Well.
As usual, I've been a little busy.
So. Thursday. I have my one film class on Thursdays, as always, and this week we watched a great Soviet film -- Мама вышла замуж (Mama Got Married). I enjoyed it a lot and highly recommend it, though it is tricky to find with English subtitles -- though we did have subtitles on Thursday night, though they were kind of hilarious and hastily done.
After class on Thursday night no one felt like going home immediately, so Ilana, Vicky, Lauren, Maneka & I decided to look for somewhere to sit and have a snack and talk. The first few places we looked were not appealing and then we stumbled upon -- totally by accident -- the insane restaurant that they took us to on our first night of orientation in St. Petersburg in June. Did I mention this place then? I don't think I did in quite the detail it deserves because the last time I was there I was so jetlagged and disorientated and confused I couldn't believe where I was, let alone this restaurant. It's called Café Alyosha, and the window display includes many stuffed animals doing strange things.... including the infamous stripper cat with the rat giving it money that Bryan got so excited about and made me take a picture of the first night I met him when I was still like.... ok.... who are these weird people..... Well this time Ilana and I were the ones getting excited about the stripper cat display and when we went in the strange pirate-looking guy was singing on his little electronic keyboard, just like last time, and the blacklight and the disco ball were going, and so we decided this was the perfect place to spend a little time before going home.
But here's the best part about Café Alyosha -- on Thursday night when we were all dispersing to the metro, I forgot my scarf there. Not just any scarf, but my purple scarf that I got in Ireland when I was thirteen, a scarf that has seen me through so many winters and a summer in Siberia. Naturally on Friday morning when I was rushing like hell to get out of the house and tie my shoes while my cell phone was ringing because Cool! English needs me to record some articles on Monday and Russian workers were coming in our apartment to replace our radiators, I realized I had forgotten it and immediately panicked. CHAOS. And, as you all well know by now, Friday is my crazy day when I only have an hour and a half of free time in the middle of my three classes. When was I going to get myself back there?? But there was no way I was abandoning that scarf, so during my brief break after writing class and before Bakhtin, Lauren went back with me to the café. Lauren went with me out of sympathy because on Thursday afternoon she had forgotten her favorite blue scarf in one of the Smolny classrooms and I had found it for her on Friday morning during phonetics. On the walk back there, Lauren and I formulated how to say "I was here last night, I think my scarf is still here, do you have it, it is purple, etc" and as I enter the restaurant, before I can even say "I was..." the waitress who was the same one from the night before says -- "Your scarf is over there."
YES!
So then Lauren and I took a victorious picture wearing our refound scarves outside of Café Alyosha, and then went to a produkti to buy bread, cheese, sausage, carrot salad and Bitter Lemon Schwepes (ah, my favorite) and had a picnic on the embankment on the Neva. It was another Indian summer day and we sat there and talked about our common friend, Caroline Holland (Lauren & Caroline went to elementary school together back in the day), and enjoyed the afternoon..... before class. Again.
Friday night after class I hung out with Ilana, Maneka, Vicky, Lauren, Matt, and Matt's friend Piper for a while, though nothing exciting or extravagant because, as always, I have class on Saturday mornings. I did make a point to call Mr. Michael Patrick "new papa" Broderick to wish him a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY on Friday though before going to bed.
Saturday. Printmaking. Back with Pyoter this week, and everyone showed up again -- all three of the Russians, plus me, Cathy & Lauren. I definitely prefer Yuri's teaching style to Pyoter's, but Pyoter is growing on me in his abrasive way. This week he said something along the lines of, "You're not a very good draftsman, huh? You should practice drawing things how they are. Curtains don't hang like hair." Good point. He was also really into discussing the differences between American students and Russian students this weekend and made us look through a pile of prints belonging to old students and wanted us to guess which ones were done by Russians and which ones were done by Americans. One of the Russian girls in the class said, "Yes, American students draw more like cartoons. Lots of animals." And Pyoter replies, "Dogs and dophins! Never draw dogs or dolphins!" ..... and then I sheepishly removed my prints of Gwen from the clothesline where they had been drying. Hey, it was Yuri's idea I draw Gwen! I like that Yuri is enthusiastic about anything and seems to have less-pretentious ideas of what art needs to consist of.
But this week we did monotype prints which are a totally different animal than linocut prints. Linocuts are when you carve out what you want to print from a block of linoleum and you can print them and fix them as many times as you want. Monotypes you only do once (thus the "mono" part) and you paint with ink and kerosene on a metal plate to get different shades of white, black and grey. You then smack it on some paper and bam, you have a print. I did two different versions of a window that I didn't like that much, but hey, it's a start. We get to try again with the monotypes next week.
Then Saturday afternoon was perhaps the most idealic fall day in existence and I couldn't handle the thought of being inside doing homework or some nonsense like that, so I ended up.... trying to rollerblade? Wtf? A group of us went to Kristovskii Ostrov and rented rollerblades for an hour and, well, let's just say I have really weak ankles and it doesn't help that I have never ice skated before and have poor balance, but I would like to point out that I DID NOT FALL ONCE, and I fall all the time in my own, sneakered feet! Though.... I also was always clinging to one person or anyother while slowly shuffling down the path. At one point Lauren had one hand, Emma had the other, and Bryan was pushing me along from behind. Yeah..... I'm not exactly a natural athlete. BUT HEY. LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY.
After that effort, I went and sat in the park to recuperate a little with Emma and Ilana and Lauren, and while sitting there I got a call from Bryan who had stopped at one of the consignment stores (thanks, Kristina!) near his house just to look around on his way home. And you know what he found? THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AMAZING PERFECT CAMERA THAT I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR SINCE THE MOMENT I GOT HERE. Bryan and I have been talking photo stuff lately so I'd told him about the camera I was looking for and he found it! A KIEV 6C. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH it's not the Kiev 88 which is the exact clone of a Hasselblad, but it is in beautiful condition and medium format and is going to be gorgeous for portrait taking and ahhh ahhh ahhh and it was a reasonable price and Bryan got it for me and I am paying him back on Monday because some other guy was about to buy it but I GOT IT FIRST AHHHHHHHHHHHH. Wait, can you tell I'm excited? One more time: AHHHHHHHHHH. Okay. Yes. So. Look forward to pictures from that in the very near future. Wait, can you see exactly how excited I am yet? No? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! There.
Saturday night there was a brief return to Fidel and Dacha -- it felt just like summer again instead there were fewer people loitering outside of the bars in the street because it's cold now at night -- to celebrate Emma's birthday which was on Wednesday and just SLIPPED BY without her pointing it out. And then, get this, there was a sleepover at my house for a change. Uh huh. Ilana and Lauren stayed over, and in the morning we all went off to various theatrical events in the city. Lauren went to see The Magic Flute with some other girls from the program, and Ilana and I went to the ballet at the Marinsky. Thank god I have Ilana to tell me what ballets are good to see and whatnot. We saw La Bayadere -- the story of a slave girl who dies, you know, the usual -- but it was refreshing to see something that was in no way avant-garde or what. It was just classic and beautiful with the tutus and the traditional backdrops and dream sequences. There were some funny/uncomfortable moments..... like the inflatable tiger prop in the "parade" scene, or all the Orientalism in general, or the children dancers in.... black face...?
And since, I've been home. I showed Olga some of the latest pictures of Agnes. She was a big fan of this one:
As am I.
So. tomorrow is Monday. Rinse and repeat.
P.S. ---------------------------------------------------------
I took a lot of pictures this week during all the walking I did in the nice weather, so at the moment I am a little behind -- but you can at least check out the newest self portraits (including some "response art") and the prints I did during the last two weeks of printmaking class. Everything else will follow.
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