headed north

First and foremost, some pictures:


A typical scene at Плошадь Индиры Ганди. Only the trolleybus broke down for some reason and people had to push it. How many Russians...? :)


Me at Tema Bar - my drink has a starfruit slice!! It was appropriately called "around the world," and it was delicious.


With Katie at Tema bar - yet another Mudders in Moscow rendezvous


More recently at the "iron curtain" party. Russian hats!


At the orchestra concert - the room where we put all our cases and stuff. (I'll hopefully be getting pictures from other folks of the actual concert...since I was playing in it I couldn't take any myself.)


Fellow violist Andrei makes some last minute bowing changes. (That's my viola on the table, along with the baroque bow I've been borrowing.)

We're headed to St. Petersburg sometime this evening...rumor has it we're leaving at midnight, but that has yet to be confirmed. I'm 90% packed. We'll (probably) take the train tonight, be there Saturday, spend that night in a hotel, be there Sunday, and come back to Moscow on another train Sunday night that arrives into Moscow bright and early Monday morning. I'm excited to see yet another place that isn't Moscow!

Gotta make this short because I'm hungry! But my astronomy research is going quite well - I put in a ton of time on that since returning from Vladimir and Suzdal and will be able to produce some kind of light curves in the time I have left. So, that is pretty neat. Thermal Physics continues to go well, though we haven't gotten to chapter 7 yet and I'm afraid a fair bit of that material is important. Oh well. I was the only one to show up to Russian Language yesterday (and there are now four of us in that class). Apparently a fair number of the group has started traveling independently, and a bunch of them are already in St. Petersburg! Once again, silly me for staying in Moscow and doing schoolwork. Aside from that, though, I had a fantastic time May 1 meeting up with Snezhana and another student who apparently goes to CMC, Natasha! We ate at му-му (yes!) and walked around the city center and I bought a nice green bag that says (unobnoxiously) "Mission for peace" on it. Finally I have the tote bag/purse I've been wanting since March.

Time for food and with luck I'm off for an adventure in St. Petersburg!