Well, that was an eventful start to my Saturday. I headed off to work like a good conscientious teacher, walked to my student's flat, knocked on her door, and was told that everyone at their house is really sick - they called the school and cancelled, but apparently the school forgot to inform the teacher! Oh well - it's only a twenty-minute walk, and the weather today is glorious - 60s and sunny. So I tromped back to my apartment, and now I'm sitting on my bed with the windows open and the birds singing outside. I thought about being industrious and going in to work before my other lessons and planning for the rest of the week, but I've found out that such praiseworthy industriousness doesn't really benefit me at all - later in the week, when I have long gaps between lessons, I usually find myself doodling on the whiteboards or knocking my head against the wall if I don't have any any lessons to plan. However, from this week onwards that probably (hopefully, fingers crossed!!!) won't be so much of a problem, because my teaching schedule looks like it's about to get a lot lighter. All of the kids get out for summer holidays this week, so a lot of the classes at the Mitino school end as well. Plus, it's the last week of work for some of the teachers at our school, so it's about to get a lot quieter there. Many of my young students are going on holiday, so I will have a good deal of free time. While I'm looking forward to that, I will really miss some of my students - Alisa, my little "Alice," who is so smart but whose mother pushes her too hard (it was always fun in class to try to help her loosen up and make her laugh); Yegor and Katya, the twins with whom I really hit it off (their personalities are so similar to my brothers' and my personalities when we were that young that teaching them is almost always fun); Vika, the little sunshine girl who I've only had for a couple of weeks because she was originally Jenny's student, and Anya, also Jenny's student, who is just about the sweetest teenager you've ever met. This week will be my last week with all of them, as well as with a couple of my other students who I can definitively say that I won't miss: Taiya - a sweet kid, but completely not interested in learning English, and the terrible brothers - an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old. Half of their terribleness is not their fault - their parents signed them up for a conversation class when they have completely different levels of English and neither of those levels is high enough for them to converse effectively - but the other half is because they always fight in class about everything. Fortunately, though, I have a lot more students that I will miss than not.
It is strange, though, to already be experiencing "lasts." I still have a month and a half here, but this week is my last with many of my students, and it's also my last weekend to dance with Возрождение. I will really really miss dancing with them - some of my happiest hours in Russia have been spent dancing or just hanging out with them - they are a really great group of people. Fortunately, though, I'll still be spending some time with Lena and Lucy, some of my closest friends from the group. Also, I will hopefully be able to take some ballet classes, which I haven't been able to afford since I started paying for the other dance group. And now, with a lighter work and dance load, I will have more time to see some of the sights in Moscow before I leave: parks, ballets, the circus...I have a lot to do in six weeks! And I have a feeling that this last length of time in Moscow will probably pass really quickly - like the last bit of sand running through an hourglass.
I can't deny that I'm really eager to see my family again, though. They've seemed a bit farther away than usual this week, because they've been on vacation in Alabama at the beach, so we haven't been able to skype as often as we normally do. Plus, our annual trip to my grandma's beachhouse in Alabama is a family tradition, and it feels weird to miss it for a second year in a row. It's not nearly as luxurious as it sounds: "beach house" always seems to me to be hoity-toity and expensive-sounding, when in truth grandma's is an old, blue-grey wooden house with a half-sized ground floor/ storage area and the second floor living area built above it standing up on stilts. There is a grassy green backyard - not as inviting as it looks, full of fire ants and sometimes burrs, but after you tiptoe-pick your way through the yard you get to the bay, Bay La Launch, and the long wooden pier stretching out over the water. It's not the ideal picture of the beach vacation - there are no long sandy beaches, and the water is brown, not blue, without the crashing waves you'd associate with the ocean. It's a small bay, really just a canal connecting two larger bays, a couple of bays separated from the Gulf of Mexico, and fringed about with green scrub pines and waving golden-green beach grasses. Our side of the bay is lined with beach houses, mostly all old wooden ones like my grandma's, but there is almost nothing on the opposite side, about two miles across the water. It's not a huge tourist spot, so it's quiet, and peaceful, and we have some beautiful sunsets.
We've been going there ever since I can remember, and I have so many good memories connected with it. But the best part about it is the fact that we can all just be kids again when we're there. The last time I went I was twenty-one years old, and my brothers were nineteen, sixteen, and thirteen, while Sophie was eleven, but we all could spend the whole day swimming, taking beach walks, and building sand castles just as if we were all ten.
But anyway, enough reminiscing and on to my holiday, also near a gulf, but a very different gulf...the Gulf of Finland! It was, unfortunately, a bit cold for swimming, but St. Petersburg was beautiful. Getting there was an adventure, as it was my first time on a Russian train, and I had to find the station after midnight and sit there to wait to leave until four in the morning (yours truly being too cheap to call for a taxi, instead deciding to ride the last metro out of Mitino and wait in the train station until four).
But it all worked out, and even though I was a bit nervous about sharing a compartment with three strangers for eight hours, on the way up it was a lot of fun - it turns out I shared my compartment with three girls about my age, all of whom were also going up to Piter for three days for fun, so we slept like logs for about six hours and chattered away for the other two.
I was met at the station by one of Jenny's friends, Vova, who had agreed to let me stay with him while I was in the city. This was something else I was a bit nervous about since I'd never met Vova before, but he was a really great guy, really easy to talk to, and so generous and courteous about sharing his home and his vacation time with me. That first day I arrived around one o'clock, so after dropping my stuff off at his flat we went for a walk around the city. And oh, it was just as lovely as I remembered! That was really what I wanted most of all to do in Piter - just to walk. As Vova's flat is close to Nevsky Prospekt, the main street in Piter, we wandered around downtown for several hours - it was cool but sunny, and even though my foot was still bothering me (from the running incident earlier that week, which turned out to be a stress fracture though I did not realize it at the time), I enjoyed it so much.
In particular, it struck me as a happy coincidence that Vova lives a few blocks down from Theatre Street, which is a very special place for me, and on that first night it was one of the first streets we walked down, just by chance.
Even then, on that first evening, though, I realized I was making the right decision in leaving Russia. When I came to Piter (and to Russia) for the first time, I was only there for six weeks - it was my first time to really travel abroad for any considerable length of time, and my first time to be separated from my family for that long, so it made a very strong impression on me. In particular, I fell in love with the beauty of the city. And always it was in the back of my mind, even this year when I realized that I didn't want to spend another year in Moscow, that "maybe I could do it in St. Petersburg. Maybe I could spend another year here if I were in such a beautiful place as that city." But coming back made me realize that, even though Piter will always have a special place in my heart, it is not where I want to spend another year. So although it meant that I went somewhere I'd gone before instead of exploring a different area of Russia or possible even gallivanting across the border to Europe, I'm glad I went.
The second day I slept in a bit, and then decided to go out sightseeing. Since I'd seen many of the main tourist attractions my first time in Piter, I wanted to go for a road a bit less-travelled. First I tried to find the cemetery where some of the famous people of Russia, like Dostoevsky, are buried, but failing in that, I decided to go for a walk on Yelagin Ostrov, an island where the nobility spent their time in the summer. Well, there's a reason it was meant particularly for summer activities - any other time of the year it's really cold! It's located right on the Gulf, so you get the strong, cold sea breezes blowing across the island, and as the second day was windy in general, and cloudy, it was quite chilly to be walking around. But even though my fingers and toes were numb, I really enjoyed myself - stumbled upon some more Rossi-designed buildings, saw the first lacy green growths of spring on the trees, and - even though it just about turned me into a block of ice - made it out to the farthest tip of the island and stood for a few minutes on the pavilion overlooking the gulf. I thought about going down and putting my hand in the water, but figured I might lose a few fingers if I tried that, so decided against it.
I detoured across Nevsky on my way home to pick up a ticket to see the Mariinsky Ballet that evening, and then went home to dress for the ballet. Vova offered to walk me, but he declined to watch with me - he said he was "sick and tired of ballet" - a feeling I can NOT understand, and probably never will, especially in a city with ballet companies like the Mariinsky, but oh well - to each his own. I thoroughly enjoyed myself - I saw Carmen and two contemporary pieces. The only downside to my relatively cheap ticket was that my seat was very bad, so I stood for the whole performance. Sometime during the day I had developed a large blister on the heel of my good foot, so between the stress fracture and the blister it wasn't the most pleasant experience to stand for two hours! But the dancers made me forget about my discomfort - I particularly enjoyed it because many of the dancers that evening were girls I had seen dance in their graduation performance three years before, and it was interesting to see how they had developed as artists.
After the performance, Vova picked me up, and we spent the next two hours leisurely strolling through the city. Although the white nights hadn't really begun yet, there was still at least a little light in the sky until about 11:30, so we walked until midnight before we came home.
I slept in a bit later the next day - I was tired out from the day before! - and when I woke up I walked down Nevsky to the Hermitage. I had been to the museum three years ago, but it was a very brief visit, and I had missed some of the exhibits I wanted to see. However, when I got to the museum, there was a HUGE line, and I ended up waiting for two hours to get in!
It probably would have been better to have done something else, because after standing in the sun for two hours, I wasn't really in the proper mindset to stand and contemplate pictures - my feet were hurting too much! But it was ok - and I realized that I really had been more thorough the last time than I thought, so I didn't feel too rushed going through the exhibits. Not to mention that the Hermitage itself is gorgeous - it was the tsars' Winter Palace before it became a museum, so the insides are beautiful. I went home early that day to make an apple pie for Vova - he'd never had it, and I wanted to do something to say thank you for his hospitality. Then I packed, went to sleep, and woke up the next morning to walk to the station. This train left at 7:00, so it wasn't such an ungodly hour, although the trip back was considerably less fun than the trip there. Instead of three chatty girls, there was an extremely taciturn man and a young couple - girlfriend and boyfriend I think. Anyways, they kept to themselves, and the man sitting across from me didn't want to make conversation either, so we all just sat very politely and quietly together in the close confines of our compartment...for eight hours!!! It did provide a good opportunity to just sit and look out the window, though, which I enjoyed - the Russian countryside is beautiful - huge open spaces of long grasses, marshes, birch and fir woods, and all of it misty and delicately-lined, like a watercolor painting, since it was rainy that day.
The rest of that week went by in a blur, because I started work the next day, and totally crashed that weekend - plus, my foot was really acting up, since I really hadn't given it a rest since I injured it - first I went shopping with Jenny and stood all day, then went to work on Saturday, then went to the park in Kolomenskoye and wandered around for a few hours. But I skipped dance and wrapped it, and after a few days of rest it was already feeling better. I'm going to take this opportunity to stick in some pictures from Kolomenskoye, because, though not much eventful happened there to write about, it was a beautiful day.
Nothing much eventful has happened in the past week, save for what has given this blog the title "I'm SINGING in the RAIN..." The caps are very important here, as I will explain, for this title does not relate to the fact that it has been raining a lot recently (it hasn't) nor to the fact that I've just watched the film recently (I haven't). Rather, it relates to a time-honoured Russian tradition: in the summer, the hot water gets cut off for two weeks in whole neighborhoods so that maintenance can be done on the heating systems, which are apparently shared between flats. Anyways, our turn came this past week, and so for a week we haven't had any hot water in our flat. Now, at the beginning of the week, it wasn't so bad - temps were in the high eighties and it was sunny and calm. After tromping home from work through the park it was actually almost pleasant to take a cold shower. But the last few days the temperature has dropped to the fifties and it has been very windy, so taking a shower has turned from a pleasure to an ordeal. There is a certain method you have to follow: First, turn on the water very quickly and then jump to the back of the tub so that you don't get completely doused in the first few seconds. Then take a deep breath, count to three, and jump under the icy cold water. I've found it helps to sing when you do so, and my song of choice has been "Singing in the Rain" because then I can pretend that I'm eight years old again and playing in a cold rain outside with my brothers, with the prospect of a warm shower waiting for me when I go inside, instead of this cold dousing being the sum total of the experience. Hence the caps: "I'm (preparing to jump under) SINGING (standing under the water) in the (jumping out again) RAIN (jumping back under, and so forth)". Needless to say, my immune system is going to be top-notch by the end of this next week!
Well, that's all I can think of for now...I hope everyone is doing well and congratulations to everyone who has graduated/ has a family member who has graduated! (Gabe just finished high school the week before last, which is unbelievable - in my mind he's still fifteen.) Hope everyone is having a good weekend!
It is strange, though, to already be experiencing "lasts." I still have a month and a half here, but this week is my last with many of my students, and it's also my last weekend to dance with Возрождение. I will really really miss dancing with them - some of my happiest hours in Russia have been spent dancing or just hanging out with them - they are a really great group of people. Fortunately, though, I'll still be spending some time with Lena and Lucy, some of my closest friends from the group. Also, I will hopefully be able to take some ballet classes, which I haven't been able to afford since I started paying for the other dance group. And now, with a lighter work and dance load, I will have more time to see some of the sights in Moscow before I leave: parks, ballets, the circus...I have a lot to do in six weeks! And I have a feeling that this last length of time in Moscow will probably pass really quickly - like the last bit of sand running through an hourglass.
the park is awash in golden waves of dandelions...
almost the same view, just a month and a half apart...
the lilacs are also blooming like crazy...such a sweet smell on the wind
I can't deny that I'm really eager to see my family again, though. They've seemed a bit farther away than usual this week, because they've been on vacation in Alabama at the beach, so we haven't been able to skype as often as we normally do. Plus, our annual trip to my grandma's beachhouse in Alabama is a family tradition, and it feels weird to miss it for a second year in a row. It's not nearly as luxurious as it sounds: "beach house" always seems to me to be hoity-toity and expensive-sounding, when in truth grandma's is an old, blue-grey wooden house with a half-sized ground floor/ storage area and the second floor living area built above it standing up on stilts. There is a grassy green backyard - not as inviting as it looks, full of fire ants and sometimes burrs, but after you tiptoe-pick your way through the yard you get to the bay, Bay La Launch, and the long wooden pier stretching out over the water. It's not the ideal picture of the beach vacation - there are no long sandy beaches, and the water is brown, not blue, without the crashing waves you'd associate with the ocean. It's a small bay, really just a canal connecting two larger bays, a couple of bays separated from the Gulf of Mexico, and fringed about with green scrub pines and waving golden-green beach grasses. Our side of the bay is lined with beach houses, mostly all old wooden ones like my grandma's, but there is almost nothing on the opposite side, about two miles across the water. It's not a huge tourist spot, so it's quiet, and peaceful, and we have some beautiful sunsets.
a picture I stole from the internet - this is a few piers down from our house at the end of the row
We've been going there ever since I can remember, and I have so many good memories connected with it. But the best part about it is the fact that we can all just be kids again when we're there. The last time I went I was twenty-one years old, and my brothers were nineteen, sixteen, and thirteen, while Sophie was eleven, but we all could spend the whole day swimming, taking beach walks, and building sand castles just as if we were all ten.
But anyway, enough reminiscing and on to my holiday, also near a gulf, but a very different gulf...the Gulf of Finland! It was, unfortunately, a bit cold for swimming, but St. Petersburg was beautiful. Getting there was an adventure, as it was my first time on a Russian train, and I had to find the station after midnight and sit there to wait to leave until four in the morning (yours truly being too cheap to call for a taxi, instead deciding to ride the last metro out of Mitino and wait in the train station until four).
the waiting room at the Moscow station - really neat and old
made it!!!
Church on the Spilled Blood
Dvortsovaya Ploshad
with the Hermitage in the background
Fortress of Sts. Peter and Paul
Vasilievsky Ostrov
In particular, it struck me as a happy coincidence that Vova lives a few blocks down from Theatre Street, which is a very special place for me, and on that first night it was one of the first streets we walked down, just by chance.
Theatre Street - today named for Rossi, the architect who designed it
Even then, on that first evening, though, I realized I was making the right decision in leaving Russia. When I came to Piter (and to Russia) for the first time, I was only there for six weeks - it was my first time to really travel abroad for any considerable length of time, and my first time to be separated from my family for that long, so it made a very strong impression on me. In particular, I fell in love with the beauty of the city. And always it was in the back of my mind, even this year when I realized that I didn't want to spend another year in Moscow, that "maybe I could do it in St. Petersburg. Maybe I could spend another year here if I were in such a beautiful place as that city." But coming back made me realize that, even though Piter will always have a special place in my heart, it is not where I want to spend another year. So although it meant that I went somewhere I'd gone before instead of exploring a different area of Russia or possible even gallivanting across the border to Europe, I'm glad I went.
The second day I slept in a bit, and then decided to go out sightseeing. Since I'd seen many of the main tourist attractions my first time in Piter, I wanted to go for a road a bit less-travelled. First I tried to find the cemetery where some of the famous people of Russia, like Dostoevsky, are buried, but failing in that, I decided to go for a walk on Yelagin Ostrov, an island where the nobility spent their time in the summer. Well, there's a reason it was meant particularly for summer activities - any other time of the year it's really cold! It's located right on the Gulf, so you get the strong, cold sea breezes blowing across the island, and as the second day was windy in general, and cloudy, it was quite chilly to be walking around. But even though my fingers and toes were numb, I really enjoyed myself - stumbled upon some more Rossi-designed buildings, saw the first lacy green growths of spring on the trees, and - even though it just about turned me into a block of ice - made it out to the farthest tip of the island and stood for a few minutes on the pavilion overlooking the gulf. I thought about going down and putting my hand in the water, but figured I might lose a few fingers if I tried that, so decided against it.
sleepy ducks :)
Buddhist temple in the middle of St. Petersburg...
flowers in the park
really neat old wooden house
the Gulf of Finland! I swear it even looks cold...
deciding not to put my hand in the water...
I detoured across Nevsky on my way home to pick up a ticket to see the Mariinsky Ballet that evening, and then went home to dress for the ballet. Vova offered to walk me, but he declined to watch with me - he said he was "sick and tired of ballet" - a feeling I can NOT understand, and probably never will, especially in a city with ballet companies like the Mariinsky, but oh well - to each his own. I thoroughly enjoyed myself - I saw Carmen and two contemporary pieces. The only downside to my relatively cheap ticket was that my seat was very bad, so I stood for the whole performance. Sometime during the day I had developed a large blister on the heel of my good foot, so between the stress fracture and the blister it wasn't the most pleasant experience to stand for two hours! But the dancers made me forget about my discomfort - I particularly enjoyed it because many of the dancers that evening were girls I had seen dance in their graduation performance three years before, and it was interesting to see how they had developed as artists.
Mariinsky Theatre!!!
curtain call for Carmen
standing onstage...just kidding, taking a picture of the mini-version of the theatre :)
crossing the Lion Bridge on the way home
After the performance, Vova picked me up, and we spent the next two hours leisurely strolling through the city. Although the white nights hadn't really begun yet, there was still at least a little light in the sky until about 11:30, so we walked until midnight before we came home.
I slept in a bit later the next day - I was tired out from the day before! - and when I woke up I walked down Nevsky to the Hermitage. I had been to the museum three years ago, but it was a very brief visit, and I had missed some of the exhibits I wanted to see. However, when I got to the museum, there was a HUGE line, and I ended up waiting for two hours to get in!
looking up Nevsky...all decked out for Victory Day
Kazan Cathedral
standing in the courtyard...
It probably would have been better to have done something else, because after standing in the sun for two hours, I wasn't really in the proper mindset to stand and contemplate pictures - my feet were hurting too much! But it was ok - and I realized that I really had been more thorough the last time than I thought, so I didn't feel too rushed going through the exhibits. Not to mention that the Hermitage itself is gorgeous - it was the tsars' Winter Palace before it became a museum, so the insides are beautiful. I went home early that day to make an apple pie for Vova - he'd never had it, and I wanted to do something to say thank you for his hospitality. Then I packed, went to sleep, and woke up the next morning to walk to the station. This train left at 7:00, so it wasn't such an ungodly hour, although the trip back was considerably less fun than the trip there. Instead of three chatty girls, there was an extremely taciturn man and a young couple - girlfriend and boyfriend I think. Anyways, they kept to themselves, and the man sitting across from me didn't want to make conversation either, so we all just sat very politely and quietly together in the close confines of our compartment...for eight hours!!! It did provide a good opportunity to just sit and look out the window, though, which I enjoyed - the Russian countryside is beautiful - huge open spaces of long grasses, marshes, birch and fir woods, and all of it misty and delicately-lined, like a watercolor painting, since it was rainy that day.
The rest of that week went by in a blur, because I started work the next day, and totally crashed that weekend - plus, my foot was really acting up, since I really hadn't given it a rest since I injured it - first I went shopping with Jenny and stood all day, then went to work on Saturday, then went to the park in Kolomenskoye and wandered around for a few hours. But I skipped dance and wrapped it, and after a few days of rest it was already feeling better. I'm going to take this opportunity to stick in some pictures from Kolomenskoye, because, though not much eventful happened there to write about, it was a beautiful day.
wandered around for two hours and then spent half an hour lying in the grass under an apple tree...so nice...
Well, that's all I can think of for now...I hope everyone is doing well and congratulations to everyone who has graduated/ has a family member who has graduated! (Gabe just finished high school the week before last, which is unbelievable - in my mind he's still fifteen.) Hope everyone is having a good weekend!
