Just one entry for this week as well, as I just don't feel up to writing about some theme I've noticed during my stay here. The good news is the low spirits I was experiencing last week have left me, they were probably just due to insufficient sleep and not eating properly. Since my return from Kaliningrad my hostess has been in the hospital, so I have been responsible for making my own meals. That isn't too much of a problem, but Russian grocery stores can be confusing, so my selection of ingredients has been rather lacking. Also, I have no recipes, so I have been having to wing it. Fortunately food in grocery stores is really cheap (I am always incensed when a block of cheese costs more than 70 rubles, or somewhat less than $3) and of a generally high quality. I think I've already mentioned this, but bread, cheese, and fruit in Russian grocery stores seem to be much better than in American ones (this is particularly true of the bread), and is generally cheaper. Anyways, after reintroducing vegetables to my diet, not to mention sleep, my spirits have improved significantly. I was worried that I was starting to exit the “honeymoon” phase of traveling abroad, after which everything gets to be irritating and life in another country loses its lustre. Fortunately, I was just not eating right, as far as I can tell. Earlier tonight I went for a walk to the post office to drop off some postcards, and since it was snowing I decided to continue to wander around my part of the city. The outer reaches of Yaroslavl' are not particularly attractive, but the snow really seemed to help alleviate that problem. It's still snowing right now, and it's very pretty. Oh, and as regards postcards, I have sent a few out, though I am still working on going down my list of people to whom to send postcards. Please do me a favour and let me know if you have received a postcard from me – it may be a few weeks before they arrive, if they arrive at all. The Russian postal service is notoriously slow and unreliable, so do not be offended if you don't get anything – it's quite likely that they either lost the postcard, or decided not to send it because they didn't like something about it. Hooray for Russian bureaucracy. Oh, and as regards my khozyaika (hostess) – she came home briefly on Saturday to take a shower and so forth (Russian hospitals are not the most pleasant places, it would seem), and she will be coming home for good next weekend. So I'll only have to cook for myself for another week, and I won't have to move to a different host family. And Middlebury gives me 250 rubles a day ($10) for food, so I am well taken care of. So you don't have to worry too much about me, Mom.
Anyways, now to the recap of my week. Monday through Friday was fairly quiet – I would say the highlights were going to play pool on Wednesday night, and buying train tickets for my trip at the end of this month. I'm going with three other American students to St. Petersburg and Moscow for 10 days, with a possible side trip to Novgorod in the middle. We bought train tickets from the main Yaroslavl' train station, and they were incredibly cheap. All told it was 850 rubles (just over $30) for an overnight trip to St. Petersburg, and a shorter trip from Moscow back to Yaroslavl'. And that was includes the service charge of around $8 which we decided to endure so as to not have to deal with the ornery workers at the normal ticket windows. We didn't buy our tickets from Petersburg to Moscow because we have to wait for somebody else, but we can get those once we are in Petersburg. But that was about it for what I did during the week. On Saturday, though, we went to go see the circus. Russian circuses are well known both for being some of the best in the world, and for having really depressing animal shows. This circus delivered as promised on both counts. Before the circus started we went and got our pictures taken with a bear sitting on a motorcycle, though the bear didn't seem to be too happy with the arrangement. I don't think bears are natural motorcycle riders. During the circus itself they brought out an Indian elephant which proceeded to do tricks, but looked very sad all the while. The dog show was significantly less depressing, with many happy-seeming dogs (some dyed strange colours) doing tricks. They even had a chihuahua that climbed a 15 foot ladder and then jumped off of it. They bear show in the second half really upset me, as they bears were are muzzled, and looked really uncomfortable and unhappy. They were all forced to walk on their hind legs, when they weren't riding bikes, or motorcycles. I think the circus would have been a much better experience if it didn't have bears or elephants in it, though many would likely not agree with me. The show was billed as being a “Bear Show with Indian Elephants,” rather than advertising what I would consider to be the much more impressive part of the show – the human acts. My mom told me that many circuses are populated with Russian circus performers, and I can see why that might be. The jugglers were really fantastically good, and according to my female companions, very attractive. For those who saw the Oberlin Circus at Teddy's graduation – imagine those jugglers, but then having done it professionally for a number of years. They were really quite amazing. The most impressive part though, was the acrobats. They had the normal dancing-type acrobats, which were fine, but then they busted out the best part. There were two biggish men who balanced 15-20 foot poles on their shoulders, with platforms on the top. Then the acrobats climbed up these poles, and did tricks on them. I was quite impressed by the people doing backflips on platforms 25 feet in the air, balanced on a man's shoulders. Little did I know, though, the best was yet to come. They got both of the men balancing their platforms, about 15 feet apart. Then one acrobat climbed up one of the poles, and stood on the platform facing away from the other platform. He then proceeded to do a backflip from one platform to the other, and these platforms were no more than 6 square feet big. Then, they got a guy on each platform, and one guy did a backflip off of his platform, and landed on the other's guy's shoulders. It was really crazy, and truly one of the more impressive things I have seen. Overall I would say the circus was a positive experience, especially considering it is a distinctly Russian sort of thing to do. Though I will avoid animal shows in this country from now on. On Saturday night after the circus some of us went over to the apartment of the Finnish student, Outi. I actually have no idea if I spelled that right. Anyways, she is here in Yaroslavl' studying at YarGU, because her home city is a sort of sister city to Yaroslavl'. We went over to her place and watched a few movies. We encountered a rather serious problem upon leaving, however – the trolleybuses had stopped running because it was fairly late at night, so four of us were forced to stay the night at her place. It wasn't too bad, though I would have much preferred to be able to sleep in my own bed, as uncomfortable as it may be.
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