church and circus

Interesting fact of the day: the Russian word for church is церковь, and circus is цирк. (Those sound pretty similar and I therefore find it amusing that both occurred today.)

Church was good, and there were more people this time! Afterwards there was some kind of youth bible study group that I got semi dragged off to (but it was not like I had anything else to do anyway). Apparently the group had just gotten restarted, and it was awkward for me because I was pretty clearly the new one but there was never an opportunity for introductions or anything. One guy who is from...Kenya? Nigeria? (one of those two and another guy is from the other) was leading it. His English was passable but not excellent, and we read "The Good Samaritan" in some old fashioned thee-thou language and he basically talked about it for half an hour. Stuff we'd all heard before so far as I could tell. At one point he decided to teach us to respond "Alleluia!" when someone says "Praise the Lord!"...which is okay I suppose, but a little more outwardly exuberant than I'm used to, plus it's Lent and I definitely have it ingrained that "alleluia" is not an okay word during Lent.

Anyway, I'll probably give it another shot next week, most of the people seemed pretty cool (plus they speak English!).

Tonight we went to the circus, which was an experience. I'm not sure how okay I am with all the animals they have...everyone says they have a great life, etc., but I just don't know. There were bears, cats, a monkey, a dog, horses, porcupines (I think), and elephants. I don't know, they just didn't look overly happy, it doesn't seem like animals should be trained to that extent. To the cats' credit, they were pretty obstinant, so way to go, cats! The coolest parts in my opinion were the magic tricks where people curled themselves up inside boxes and reappeared as another person, etc. There were also some pretty quality trapeze artists and dancers, "Clown Harry," and a giraffe unicycle that put South Dorm's to shame.

So, now I have been to the circus, and in Moscow of all places! I'm off now to finish up some Thermal Physics homework and call it a night.