Heaven and Hell in one Weekend

The weekend started out so well. Friday we watched the movie Nezhnaya Vozrost, or A Tender Age, about teenagers in Moscow right at the fall of the Soviet Union, who get mixed up in some nasty stuff with mafia and bandits, but who turn out okay in the end. It was the last movie we watched by our visiting director, Sergey Aleksandrovich, and was particularly interesting because all the events really happened to his son, who also stars in the film. You sort of have to know what was going on in the early nineties in Russia for everything to make sense, but overall it was really good. Recommended, to anyone who's interested.

After the movie on Friday I went to a party at one of the dorms and talked to Chris from Level 2 until about 12:30, when we went home.

Saturday the weather was simply perfect: sunny, but not too hot, with a light, cool breeze. In the morning I watched our soccer team kick the Italian school's soccer team's butt, winning 3-1. In the afternoon, a whole bunch of Russian students went to Bristol Falls to go swimming. Here's a picture of me jumping off a rock into the water. I've put more pictures up here.



Saturday evening they showed a silent film from 1929 called A Man with a Movie Camera. The fantastic thing about it was that we got to watch it with live piano accompaniment, just like in the olden days! It was a really interesting movie, which attempted to document every aspect of life in a city from every angle. The only "character" is a man with a videocamera, who ends up in all sorts of strange places and positions to get his shots. All the other characters are just people in the city, from those at the wedding registration office, to workers in factories, to ladies getting facials. It was fascinating.

Saturday evening I hung out with Chris again, first going to the Grille for a couple beers then, when the Spanish school disco got too loud, to the Two Brothers, where we sat on the patio. It was lovely.

Sunday the weather seemed to know that I had an essay to write: it was cloudy, windy, and rainy all day. I sat down in the library at 9:30 AM, fully intending to have my essay done by lunchtime. But as the day wore on, I struggled to express my ideas in Russian. Literary analysis comes fairly easily to me in English, and so I had lots of ideas of what to say about this story we were analyzing, but actually saying them in Russian, or quoting the text and interpreting the quote in Russian.... oh my god. It's just a completely different deal. I'm not kidding you, I sat in the library until 6:00 PM. The sad thing? The whole damn essay was only two and a half pages long. Ugh.

However, my mood lifted considerably after dinner, when one of our visiting musicians gave a lecture on Russian/Soviet bard music from the 1960s-1980s. There was much singing, which made me simply happy. Our director, Kira Ivanovna, also sang. She has a great voice!

After the lecture I went to office hours to have my essay looked at. For what it's worth, there weren't nearly as many corrections as I feared. Evgeniya Olegovna was even pretty nice about pointing out mistakes (not usually the case). I hope that doesn't mean she just didn't point out some mistakes so that she could mark them later, or to see if I'd catch them myself, because I didn't do anything else with that essay after looking it over with her other than print it. She kind of drives me crazy sometimes. I'll go to office hours and make corrections on my homework, but then when she grades that assignment, she counts all those mistakes we caught in office hours against me. I know the point of office hours is to catch mistakes before turning in assignments... so shouldn't I get some credit for having gone? If I go to office hours and everything is perfect, then isn't it pointless to go?

Well, there's lots going on this evening: a concert after dinner, and then Business/Official Russian language club, which I've never been to before, but I know I should go to, since business language is really necessary. So I'd better get crackin on my homework. Do ckoroi vstrechi!