Lots to catch up, 2 days behind!

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Sorry that I got a little behind, the last couple of days have been pretty hectic. So Saturday we had our first movement class with Vladimir. He was super fun, with lots of energy. We spent most of the time warming up in ways that I didn't even know were possible. Lots of isolations of body parts and stretching them beyond what I thought were their limits. He informed us that there was a spot at the back of our heads that was designed for our heel of our foot. That it was no problem for us to put it there when we were children, and that our body has not forgotten, we just have to remind it. My bodies memory is pretty deeply repressed, then, cuz I don't know about that one.

After movement we had our first singing class with Meriana. She is also pretty spectacular. They all have this way of telling you NO, but then making you fell alright about it. We will be splitting our class in have and only meeting one day a week so that we can have more personal attention. Should be fun. She is bringing me a song to work on, I'm curious to see what it will be.

Then lunch was followed by our acting class. The class has been such a joy, and each day Sergey adds a new concentration exercise that is more challenging than the last. The tough one is we have to pick up our chairs and run around the room, he then calls someone's name and they have to call some out and ask them a question, can't be yes or no, then that person answers and asks someone else. It just keeps going on like that while we are running around like mad people, but we have to run quiet. Then after about 15 or so questions have been asked, we sit down and we have to remember the exact order of the questions, and the answers. You have no idea how hard that is until you have tried it. Hopefully we will get better at that one.

That night we had no show to go see, so I decided to go explore the metro. I of course first of all wanted to make sure I could find the church so I could get to church on Sunday without any hassles. I actually found it relatively quick, of course I did wander about the alley or back street where it was located before walking down the right little section (the signage wasn't very clear), but when I came around the corner and saw a bunch of missionaries in the lobby of this building, I knew I had found it. I went in and asked about church services, only to find out that there wouldn't be any tomorrow, because Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of the Twelve was in town, and they were having a special conference on Sunday. Pretty exciting. So I got directions to the hotel where apparently they had booked a large conference room to host it.

After that I got back on the metro to explore. So the way it is set up, there are all these lines that run north and south and east and west, and connecting them all is a giant circle line. So I got on the circle line and just got off every station. The metro stations are really quite incredible. First of all the lines run really deep below the city, so you get on this escalator that is like combining 3-5 escalators in any American mall and putting them end to end. There is one that is supposed to be exceptionally long, that I am going to try and find one of these days. Then all the stations are like these mini art deco halls, all of them done differently and very ornate. So I hit all of them on the circle line, did lots of people watching and took lots of photos.

Sunday, I was up early and off to the orange line of the metro which would take me to the hotel where the conference was being held. I found it all no problem, ran into some sister missionaries in the metro station, so I stalked them to make sure I was headed in the right direction. The conference was really pretty cool. It is so amazing to me that the feeling of church is the same no matter where I go in the world. It didn't matter that most of it was in Russian, and that most of the people there were Russian. It still just felt so comfortable and familiar. The downside was that the conference started at 10 am, and I had a mandatory bus tour that I couldn't miss which started at noon, so I had to leave the conference just before Sister and Elder Perry spoke, but it was still pretty amazing.

I got back to the dorm only to find out that the bus was late, then it arrived and was too small for us all, so they had to send for another, and so we didn't end up leaving until 2 pm. I could have stayed for the conference. Bummer. Oh well. So Peggy (Scenic Teacher) and I went for an exploratory walk. We headed up the street, crossed over Tverskya, past the grocery store, and kept going. We found this really cool statue and a bunch of various vendors on the street where I stopped to get some apricots, plums, and the biggest pear I have ever seen. Beyond that we found this pretty fancy mall. We walked around and I was passing this clothing store and had just said that I really wanted to get some t-shirst with Russian on them, and in this store had one in the window that looked cool so we went in. We found the shirt and it looked like it was 600 roubles, but was also half off. So I was totally prepared to buy it, and Peggy suggested that we have the clerk show us on the calculator how much, she had kept saying 200, 200. Well, she was talking US dollars, it was actually 6,000 roubles. I almost bought a $200 shirt. Yikes.

The bus tour was really something amazing, they said it was 3 yours which seemed long, but it could have been so much longer. I got some really great pictures. And I got some cheap t-shirst that were pretty cool. I got two for about $18 US, which you can't beat. The bus tour just really put into perspective just how massive and expansive Moscow is. After we returned from the bus tour he headed out for a show, and saw the Lencom theatre's production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest. I was really geeked up to see this show since we had done it last year and I was in it. Well, first of all the set was ridiculously amazing. So I am really pumped now. It kind of went down hill from there. They either were working with a completely different script, or they had just taken lots of liberties. They cut all of the Chief's speeches, they changed the ending which was a total let down, while the acting was pretty strong, and the action was non-stop, I felt some of the actors were a little flat. The best actor in the whole show was the kid that played Billy. We was so alive and just really captured the innocence and quirkiness of that character. It was actually nice to see a show that I didn't get completely blown away by, because up until then, I was thinking that the Russians could do no wrong. I mean the show had a lot of strong merits, but I wasn't blown away.

Today we were back to the grind. Movement for our second class, we took less time warming up and then started doing partner balancing work, and moving across the floor as different animals. I was pouring sweat and having such a great time. Acting was also very good. We spent a lot of time talking about Uncle Vanya which is the play we will be focusing on for the month. A new exercise in concentration required that one person rises and moves with eye focus to take another person's seat, we had to use all our energy and concentration to force them to move, then that person had to get up and find someone else and push them out, it all sounds easy but it had to all be done at a run and no more than one seat could be open at a time.

After class we had almost 2 hours before the show would start. Sergey had mentioned an old neighborhood that reflected Russia 200 years ago on the other side of Red Square and the Kremlin, so a few of us decided to go and explore that. We took off across the square, had to take a pass through GUM mall, which is this very long high end mall on Red Square (a lot of the square was blocked off because they are setting up for this Saturday's holiday Russia day). We found this neighborhood that was really pretty cool. It was amazing how alive it was. We ducked into this pretty cool church, saw a Pizza Hut and a really tiny McDonalds with just a take out window on the street, no inside dining. We caught the metro back just in time for the show. The show was A Three Penny Opera. We had heard about how amazing this show was from the previous year, and they weren't lying. Amazing and LONG. It started at 7 and ended at 11 with 2 intermissions. I'll admit I dozed off more than once, but it was still really amazing. The spectacle at the end was mind blowing. I giant skeleton man/horse/dinosaur puppet, people flying and a dude walking up the wall. Amazing!!!!

I guess I was three days behind, but now I am all caught up, enjoy the pictures, there are lots of them.

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Comments

[Frank Loftus]

Cool Panarama
President Jones, Wow! thanks fer lett'n moi come along for the ride, on your sabatical to Russia. I'm digg'n the most outta it! It is really a thrill to be a voyeur! Yers, Frank

[Tonya]

Very cool
Ok i am a dork, thought the email i got about your blog was the blog, didn't realize I had to click the link. Now i need to go back and look at the rest. Thank you for taking time to do this. I really enjoyed reading this and seeing the pictures. Way cool!