We've Got Class

Number of Steps: 10808

Today was our first day of classes, but it didn’t start until 11:30, so the morning was still pretty leisurely relatively speaking.  We strolled down to school and met up with the other two groups in the courtyard where we waited to be escorted inside.  This first class is sort of special, since it is our formal introduction to the MXAT school (even though the other groups have been here a few days longer than we), so it’s held in the lobby of the main theatre, which is also a gallery of some of the greats of MXAT past.  I think it may have been the moment that I walked back into that lobby that I finally got really excited about the fact that I’m back here.  The lobby is so beautiful in general, and the photos on the wall hold images of some of the greatest artists of the 20^th century – all of whom are part of the same artistic family – and it is humbling and breath-taking and moving to be in that space.  Once we were all seated, we received a lecture from the head of the American studio, Anatoly Smeliansky, about the founding of the MXAT, and let me tell you, as a future professor, I hope I can learn even a fraction of his passion for history!  When he lectures about these people, it’s as if he actually knows them.  History is about real people, not merely memorizing facts.  And as he reminded us, “Theatre is not a museum.  It is a struggle.”  Theatre is not a place we go to memorialize what came before us as some immutable monolith – it’s the problems we solve every day! 

So after our awesome lecture, we made a mad dash to the cafeteria.  Though our group is smaller than last year’s, the fact that there are three groups here this year means that there are about 40 dumb Americans trying to point and gesture their way through the cafeteria line at lunch.  So I managed to get in, get food, and get gone pretty quickly so I could take one of the students over to the Megafon store to get my phone activated and to get a sim card for her.  The hipster salesman at the front of the store rolled his eyes with all the skinny-jean contempt he could muster when I asked ever so sweetly, “Говорите ли вы по-английски?”  But he did begrudgingly direct me to another man who was extremely helpful.  He got me and the student set up and on our way with 20 minutes to spare before class. 

So we headed upstairs for acting class…which was a hoot.  Our teacher Серге́й remembered me from last year, which was an affirming feeling, and he teased me here and there about the fact that I had survived last year and that I had come again.  After chatting with him about our first impressions of Moscow, he threw us to the lions by asking us each to do a monologue for him.  Now, this was not something that happened last year, and I haven’t really been doing any auditioning per se for several years now, so I was lucky to be able to pull an old piece out of my bum for this one.  It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful, so whatcha gonna do?  From there we started some of the ensemble and concentration exercises that we all love so much.  This group is already really impressing me.  First, the size really does make a difference.  We don’t have to switch back and forth between halves of the class, we all just get to work for the whole time, which is very cool.  And this group really seems to want to learn together, which is something you just can’t manufacture.

After class JT and I went on an expedition to look for the Афиша – which is a book of all the theatre being performed in Moscow in the month of June.  This, it turns out, is not easy to find.   They always sell it in the lobby of the Moscow Art Theatre during shows, but it almost seems impossible to find them if you’re not already at the theatre.  But boy did we try!  We looked all over the place!  We did stop at a kiosk that had a poster of a schedule for the first two weeks, so we stuck around there for a while.  I wrote down the website off of the poster, however, and when I got back to the dorm I spent a while surfing through (dear google translate: I love you!) to find plays that I thought might interest people.  I certainly have some ideas of what I’d like to see, but if last year is any indication, it’s kinda hard to go wrong.

In the evening we had a quick meeting to talk about some things, which was interspersed with one of the craziest (and awesome-est) damn stories I have ever heard.  Suffice it to say – there are a few girls in this group who are just magnets for fascinating people.  I have got to spend more time with them… hopefully I can catch the periphery of some of their adventures!

Buses and Potlucks

Number of Steps: 5349 (it was a bus tour… so it stayed pretty low today…I think)

So… things are starting to begin or beginning to start or whatever here in Mother Russia.  Last night we met downstairs in the rehearsal room to do a little orientation on ballet and classroom etiquette.  Let me tell you, 12 people is a much more manageable population than 20 (last year’s group).  I really think there’s going to be some good work from this group.  From there, we FINALLY got our internet access for the dorms (JT had accidentally been hoarding our login info), so I walked everyone through how to access that and we promptly sat around in a circle staring at our respective computer screens before making the decision to go out to The Темпл Вар for a while.  We did well with the ordering vodka portion of the evening, but the menu was a little difficult to manage, so the bartender teased us about ordering French fries… but after the fries had been ordered, he magically produced English menus.  Now that we know such marvelous things exist, we’ll definitely have to go back some time.  We called it a pretty early night as we ran back through the rain to the dorm about two blocks away.  The lady working the front door had been adamant about our bringing umbrellas – even giving us her umbrella – and she was definitely right to do so.  My den mother came out big time as I tsk-tsk-ed at all these adorable 20-year-old girls in their cute, going-out-in-Moscow outfits that they shouldn’t be wearing open-toed shoes in the rain.  I, of course, was severely underdressed, as I stuck with the jeans and sneakers part of life…but I’m the little old lady in the group, so I’m going for comfort, not for cute factor.  Still, it was a very fun first outing.

This morning I allowed myself the enormous pleasure of sleeping in until a little after 9:00 – that ended up giving me almost nine hours of sleep, which was delicious!  I continue to cautiously celebrate the group’s general lack of jetlag.  Go team!

At 1:00 we piled on a tour bus with the groups from Northern Illinois and Butler who are also here this month.  It was the same tour I took last year with the same tour guide, which actually ended up being kind of nice.  I didn’t feel the need to take every photo ever, I just allowed myself to listen to our guide and to really look at things.  Of course, the weather hasn’t been as warm this year as it was last year, and today has been pretty windy and overcast, so the tour involved a lot of shivering as well as a lot of running for shelter from the rain.  It seemed as if the skies opened up every time we got off the bus.  But still, it was a really good tour of the city.  We saw Red Square (St. Basil’s is still there… I think it missed me), Christ the Savior Cathedral, and the outlook at Sparrow Hill, while also driving by as many sites as humanly possible.  As for the other groups, there was the occasional crossover conversation, but more often than not, everyone seemed to stick with his or her own group.  I’m sure the fraternizing will increase as the month goes on.

The MIM Class of 2012 - note the foreboding skies...and the smiles!

Back on the home front, everyone enjoyed some much needed downtime before our Sunday night potluck.  I myself succumbed to a little jetlag (the only jetlag I am permitting on this trip, damnit!) and took a quick nap.

Things we learned at tonight’s potluck:

• Шашлык (Shishke-bab) flavored chips… not my favorite
• A package of pasta doesn’t feed as many people as you might think
• Jet lag has finally arrived in a big way for a couple of our group members - one of whom fell asleep sitting up during our potluck meeting
• So far this group is WAY more ambitious in the kitchen than last year’s
• We’ve only been here two days, and a lot of people have had opportunities to really try to interact with some Russians – good job gang!

After the potluck we cleaned up and a few of us ventured into the hallway to look for the gym where we were stopped by a shirtless Russian student named Дима who was quite taken with some of the young ladies in the group.  We spoke in broken English and Russian for a little while as he tried to get the group to come watch a movie in his room with him.  A couple of his buddies happened along and tried to translate for him as well.  Ah… those Russian boys do love those cute young coeds… I, on the other hand, retreated from the smoke-filled stairway (Russians smoke in the stairways of buildings, so spending 30 minutes in a stairway means I now smell like I was just in a bar in the 1990s) and headed back to my room for a little bit o’ skype before bed.  Tomorrow… it begins in earnest.

On a side note, it’s definitely true what they say about teaching being the best way to learn something.  The more questions I’m asked about Moscow, the more I feel like I’m learning and retaining about Moscow.  And the more I think I should probably just come here every year…right?

Things I must admit:

• Despite my 18 years of being a vegetarian, cooking bacon smells awesome – ahhh… dorm living.
• I’m super glad that I don’t need coffee…it keeps this trip a lot cheaper.
• I have no idea what to do about bringing back family souvenirs this year… since I kinda did the Russian kitsch thing to death last year.  I’ll have to get creative…

A Leisurely Beginning

This morning we woke up in Moscow – most of us for the first time.  I didn’t find my pillow until this morning so I used my comforter as a pillow, which means I woke up with a crazy case of the shivers in the middle of the night.  But I managed to take care of that pretty quickly, and I actually did sleep for about six hours, which I count as a point for me… take that jet lag!  Of course, I’m typing this at 8:30am, so ask me again in a few hours when my body thinks it’s 4:00am.  It’s sounding like they’re going to keep us fairly busy this weekend, which will be good for getting us on this schedule.  I feel like I want to have so much to talk about right now, but I just don’t have it yet.  Of course, that will cease being a problem almost immediately, but at the moment I’m feeling a little like I’m floating. 

Things I know for sure so far: this haircut is not conducive to the “get-up-and-go” lifestyle of Russia.  Translation: my hair is going to look like a street urchin for most of the month (and yes, I recognize the ambiguity of the syntax here, so if you prefer to imagine my hair itself as a street urchin living on top of my head, that’s your prerogative – and probably not entirely inaccurate either)

Things I suspect so far:  Part of my disembodied feeling probably stems from my lack of internet access…which will, of course, be remedied by the time I’m posting this.  I resent how much we rely on the interweb tubes… but boy howdy, I miss it when it’s gone!

At any rate, we spent the morning on a little walking tour of the supermarkets in the area, and it was a good time watching everyone wander through the grocery store with that “where the hell am I” look.  Having done this before, I am only slightly less deer-in-the-headlights-ish. I led the group down to the school for a brief orientation, which was a hoot.  I walked that path like I had never left.  It was a little surreal.  This evening we'll be having a little mini orientation in which we'll work on ballet positions and classroom procedure.  Sunday is a bus tour, and Monday is go time!  It's actually kind of nice that we arrived on a Friday and have this weekend to get our feet on the ground.  It's weird - I actually don't feel remotely jet-lagged today.  We'll see if that continues, but so far, I'm feeling pretty good!

Another thing I forgot: gifts for the professors.  Looks like they’re getting Russian candy again this year!

And something I forgot to do today: to wear my pedometer.  I really want to include my steps walked in each blog post... so here's hoping that little goal is met starting tomorrow!

Off we go...

So – days one and two are finally at a close.  We left Detroit a little later than our scheduled 9:40pm departure time, but with our four hour layover in Paris, a little delay doesn’t really hurt anyone.  The whole travel experience was made up mostly of sleeping, but my little triumph for the day was that they did have vegetarian meals for me and the other two veggies.  So… hooray!  Arriving back here in Moscow was a really strange experience.  The name of the game for me today has been “cognitive dissonance.”  How can I be having a once in a lifetime experience twice?  Coming through passport control, claiming our bags, being met by our fabulous liaison Настя – it was all so foreign, but all so familiar.  In particular, it’s nuts to come halfway around the world to have someone you know hug you and say how nice it is to see you again.  Weird.

So we bussed out to the dorm – it was right where I left it.  I have a bigger room this year, since I’m the RA/Den mother/house frau, which is nice.  And there are a bunch of other American students around this summer as well, so that should be an interesting little cultural exchange within a cultural exchange.

Mostly, once we got to the dorm, we met to plan out tomorrow, there were plenty of complaints that we don’t have web access yet, and plenty of disbelieving stares when I broke the news that we don’t flush toilet paper here.  I already have my guesses as to who’s going to be high maintenance, who’s going to be late all the time, who’s going to be easily distracted… so we’ll see whether I turn out to be right.  But overall, I have a good feeling about this group.

Things I’ve forgotten: scotch tape, the correct extra bag (the one I brought is my tiny red one, not my medium red one) and my copy of Chekhov’s plays.

Things I should have forgotten: I packed way too many clothes.  This is extremely unlike me. 

I get the feeling that homesickness is going to be a bit stronger for me this year…but once we get started, I don’t think I’ll have too much time to notice.

Moscow Standard Time

Here, folks, is what time it is in Moscow.  8 hours ahead of Eastern, 10 hours ahead of Mountain, 11 hours ahead of Pacific, 6.5 hours ahead of Newfoundland.

Sadness on the Interweb

So... it seems that my old standby blogging platform blogsome.com is going away.  I have received no notice of this, but the blog for The Distracted Globe has disappeared some time in the last couple of weeks, and I fear that my personal blog is not far behind.  So... here I am on blogger, trying to figure it out.  It's much less customizable at first blush, but I'm playing around, seeing what there is to see, and I figure google's not going to be folding any time soon, so it's probably a pretty safe place to house my summer meanderings.  Of course, someone else already had my old blog title (Self Indulgent Ramblings), so I came up with this one... which I don't really like... but we'll see if it grows on me.  But now that I'm done whining about my new blog, I should probably go pack for my unfortunate weekend trip to Toronto (for my grandfather's funeral - he was a dear, dear, adorable man with the cutest Newfoundland accent you have ever heard, and he will be sorely missed), do some reading, and get my act together for Russia.  This next week is a doozy.

Back to the...

"Back to the Commonwealth, Back to the Commonwealth, Back to the Commonwealth of Independent States!" - Wayne and Garth

In less than two weeks I'm headed back to Russia for another June of intense training and intense theatre... and I feel kind of unprepared.  Last year there was so much build up and anticipation, but this year there has been very little prep work.  I haven't been working on my Russian (yikes), we didn't have a pre-Moscow training session, we didn't have many meetings... so the fact that I'm jumping on an airplane in eleven days to begin the most intense month of my life - AGAIN - has been escaping my conscious understanding for the moment.  This weekend I bought a pair of comfy walking sandles.  I did go over some numbers and colors in Russian yesterday, hoping that might help jump start things.  In the next day or two I'll be putting together a shopping list for the trip - maybe buying all the blister band-aids, ibuprofen and cold meds, and sunscreen will knock me into gear.  Or maybe it just won't land until I do.  The fact is - everything about my life this summer is very different from where I was at this same time last summer, so maybe it's just all the change that seems to be defining me right now that makes the idea of going to Russia so unfamiliar.  I don't know what it is... but whatever it is, it's definitely time to start getting my ишак (ass) in gear.

Hey... maybe FEAR will get me motivated! 

Things that scare me about going to Russia this year:

1. I have not been working out this year like I was last year (plus, I'm a year older)... so the physical work is probably going to be even tougher 
2. I'm the group coordinator this year, which means I'll have some weird, undefined set of extra responsibilities on this year's trip
3. I've been on this trip before... so I'm supposed to know stuff or something
4. I came back from a five day trip to Denver and my kitten had grown.  I can't believe how different she's going to be after a month!
5. I am currently studying for my qualifying exams, which will take place in September.  This means reading everything that has ever been written ever... and I'm all kinds of nervous about it.  Russia will not help me with the studying.
6. I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons to be scared... I'll go try to read and instead obsess about the things to be scared about.