Hey! 100 entries!

Well would you look at that. That's some kind of a landmark. Highmark? I am forgetting English. I was also wanting to see when I hit 100 self portraits, but I just realized that I already missed that. That day came and went uneventfully on 9/21/08.

My one RSL class that I have on Wednesdays was canceled yesterday because my teacher was really sick. Don't worry, I kept managed to keep myself sufficiently busy anyway.

On Saturday -- when I elected to wobble around outside on eight wheels instead of being cooped up inside -- was the opening day of the fall festival run by Pro Arte. Pro Arte is an organization in St. Petersburg that promotes the arts -- and their festival involves installing art exhibitions and projects at museums throughout the city that are smaller, quirkier, and often not as well known. On Saturday you could ride a free bus to all seven of the museums where exhibits are temporarily installed, but I didn't feel like being indoors let alone in museums crowded due to free admission. I decided instead I would check out each of the seven museums on the list on my own time, at my own pace, before the exhibitions are uninstalled on October 19th. This is also the kind of thing that reminded me of my list of the many, many museums I still have left to see in this city and gives me a push for seeing a bunch of them in the near future.

So, I started today with the Museum of Bread (one of Carly's favorites) which is not too far from my house. Man, it was awesome, Sasha it is really too bad we didn't get to go together there this summer -- it is just the kind of weird quirky museum you would love, like the Arctic/Antarctic Museum or the Museum of Hygenie. The museum is located on the fourth floor of a poorly labeled office building on Ligovskii Prospekt and is made up of three rooms. The first room you can go into without paying for a 30r ticket and is mostly made up of class cabinets displaying bags of bread made by different Russian bread companies, such as the delicious Хлебный Дом. The other two rooms -- which you have to pay to get into and are guarded by babushkii -- are made up of displays of plastic models of how they used to mold bread and table settings and the machines used in Soviet bread factories and such. It's totally weird and kind of dusty, but I am a big fan of museums like that. Not only that, but, as Carly promised me, the women who work there are unbelievably helpful and friendly and nice and are just so damn excited that they have visitors. When I asked them where the Pro Arte video exhibit was, they took me to the room, unlocked it just for me, and turned on the projector and warmed up the video and set it all up all after only asking where the exhibit was. I was so flattered by this that I felt I needed to stay and watch the entire video project -- called Kolobok and consisting of close up shots of people's faces and their reactions listening to a Russian fairytale -- even though I found it kind of tedious.... I ended up leaving after about a half an hour, feeling really guilty, but managing to slip out as all the women were distracted with a school group of five to seven year olds -- hanging up all their little coats in the front entrance.

I then spent some time doing errandy things -- I went to the post office to pick up a packge from Mom and Nunni (THANK YOU SO MUCH) and on a hunt for clothespins (long story, but they're called прищепки and I am never going to forget that word now after asking for them so many times). I was successful regarding both the package-pick-up and the прищепки-finding, but when I tried to check out two other museums where Pro Arte exhibits are, I had less luck. I located the Pushkin House Museum of Literature but was unable to gain entrance to the museum as it is closed today and tomorrow because of a conference, and as for the Soil Science Museum..... I found the door, I found the sign with its name on it, I even found the Pro Arte poster advertizing that, yes, this was indeed the Soil Science Museum and one of our exhibits is inside, the lights were even on in the building..... but the door was locked..... with no explanation or hours posted.....? Typical.

Spent some time at Smolny then, reading, watching movies for Jonathan's class with Matt, sitting, drinking tea, talking about arcaic punctuation with Eric and Bryan when Bryan was supposed to be working (POLL: how many of you have heard of the INTERROBANG? or, even better, the IRONY MARK?)..... and then I met up with Lauren (HEY MAN, hello, since I know you're such an avid reader of this blog despite how busy you are with all of your Fulbright research.... HA) to go to Pyoter's gallery opening which was part of our printmaking homework for this week (not self-serving at all, no, nope).

That was.... not what I expected. Lauren and I went to Mohovaya to find one empty bright white room with one huge painting on four panels proped up in the corner.

Yup. Just like that.

A blurry-eyed Pyoter holding a glass of champagne found us and asked us what we thought and invited us to another opening on October 12th. Everyone else was standing outside smoking. We left after less than ten minutes, and instead tried to go eat for free at a restaurant that Lauren needed to review for her internship at the St. Petersburg Times..... but in typical fashion, the first place we tried (which was located in Lauren's apartment building) turned out to not be a restaurant at all and the second one (which was located in my apartment building) we tried was busy with a wedding party. So. That failed honorably. But then I just went around the corner and into my dvor and home where I ate more mushroom soup with Olga and called it a night.

Last night before bed I did finally catch up on all of my picture uploading..... we've got self portraits bringing the total up to a nice 111 and some holga pictures from a roll I don't like that much.... and ALL THE DIGITAL from the past ten days....

Now it's Thursday and I don't have class until later this afternoon, so I am going to attempt two more Pro Arte exhibits..... let's hope for Museum of Bread luck and not Soil Science Museum luck.