Well the fall is off to quite a start.

This morning at Smolny..... Russian placement test. Learning about how academics work during the semester. Stuff like that. Kind of dull. We were done by 2:30/3pm though which was nice. I didn't go home though.... instead I hung out in the 1st line Stolle for about three hours, bonding with new friend Matt, reading by myself, eating, drinking tea, occasionally leaving to mail letters, inspecting the new black and white photos I picked up today....... and then I walked over to Petrograd to the Baltiskii Dom to see the play version of "Master and Margarita."

I didn't go with anyone. In fact, I felt very much like Puppy on his excursions to the Lexington Flick by himself when Nunni is at chorus. It was really nice and something I think I want to start doing more of..... it was also one of those really satisfying living-in-Russia moments thinking about how I purchased the ticket, figured out where the theatre was, got myself there, watched the whole thing, and got myself home, all by myself. There seems like so much room for error in that situation, but I successfully navigated that one. Good for me. I've got that much on the new kids. So there.

As for the play....... well...... hm...... it was very much like something the American Rep Theatre in Harvard Square would do....... minimalist set, lots of complicated props instead, very modern, lots of red and blue accent lights, projections of both live video feed and prerecorded old footage of wars and such, crazy voice amplification (is that what it is called?)...... there was also no speaking for the first twenty minutes and every now and then there would be a random song and dance number. That kind of threw me for a loop. But in general I think the play captured the kind of crazy surrealist air of that book that I love so much, so that was good. And the actors who played Begemot (the cat) and Voland were exactly as how I imagined they should be when I read the book. And the actor who played Koroviev looked like Hugh Laurie if he came back from the dead as a zombie. And the other thing that was cool was that I could hear all the dramatic rolling of the "r"s that Olga Nikolavna always talked about in phonetics class this summer. So, maybe I did learn something.

The only thing though was that the production was..... oh, a mere four hours long. Started at 7pm and I was walking out of the theatre, texting Katya to tell her I was coming home as she called concerned while I was still watching the play, at 11pm. Gotta love those days when you're out of the house for fourteen hours. But as I was coming home I thought about how it was strange that Katya called to check on me to see where I was because Olga was supposed to get home from the dacha tonight and if Olga is home she would be the one asking me if everything was ok........ and my hunch was right. I came home to have Katya tell me that Olga fell today in her mom's apartment's kitchen and broke her leg and is now in the hospital in Kirovsk. Well, shit I say. No, really, this sucks. Olga is supposed to start teaching art class again on September 1st which is in a week. Timing is everything, right? So we don't know how long she'll be in the hospital yet or how bad it is...... Katya and Stas are going to go out to Kirovsk to see her tomorrow, but I can't go as I have class. Oy. Shit. Oh! And we don't have an elevator in our building! Crap!