Feeding my Soul

Once again, the weekend never fails to disappoint. Friday night was pretty laid-back. Alissa, Henrike, and I stayed in and played Monopoly. What was really neat was that it was Monopoly in German!

Saturday was looking to be ridiculously, mind-numbingly boring. By the afternoon this misty rainy cloud was just sitting over Moscow. It looked disgusting, but despite the weather, I took a walk to the promenade at Vorobyovy Gory, which overlooks the entire city. I love walking around the city, looking at different people and thinking about things. In the evening, we decided to go out with some of Meghan's internship friends for dinner. Since one of her friends is Indian and yesterday was Diwali, we celebrated by going out for some Indian food. It was great to eat Indian food again and meet some new people. Then we went to Vorobyovy Gory station with some fireworks. We weren't sure where we could set them off, so we asked the two militsa officers standing outside smoking, and they replied "Oh, off that way a little bit is fine." So we set off some huge fireworks (the kind you can't buy in America) and another militsa officer came by and said "I understand that you're young and like to set off fireworks, but that's very bad." The funny part was that he wasn't any older than us. But we left and went home anyway.

Sunday morning/afternoon I was planning on sleeping in more than I usually do, but Meghan barged in and announced that she was going to the Pushkin Gallery. I had really wanted to see this museum, so I was up for the adventure. First, though, Henrike wanted to buy some football tickets. We met a German friend of hers and bought some tickets for Bayern Muenchen vs. Moscow Spartak- apparently this is a Champions League match on November 22. After a little walk in the area of the stadium, we headed over to the Pushkin Gallery for some art. Despite my best efforts, I was charged the international student price instead of the Russian student price (free). The museum was worth the price though. It focuses on European and American art of the past 150 years, so everything is quite modern. I saw a lot of Picasso, Renoir, Pissaro, Monet, Manet, Van Gogh... all the famous ones. It was impressive, and in some ways, more intellectually satisfying than the Hermitage.

Then I came home and made a yummy meal of pelmeni with butter and plov spices. (Plov is a central Asian rice/meat dish, so it was pretty weird to sprinkle that on top of Russian ravioli dumplings, but it tasted good.) Also, everybody in Cincinnati, take note: It'll be warmer here in the next few days than it will be over there. I'm just hoping it snows here by my birthday.