Woah. A lot has happened in the past few days. So.
Saturday: Acting went really incredibly well. Darren and mine’s scene worked for about an hour, and we worked out a lot of stuff and freshened up some stuff and changed some stuff. It finally feels like a conversation, and I feel like Sarah. I feel like a woman fighting for her husband, and it finally feels appropriate to the scene and to the circumstances. We’ve been working it for the past few days outside of class, and it feels awesome. We go in first tomorrow afternoon and I’m excited about that. (We’ve moved on from entire class work to individual scene work using a schedule.)
Took care of everyone that night... everyone got pretty smashed, despite spending the whole night in the dorms. I don’t think anyone went out partying, just got drunk together. Helped my lovely and very apologetic roommate at around 2:30 in the morning. Really a very entertaining night. I ended up hanging out in Greg and Darren’s room until 3 or so, discussing life and relationships with Greg and Todd. My beautiful, beautiful people.
Sunday! Hurrah! Woke up at around 11 and went to the souvenir market (the same one that you and I jumped a fence from 2 feet of snow to get to, Katie) with Masha, Megan, Lydia, Kelley, Jen, and Josh. Of course, we lost each other within ten minutes of getting there. I managed to find most of my souvenirs/Christmas presents and had some pretty marvelous encounters. On the second walkway, above the majority of the market, there’s an antique aisle. Full of crazy antiques-gramophones, rotary telephones, Soviet propaganda, old postcards, trinkets, samovars, silverware, etc. I walked to the end of the aisle and a man calls out to me: “девушка!” which is “girl!” in Russian. (But it’s not a rude expression; for example, you can call a waitress “девушка” to get her attention.) So I turn and walk toward his booth, which is full of odd knick knacks. He’s a funny man, and when I explain (in Russian, haha!) that I only speak some Russian. He guesses from my accent that I’m French. I explain that I speak English, and I’m American. He admits to not speaking any English, but sings Happy Birthday. Then his compatriot says “Good morning!” (the only English he knows), and he corrects him “Good day!” Because it was around 3 in the afternoon.
Then I looked for the ATM, and I walked out the end of the antique aisle when I happened upon this man sitting at an empty booth, sort of distanced from the rest of the market. He walked out of the booth as I approached, and I put on my instinctive “stranger approaching, prepare to run” mode. I tapped me on the shoulder very politely and introduced himself as Stanislav. I introduced myself. He told me that he though I was pretty, and would I mind if he took a picture and painted my portrait, then send it to me? It didn’t seem sketch; he seemed very sincere. So I halfheartedly agreed and gave him my email address, and we had a funny Russian-English conversation while he showed me the ATM. He told me what his favorite American band was (I can no longer remember which it was), asked mine, and we talked about New York, etc. A good interaction.
A not-so-good interaction:
Was looking for a hat, and looked at a stand of hats manned by a 20-30’s guy. He ended up a) putting several hats on my head as I turned one down, then another b) forcefully grabbing my rest when I said thank you, goodbye and c) asking me out for coffee and kissing me on the cheek. Russian men are unlike American men. In the sense that when an American girl says no, she means no, and a guy backs off. In Russia, when an American girl says no, an Russian man thinks no means “Oh, I’m just being coy and actually mean take me, I’m yours.”
Entertaining. I think.
Then we rehearsed our group movement etude for Lion King, using the Broadway music song “Lioness Hunt.”
Hurrah for Sunday!
Today was good, too. Had wine at the American Embassy. No big deal.
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