A Red Birthday!

I had a great birthday yesterday!

We kicked it off at midnight here. My friends brought a cake and some wine, and a few gifts, so we had a good time sitting around eating, drinking, and talking for a few hours. During the day I didn't do much- just shopping and taking care of some business. But I got a ton of texts and calls from friends and even family back home. I definitely loved that.

Meghan and Alissa

Two of the many bottles of cheap Russian wine we drank that night...

Then, around 6, Alissa and I decided to head downtown to Red Square to see if any Communist marches were going on. November 7 is the anniversary of the October Revolution- as my Russian teacher back home used to say, it was the birthday of the Soviet Union. So the diehards still celebrate the holiday. It was scary to come up out of the Metro and see hundreds of militsya just standing around, some wearing riot gear. We saw a huge gathering around Teatralnaya Ploshchad. At first we were a little hesitant to go into the crowd (you had to pass through metal detecors first) but once we got in, it was pretty fascinating. The crowd was mostly made up of people 50 and older. Some of them were really old- it was sad to think about how they knew only one government and way of thinking, and 15 years ago their world was totally turned upside-down. We listened to a speech for a little bit and enjoyed the general surrealness of being at a Communist rally in Russia, then we left. And after we left, we went out for a birthday dinner. Also, my dad sent me flowers and I just got them today. That was a wonderful surprise- they're beautiful.

I forgot to mention it was snowing heavily this whole time... big wet flakes of snow!

So, it was a great birthday, and thanks to everybody who made it great!

I thought I was going to a tennis match…

but instead, I found myself at a football match. But football matches last 90 minutes, not 5 hours.

Yeah, I am talking about the Davis Cup on Sunday. I was totally pumped to see some good tennis. In fact, I didn’t go out the night before because I knew I had to get up at 10am. I guess I should have known something was wrong when they handed out Thunder Sticks at the door. You know, those long tubes you blow up and bang together to make a lot of noise? At a tennis match. And that set the tone for the whole match. Granted, I knew watching Russia vs. the US in Russia, the crowd would be biased. But this crowd was out of control. All Andy Roddick had to do was fault on a serve- not even double fault- and the crowd would go wild. He shared a few words with the chair ump, but I’m surprised he didn’t just give up and walk out. Tennis matches are supposed to be reserved and polite- this really was more like a football match. All the noise gave me a headache.

As far as the playing went, it was disappointing. It was Andy Roddick vs. Dmitri Tursunov on clay. On any other surface, Roddick would have smoked Tursunov, but apparently Roddick really sucks on clay. It’s just too slow for him- Tursunov even had more aces than he did. (Tennis fans, let that one sink in). So Roddick dropped the first two sets, but he took the third and fourth sets. So we came to the fifth set. Apparently the Davis Cup doesn’t do the whole tiebreak concept. Which is very bad when players hold their serve. Roddick and Tursunov held serve through 31 games. Thirty-one games. Then in the 32^nd, Tursunov broke Roddick and finally ended the whole thing. By the end I didn’t even care who won, because the entire match lasted 5 hours. Just watching them made me tired. In fact, we didn’t stick around for the second match, which was James Blake vs. Marat Safin, I think.

Tuesday was my friend Henrike’s birthday, so Terri and I spent our Monday off shopping for her- and us. I actually bought a notebook which cost like $10, but it’s a really awesome notebook. Anyway, we ended up buying her a cake and some flowers, and made her a banner in Russian. Then at 10pm, us four ladies went up to her room and sang “Happy Birthday” to her in German. We had a fun little girls’ party: eating cake, listening to the radio, and drinking wine. Then Irina showed up and brought another cake, and we ate that with tea. Henrike’s parents were in town visiting her, so they brought German board games and sweets. We stayed up until 3am playing Bluff, eating Haribo Goldbären, and cooking up revenge on our noisy neighbors. Nice night.