Yeah, I know - it's not even Thanksgiving yet, and I'm already doing Christmas songs. The weather here is seriously messing with my Texas-accustomed mind. We had our first proper snowfall yesterday (ie, snow that stuck). Actually, it's still sticking around, primarily in the form of pretty banks of white snow and sort of treacherous icy sidewalks. I've been wearing my boots in the snow - for some reason, it makes me laugh.
According to the Russians, winter doesn't really start until after the third snowfall. By my count, this is third, but by the Russian count, I think this is just the first or second. We were telling our teacher about all the snow earlier this week, and we got told that part of it didn't really count as "snow". This distinction confused (and continues to befuddle) all of the Texans - as far as we're concerned, white stuff falling from the sky that isn't sleet = snow. But apparently, there are finer distinctions.
Other exciting nonsense in my life:
I went to the ballet twice this week - Swan Lake on Wednesday, 1001 Arabian Nights on Friday. The same company produced both, which is quite impressive - that's a lot of dancing to remember. As with the Nutcracker, some "artistic liberties" were taken... Somehow, Swan Lake ended up with a happy ending. Swan Lake is a tragedy - everyone dies. That's what I explained in my intermission synopsis (somehow, I'm the one who always knows most of the story - it's odd). And then, at the end of the ballet, the prince and the swan went off together, all happy, completely oblivious to their interspecies dating issues. The orchestra was kind of lacking, too - the harpist was choppy (just commenting, not that I could do better, but no one pays me to try, either) and the oboe player was having a very rough night. He kept cracking the top notes of the main melody, so it was da-daaa-da-daa-da-HONK.
1001 Arabinan Nights was really, really short - just two acts, clocking a not-so-impressive hour and 20 minutes. The choreography was okay, but parts of it definitely felt like a musical, except no one was singing. On the whole, though, the costumes were amazing and the music was much better than Wednesday, so it was certainly worth the $6.
There's nothing much to report about school. We leave on Tuesday for a week-long excursion to the Caucauses, so don't expect to hear from me. (To the rest of you: I check blogs daily - you should write more often.) It's another 24-hour train ride each way, which is always fun. It's supposed to be warmer there, so that'll be exciting. And no, we're not doing anything dumb, like going to Chechnya.
Things I've learned today:
-Walk on white snow, not on gray snow. Gray snow generally means a million other little feet have already trod there, packing the snow down in yicky ice.
-Krasnaya Shapochka candy is really good.
-You can make pancakes ("americanskii blinni") from some form of cake mix. (My hozhaika's son made them this afternoon - one of their previous exchange students had taught him how).
-Cirok with cocoa is amazing. Cirok, for the uninitiated, is essentially a small bar of cream cheese coated in chocolate. The aforementioned variety is chocolate cream cheese coated in chocolate. It takes some getting used to, but now I'm hooked. And the chocolate stuff is way better than the kind I had with breakfast - plain cream cheese, coated in chocolate, with raisins in the middle. (Raisins?)
-Russians seem to value foreign language skills more highly than Americans. (Actually, pretty much everybody puts more emphasis on foreign languages than we do.) Anyway, my beloved bookstore that sells English-language literature (I bought Mill on the Floss today - it's on my reading list, and since I finished all 1000 pages of Don Quixote, I needed some new and educational.) also sells books in Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Japanese. I found the same version of Marcelino, Pan y Vino that I read junior year in high school. I may buy a Spanish title and something in German, so I can brush up on those skills, too.
Photos: I know some of you who read don't have access to my Facebook account, so links to all the albums posted are below.
St Petersburg:
http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2138813&l=fcded&id=9214311
http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2138988&l=3290c&id=9214311
http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2139130&l=7eb3d&id=9214311
http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2139245&l=dee96&id=9214311
Voronezh:
http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2139363&l=b06f8&id=9214311
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
The day I walked off the plane into Edinburgh, it was something like 49 degrees outside--I had Christmas carols stuck in my head for a week. :) It only snowed once, though, so you have an advantage. No falling on the ice and cracking your head open, k? And no getting beaned in the head by snowballs, either. That's not pleasant.
Yay for awkward ballets!
Have fun on your excursion (that seems to be your new favorite word, eh).
And that chocolate cream cheese stuff sounds amazing. Bring me back some. ;)
Post a Comment