News from Kaitlin

I was a little hesitant to come back to this wonderful little internet cafe (which is beneath a Moscow department store that's next to a dance club that's between the Kremlin and Godzilla's Hostel) because when I was here earlier today, some married 40-year-old Armenian banker dude definitely tried to buy me coffee and get my telephone number 8 times and asked me if I was married et cetera. I made the mistake of talking to him because I am programmed to be friendly by default. I figured he wanted to get on the internet and was having problems, and wanted my help. It turns out he wanted to give me his business card. And his business, if you know what I mean. Men here are definitely more forward. So I told the guy I didn't speak Russian and he asked me if I spoke French. I said I spoke some French. So we had a conversation in English/French/Russian. An Australian named Carlo who is taking 12 months to travel the world and jokes that since he's been gone for 9 months, babies are "popping up everywhere" tried to pick up anywhere between four and six of us American girls up the other day. He's super friendly and he has been staying at our hostel. Thankfully he's leaving today. Some of the other girls were hit on extensively by Slavic people and French people and basically, non-Russians. We don't actually maintain much direct contact with Russians. Ya nee gavaru pa ruskie. I don't speak Russian. I don't know how to spell that either.

Tonight several of us are going to a Georgian restaurant with our TA Lisa. She will translate the menu for us, I am sure. Georgian restaurants are probably pretty expensive, but I have read that their food is the best in the world. Literally. My guidebook told me that there's a myth that God tripped over the mountains and spilled his dish over Georgia, and that's why their food is so good. Apparently Georgia has been, for better or worse, a big trade route/army route et cetera through the mountains, so they have the influence of various regions of the world in their culture and in their food.

I always wanted to go to Russia because I did ballet and character dancing for ten years, and Russia is extremely influential in those areas. I remember wearing what we hoped were culturally accurate dance costumes from all different countries through the years, including Russia and doing Russian dance somewhat. Today in the Armory Museum Shop at the Kremlin I bought a doll for my doll collection (of so far four dolls from around the world) who is wearing such an outfit. We saw some perhaps? historically accurate costumes on Christmas morning. There were four dancer/singers on a stage outside of the Church of Christ our Savior (beautiful!) but they were singing modern music. Very joyful stuff. Yesterday we went to a ballet in the Kremlin. I was thoroughly, thoroughly impressed by this. Theater is hard for me to understand because of the language barrier, which is why I've been putting off talking about it. But ballet, I get. Music is the universal language (or is that love?) so I got that too. Harasho. Or however you spell that. That's "good."

I'll post again some time and focus more on theater.