Thursday, typical.

Once again I made up errands for myself to do so I would have an excuse to spend four hours walking from my house to school. I also shot some film of the new snow, not completely disgusting-looking yet, but pretty close. A lot of it was just melty, but there was some accumulation.... my favorite example of it was the small, perfectly circular, flat little lump of snow that had built up on the top of the head of the statue of Dostoevsky near the Vladimirskaya metro station -- exactly the size and shape of a yarmulke, nonchalantly crowning the head of perhaps Russia's most Christian writer. Ha.

On my walk I also stopped briefly to have a small burning cup of tea and a perozhok and look at my favorite view of the Hermitage from Peter & Paul's fortress and there was, of course, as usual, a Russian wedding photo shoot going on. I thought that the wedding photo thing would die down with the shittier weather or that people would be less enthusiastic about it, but I think that the winter weddings actually have more fun. The one today had the bride wearing a huge fur coat over her dress and the photographer was making the whole wedding party run through piles of snowing screaming and silly stuff like that. Or maybe they just drink more to keep warm so they look like they are having more fun.

And tonight, in film class, we watched a Czech film called Closely Watched Trains. I really liked it and recommend it if you can find it. The beginning part reminded me of Amelie with the voice over against the stills of old photographs.

Tomorrow is Friday, which is nice, especially as Bakhtin is canceled this week, but Joan is visiting this weekend so things promise to still be busy/fun/crazy/nonsensical.