Loving it!

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Another great day. I walked to the MXAT by myself in the morning, and this city still just amazes me. Constant bombardment of sounds and sights which enlivens the senses. We had a hard time finding the location of our first class, Russian Film History, because apparently our helpers didn't feel it was necessary to give us any sort of tour of the MXAT where all of our classes are held so that we would know where to go. But we found it eventually, and it was pretty amazing. We got a crash course on Russian political history and my goodness, the things that these people have been through! It's amazing they still have a country. We got to watch some really cool old films from the 1920's and before. One of them was literally the first animated film ever all about a beetle cheating on his wife and getting busted and having a huge jealous fight with a grasshopper. It was really cute and really fun.

Lunch for the first time in the cafeteria was great. The food was really quite delicious. I had a Russian version of potato salad, some chicken with this amazing sauce, cheese, and pineapple on top, the best pig in a blanket I've had in a long time, some broccoli and a bread puff stuffed with minced meat (which was actually not good, too dry).

Acting class was delightful, and we exlopered rhythm and tempo and performed our objects homework from the previous day. Looks like every day we need to be ready with an object to become and perform that goes through a changing event, my first one was a door on a high rise that sees a beautiful girl pass by everyday, and on this day she actually walks through my door. Sergei the teacher thought it needed to be a bigger event.

After that we had about 2 hours before our show for the evening started. I took a siesta in the green room. The show was called Khanuma, performed by the same MXAT students that we saw the night before. It was a musical based on a jewish folk story of a matchmaker. It was really cute and well done. They actually gave us a play synopsis before hand so that we could sort of follow the story. It was nice to see the student who had been performing the etudes from the night before actually working with text.

I came home and pretty much just crashed for the night after updating my journal. I did get some disappointing news. I thought I had all my flights booked, but apparently they are all cancelled. Turns out the website I used was run by some Greek based travel company and they didn't give me any clear reason, but apparently they are all cancelled. So I have to wait for my money to be refunded and try again with a different website. (GRRRRR). Oh well, it will all work out.

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Photos

The underpass of Pushkin Square.
The streets are so crazy with vehicles that they have these underpasses for pedestrians. This one is particularly long and is lined with shops that people sell stuff out of. The shops are ridiculously small and the idea that someone would stand in there for 8 hours is mind boggling.

Comments

[Tonya]

bummer about the flights being canceled, hope everything is working out on that.