Number of steps: 16080 (5.08 mi)
Today hasn’t been the greatest day. I considered not blogging because I was in
such a bad mood. But no… I will soldier
on through the inter-tubes to bring the seven and a half of you who read this
blog your eagerly awaited update.
So, I didn’t have singing this morning since I had it on
Wednesday, so I had a slightly later start than usual, which was kinda
nice. Then we headed upstairs for what was
listed on our schedule as our one stage combat class. Cool! Instead
of ballet. Double cool! Oh wait, never mind… it turned out we were
just observing NIU’s stage combat class because it was important that they “continue
to move forward.” The Butler group got
an alternate movement class instead of ballet… and we sat on our asses watching
Illinois students have an awesome stage combat class. Things I learned from this event: 1) MXAT
stage combat involves way more actual contact than the combat we generally
learn in the States. 2) I can successfully
act like things that piss me off are perfectly reasonable for the benefit of
the group. (I'm fairly confident that no one on this trip reads my blog... so my brave face is still in place.)
We weren’t told when the class would end… and it looked like it
was going past our usual 1:00 end time, so I ducked out and headed out to find
the Taganka theatre so that I could get us tickets for Marat/Sade tomorrow night – despite the fact that most of the group
had not yet responded to my request that they tell me if they’re interested in
tickets. (sigh…grumble grumble) Anyway,
I hopped on the metro, found the theatre with no trouble, managed to
communicate with the woman at the box office to successfully purchase 8 tickets
for 100 rubles each (that’s about 3 bucks - yeehah!) and then rushed back to the MXAT for
class. (I had time to shove a cherry
crepe down my throat AND to find out that three other people were interested in
tickets to Marat/Sade…so guess what I’m
doing on Lunch tomorrow.) Anyway, our
beginning-of-class etude today was not one of our more successful ones, but
that was okay – there were still good things about it and things to learn from
it, so no worries. Then, we did this
exercise where we listened to a piece of music and then Ilja (Sergei’s
assistant teacher - beloved by undergrad women of every nationality) led us through this envisioning exercise that really didn’t
work for me in the mental space where I was at the moment, so I just kept getting
grouchier from my residual grouchiness.
Our training went fine for the day, and another day of animal etudes
made me feel a little better too, but I really did have a hard time making it
through today with anything resembling a positive attitude. Then I had to hang around for an hour and a
half waiting for Will Call to open so that I could collect our tickets for The Master and Margarita… and give it to
someone else. Because there are so many
people here, they could only get ten tickets for us tonight, so I bowed out,
since I had seen the show last year (not that I didn’t want to see it again… I
REALLY did… but I was gracious and mature and all that crap. Whatever.)
So they finally opened the will call half an hour before the show (REALLY?). I did manage to figure out that a woman who
came and spoke to us while we were waiting for the tickets was trying to scalp
some tickets to the show… so that was another moment of Russian triumph for
me. I should have asked what her price
was. But oh well. Anyway, once I finally got the ticket, I
explained what it was going to be like to be shoehorned in to the sold-out show, and I
headed back to the dorm where I did my insanely expensive load of laundry (it
costs about $10 to get a card that works three times (a wash, a dry and a
wash?). So I just washed and then
decided to air dry. Maybe someone else
in the group will give me 100 rubles for a wash. <shrug>
But hey… at least I have some clean clothes moving into the second half
of the month. Woohoo! I then spent the evening with some work and
some extremely mediocre vodka in a very pretty bottle. But hey… tomorrow I have movement class, and
tomorrow night I’m seeing a show… so tomorrow will be a better day!
In other news… I’ve decided that I could probably get a grant to come
back here to study contemporary Russian women playwrights… so there’s something to toss onto my to-do
list!
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