Keep your top on

Many days are like this, mind wandering. I can’t seem to keep my attention on the important things I should be reading, so I just listen to sweet music and read frivolous articles online. It’s almost been three months in Moscow, which means we have only three months left. Before we came, the idea of moving to Russia seemed like a quaint, far off idea, like owning a house. Now it’s my here and it’s half-way over. One thing I’ve definitely realized, it that maybe living abroad is best lived in hindsight. My everyday is filled with normal living – brushing my teeth, making sandwiches, typing on the keyboard, crossing streets. I can’t always sit back and take it in, the smells, the noise of voices speaking a language I don’t understand very well. But after we’re gone…it’ll be there, in beautifully filtered pieces. The smell of pirozoky in the metro stops, the cold of cobblestones on Red Square, the taste of waxy yellow potatoes. It will all feel special then.

The top photo is of the fireworks over the Kremlin after the Russia MTV Music Awards, second photo. Jason and I got tickets through TPAA. It wasn’t quite the gala event I expected…Jason and I stood on some scaffolding near an open and chilly entryway while Russian pop, rock and rap (indeed, it is as bad as you might imagine) acts paraded around the stage and the industry’s big names and faces disinterestedly wandered around below us. Some of the people were great to watch, like the young Dima Bilan, a popular pop singer whose enthusiasm for winning was so sincere he was nearly shaking. Not cool? Two pairs of breasts flashing the crowd during Kasta’s, a Russian rapper, act. I thought the girls looked tacky. I certainly think nudity has an appropriate place, even in entertainment, but it’s not next to a group of over-weight and under-rhythmed white rap guys with BMWs serving around them. Looks like someone’s trying to hard…

Tonight’s my first day of teaching English and getting paid for it. Jason has suggested the trick is to smile a lot. Indeed, American’s are smily. I’ve had to train myself out of smiling at strangers in semi-awkward situations, like stepping on them on the train. Accept the stepping; it happens to everyone.
Bottom photo – the view from our balcony in our new apartment