Russian Snow and "Garry" Potter

Notables of the week:

Working away at the Spec-Tacle:

Getting our final music program put together has been a challenge: the language barrier has made getting the necessary ideas across for putting something like this on pretty tough. Despite the difficulties, though, the kids are loving the songs, and the older ones at least understand and are excited about their outlaw roles. Hopefully we can pull this thing off in a couple of weeks.

The Cowboy Joe stick figure I made to teach the kids the storyline-

Pretty great, I know. ;)

Getting our first taste of Russian winter:
Saturday night, we got several inches of snow. The following are some pictures I got of it on my run this morning:

Our backyard-

The road heading out of our community-

Main road: note the gigantic green metal walls, as well as the little yellow bus in the background (its the one that takes us to our Molodyozhnaya metro stop every weekend)-

My dirt trail-


Trail again. In the background, you can see the President's little guard station where my waving policemen friends hang out.

Gorgeous.

Visiting the Museum of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) in Park Pobedy:
I feel like I've said this about every museum I've been to here, but... this museum really was incredible. Its crazy how much war has been a part of this country's history---27 million Russians died in WWII alone.

Now, for an Aly Soapbox moment:

Something I've decided about museums is this: If taking in the stats and artifacts and information in museums ends up increasing my understanding of history, that's great. However, if that's all I've gained from it, then the 150 rouble ticket I just bought was probably, for me, a big waste. I think that learning about history should lead us to consider again and then better appreciate the things that we now have. I loved these quotes from President Monson in October:

"If ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues... 'How much happier we are in the presence of a grateful and loving soul, and how careful we should be to cultivate... a thankful attitude toward God and man.'"

Of all the things I want to bring back from Russia, I hope more than anything that what I've learned here will have made me into someone more capable of expressing real gratitude in my words and actions.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

Hall of Sorrow and Remembrance, which has 260,000 bronze chains, some with glass teardrops, hung from the ceiling-


Whitney, Kaitlyn and I inside the impressive Hall of Glory-


Statue behind the museum-

Me in front of St. George's Cathedral, just a short walk from the museum-

Seeing Harry Potter 7... in Russian:

Other than Thanksgiving, the event I was most sad I would miss by coming to Russia was seeing the new Harry Potter movie in theaters. Therefore, you can imagine my joy when I found out a week or so ago that the new film would be coming out in Moscow the same day it did in America! Brilliant!

So, the night before, we spent an hour trying to find a cinema that played movies in English, or at least had headsets with English translations we could use, and thought we'd found a winner with the Kinocenter off of the Krasnopresnenskaya metro.

Us before the movie-

Well, turned out that the movie was entirely in Russian--no subtitles, even. This got very annoying sometimes--especially when everyone else in the movie theater started laughing hysterically, and none of us knew what the joke was about--but, knowing the basic storyline, and having our collective yet super-basic knowledge of Russian, we got through it pretty well, I think. It was quite interesting.

One comical moment in the movie that we we did get was when, after having left "Garry" and "Gearmona" (that's how they'd pronounce their names in the movie) for several weeks, suddenly shows back up, and all he has to say is an awkward "hey." Since we do, in fact, know how to say "hi" in Russian (yes, be impressed), we got to crack up right along with all the Russians in the audience. It was fun.

My ticket-


Narrowly escaping a run-in with a genuine Russian mafia member on the metro:
So. There we were, in our happy little Sunday dresses, just minding our own business, takin the metro to church, when my roommate Kaitlyn suddenly leaned over and whispered, "That guy staring at us over there... he's totally packing heat..." Upon personal observation, I quickly learned that this fellow did indeed have a very unfriendly-looking gun. Which gun he didn't seem too concerned about concealing from us, since the side of his jacket that it was hanging from was totally hanging open. Other notable characteristics of this man were the "V" tattoo below his thumb and the large package that looked like an entire roll of packaging tape had been used to cover it. And that, when he wasn't keeping an eye on this suspicious package, that he didn't exactly look happy to see us. So, after spending the next several seconds trying to appear oblivious to the fact that this shady, armed man was trying to decide whether or not we should be shot, the car finally pulled into Arbatskaya, and we booked it out of there very, very quickly.

Anyway. I guess I can't confidently state that this guy was, in fact, mafia. Definitely not the sort of character one would run into on their way to church in Logan, though.

Learning some great bathroom decorating tips for use in the future:

Inside one of the stalls at the Kinocenter-

Creepy.

Startin up our awesome daily workout sessions:
I don't know how effective they'll be, since we seem to be busting up laughing for the majority of our workouts. Good for quality roommate-bonding time though, at least. And quite interesting: especially "Bollywood dancing" the other night. Oh boy.

And... last but not least...

Learning what kind of people I'm really living with here:

Kaitlyn checkin out Whitney's cards before a round of our new favorite game, "Ilyousha."

Filthy little cheater. :)

THE END