Keep on Movin' Down the Road

So it's been forever (aka a week) since my last entry. I keep meaning to write more often, but last week's schedule kind of went out the window, since we had a visit from the head director. This also entailed much scolding in the days immediately prior, since we weren't supposed to speak English around said director. Said director *also* scolded us for being the city that doesn't speak Russian. Those of us interested in speaking Russian at school (wow, that sounds pompous) are trying to find ways to make it work, but some days you just can't. I dunno - things have been better of late, so perhaps the changes will stick.

I still have yet to determine whether or not Russians perform Sousa, but they certainly do play jazz. I went to a jazz concert at the philharmonic on Thursday night - "A Portrait of Duke Ellington", and it was quite good. The instrumentalists were excellent, especially the trumpet soloist. There were three female singers - I thought the first two did a beautiful job, especially with regard to what must be the considerable difficulty of singing English language jazz without accent and with proper diction and all that - I really enjoyed their songs. The third singer, who was by far the favorite of the evening, had a voice like, in my oh so humble opinion, an angry cat. She certainly proved that singing scat is an American art... The philharmonic's sound engineers apparently fell asleep at the mixing board, though - the balance veered between standard jazz-loud and downright painful :-(

Saturday's excursion was "interesting", if you want to call it that. It consisted of hiking up two hills to gaze at what was essentially central Texas in March, and two tiny museums that were somehow related to the production of fish products in Astrakhan. The most interesting part was definitely the fact that both museums had an entire room devoted to the USSR and collectivization/Lenin/propoganda/the color red. It makes sense, but the joke was that either Lenin loved fish or fish loved Lenin... I'm now very interested in the role of women in the WWII in Russia, as the shrines to the honored veterans of the Great Patriotic War frequently include photos of highly decorated women - I've never heard much on the topic, and thus have no idea if they were factory workers, some sort of equivalent of WAVS/WACS, or something else entirely.

Sunday was a lovely free day - two of the other Americans, Shelley and Laura, and I went to the movies at a local mall. As usual, we grabbed the wrong marshytka - it's our hobby - but it went to a familiar stop and we were together, so no problems. We saw "Sex in the Big City", as the "Sex and the City" movie is called in Russia. It ended up being really bizarre - the movie is so very American, so walking back out into a Russian mall after watching it (in Russian, of course) was a little confusing - I had to ponder which continent I was on for a moment.

That's all I can come up with for now, but all of y'all should take care - I can't wait to be home and see all of you!
PS - Mom, could you e-mail me "Stars and Stripes Forever" from the I Love A Parade CD in time for the Fourth? It seems appropriate...