spring, music, and ice cream

First and foremost: spring has sprung!!


That's right, one degree warmer in Moscow in the afternoon than in Claremont in the wee hours of the morning! And sunny to boot! Man, living somewhere with seasons is fantastic.

Storytime. So last night, I got back from Russian language class around 5:30, and texted Jack to see if anything was going on. Turns out he and Jeff were just about to get on the metro to meet Irina at Ohotniy Ryad metro station at 6pm to go to some kind of classical music concert! I was all, whoa, hold on, why didn't anyone tell me about this, I'm coming too......so I called Irina and she said "sure, I'm running late too, see you a little after 6." And off I went, grabbing a pancake thing filled with chicken at a Teremok stand on the way.

It became apparent that I wasn't going to get to the meeting point until 6:30, so I started texting people, but when I arrived I didn't see anyone I knew. Fantastic. Finally about 15 minutes later, Irina managed to round us all up from the various misdirections we'd all headed. There were probably 10 of us who were there. We followed her down side streets until finally at about 7:05 (the concert was supposed to start at 7) we arrived at a small little concert hall. But Irina knew one of the performers and had asked them to postpone starting the concert a few minutes. (Apparently that actually works here!) We filed into a very small, rectangular recital hall and sat down. And then the most amazing recital I've ever been to began.

It was seriously amazing. And the fact that it happened on the spur of the moment made it even better. The whole thing was two and a half hours with intermission. There were piano solos, violin solos, violin with piano, flute and clarinet with piano, classical guitar, cello, and, best of all, BALALAIKA!! I got a few pictures. Everyone was an insanely good musician - this is the Moscow Conservatory after all. They all played magnificant pieces, too. For instance, Chopin Ballad no. 3 (piano), Saint-Saens Introduction and Rondo-Capriccio (AMAZING, violin), Sarasate, Tshaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, random Russian people I hadn't heard of. Two of the pieces I think I played in the accompanying orchestra at CCO - the Sarasate and one of the Tschaikovsky pieces (both violin solos). There was something about Russians playing Russian music that was simply fantastic. And the cellist blew me away. The whole thing blew me away. It was amazing. I also went through an entire roll of Halls' cough drops - but I didn't cough during a performance! I spasmed silently a few times, but I survived.

After all that awesomeness, we headed to Asia Cafe for dinner/snacks around 10pm. This being Russia, we didn't get out of there until midnight, and I didn't get back to the dorm until nearly 1am. But it didn't matter, what a wonderful evening.

Today I have been getting little things done, namely laundry. I enjoy doing laundry here, because usually I get to spend an hour practicing my Russian by having a conversation with another person who is annoyed that the laundry room isn't open. "Do you know when it is open?" "No, I have already been here 20 minutes." etc. And then it becomes "where are you from?" and "what do you think of Russia?" and all that fun stuff, and an hour or so later the laundry room lady arrives and you finally get to do your freaking laundry. Only this time there was the added bonus of "you have a bad cough and need to go to a doctor." Um. It's not that bad. Really. You should see me in LA smog.

And last but certainly not least - ice cream! I wanted an ice cream bar and decided to get adventuresome and buy one that didn't have a picture on the front and was written all in Russian. I deciphered "ice cream," "chocolate," and "vanilla," and figured I couldn't go wrong. I win! I essentially bought a huge brick of vanilla ice cream with little chocolate shavings/flecks in it. YUM. Ice cream makes everything better.

Okay, now it is time for me to go get my laundry.