spare and met up with Alisa's friend, Sascha (a girl, which is unfortunate because I heard the name and thought we were going to meet up with a boy. Gender-neutral nicknames. Gotta love them.) We were starving at this point, so Ivan ran to the nearest grocery store and bought chocolate chip muffins and grapefruit juice and this really gross thing called "ten" or "tan" (I think), and it was a soda made out of kafir, which is like sour buttermilk and everyone here loves it. So basically imagine a spoiled cheese soda. Yeah. I was not a fan. They all tried to convince me that it was an acquired taste. We'll see. So the four of us sat on a wall outside the church eating muffins and juice for dinner, and honestly, it was ne of the best times I've had here. I finally felt like I made some friends. Then we went into the concert which turned out to be improvisational organ music (which should not exist). It was terrible and went on for two hours and Sascha kept whispering to me at the end of every song, "Let this be the end (in Russian)." We kind of laughed about it and then I went home on the metro, getting home at 10:30 at night. I'm going to meet with them again tomorrow morning at the Tretyakov art museum, which has a ton of famous Russian art. I think it's going t be amazing.

Yesterday, we went on an excursion to MosFilm, which is basically like Russian Hollywood. Every old Soviet movie was a mosfilm production and a bunch are still made there today. The studios are located only like 15 minutes from my house (I know this because when I got lost on a bus this one time, we passed it, among other things.) Vika came with us, and this blond tour guide lady showed as first around a museum with all the old cars used in the films, and then to another museum which had all the sets from the films, and another which had all the original costumes from Anna Karenina and War and Peace. It was pretty cool. We went inside this main office building and saw all the wigs and prosthetics used in the movies. We walked past a bunch of "lots" and saw costumed actors walking around, I guess on their way to their respective films. We got to g intoo this one giant room where they were in the process of constructing sets for the next film they were shooting. They made a lot of it out of styrofoam, and then they sculpt it to look like buildings or caves, and there were artists there painting the sets according to sketches they had of the set design. Next we actually got to walk through two different sets on the premises, one of Moscow circa the 19th century and the other of an ancient wooden village that was for some fantasy magic film. It was crazy, the sets looked like actual towns. The old Moscow set had a church and a bar and a fire station, and the old village had wooden bridges and huge (fake) trees and vines everywhere. It was surreal that we were allowed to actually see all of that. ACTR actually came through with a pretty sweet excursion.

After Russian-American club this week, we were all going to go out drinking like we do every Thursday, but somehow Matt, Mikel, Jenna, Jan, and myself got seperated from the group and ended up at Chisty Prudy ("Clean Pond") Metro stop. We made the best of our situation, and went into this outdoor see-through enclosed beer tent right across from the metro that had a bar and a bunch of picnic tables. Matt somehow while trying to order a half liter of beer, ordered 5 half liters of beer, but we just took the other beers, so it wasn' t a big problem. When we were sitting down drinking, Matt proceeded to tell the funniest story I've heard since I've been here. I really hope I can do it justice. It went something like, "So I woke up this morning and I REALLY had to pee. So I went into the bathroom, and totally had my zipper down, when my sweet babyshka (his adorable old tiny host mother) burst into the bathroom with this big contraption with something moving inside and told me she needed to get in there. So I got out, but I was thinking "What the fuck is going on?", but of course I can't express that, so I just said "shto" (what?") and she said "nothing" and went back into the kitchen to get a bucket of water. Finally she left the bathroom and I still really had to pee, so I get in there, and apparently she'd caught a rat with some sort of no-kill trap, but dumped it in the toilet and was trying to flush it and drown it with the extra bucket of water. I looked down and saw his little paws trying to climb out of the toilet. It freaked me out, so I just held it and went back to my room." Only in Russia would a 80 year old woman try to flush a live rat and act like it's nothing. After we had our drinks, Mikel really wanted to go to the McDonald's across the street. All the guys were ordering Big Macs, and I told them I'd never had one before, so they told me I had to get one. So I had my first Big Mac of my life in Moscow.

Last night, I went to the opera with my literature teacher, Grey, Ben, Kat, Jenna, Jen, Rhiannon, Paige, Erika, and Daniel. We went to go see Eugene Onegin, an Pushkin novel made into an opera by Tchaikovsky. I was really excited to get to dress up nicely and the tickets were only $20 for really great balcny seats. The music was beautiful and it helped that I knew the story before hand. Our literature teacher kept saying how beautiful I looked and telling the boys, Doesn't she look beautiful? Which was kind of awkward. The only people I have been hit by in Moscow have been my female teachers at school. Just everything about the opera was beautiful and enjoyable and it was a really well spent $20. The walk home was a different story. On my 15 minute walk home from the metro station to my house (this was about midnight), I was trying to cross the street to get to my house and an older man in a white car stopped his car in the crosswalk (so I couldn't cross to the other side) and rolled down his window and and was shouting things at me like get in the car and asking how much I cost. He thought I was a prostitute, which is really insulting because I looked damn classy. See facebook if you don't believe me. He wouldn't go away even though I kept backing up and saying no, but what he didn't know is that he was blocking traffic by doing this and the car he was blocking was a police car. The police car was honking at him to move and he was ignoring it and I kept giving the two male police officers looks like "help me," so they speed up around the guy's car and blocked him in and proceeded to arrest him. I never thought I'd say this, but thank god for the Russian Police.

So my week has been pretty exciting, and the Volga Cruise this thursday should be all sorts of fun. Miss you guys very very much!!!!