Развод Мостов - Palace Bride opens over the Neva

Hello, readers!

With the ever-lovely Rachel and Lev

I hope you’re enjoying beautiful, authentic summers wherever you are. SO much has changed in the past two + weeks.

I’m sucking the last marrow out of my wifi before I move out of this apartment in an hour, so I’ll sum it up:

- Today I’m moving into homestay #3, not because I unwittingly flicked the last straw onto my hostess’ back, but rather a guest from her church is arriving in SPB two weeks earlier than planned and needs a bed. Believe it or not (!!! – in St. Petersburg, it would seem, anything can become believable), I will be moving back in with good old Raskolnikov. My third hostess is not named Lyumdila Alexandrovna, thank goodness. But she does have a pekinese dog, from whom it would seem there is no escape! I haven’t a clue if she’s on gossip-sharing terms with my first hostess, in which case she would already know about my arrogance and cannabis addiction, if my first hostess is to be believed. In any case, I’ll be living there for less than two weeks, and as I’ve said before, anything is tolerable for two weeks. I’ll be floored with amazement if it turns out that there will be any internet, however. This might be my last post until I’m back in the States on July 14!

- I’m flying from St. Petersburg (via Brussels and Chicago) back to Traverse City, at which point I will enjoy six or so mind-blowingly comfortable weeks in Bay View and likely perform in the summer musical!! This is unbelievably exciting and revivifying. Some of you might remember that I had planned originally to spend two weeks in Riga, Latvia before returning to the States — suffice to say I’ll return to the US more educated, enlightened, sobered, excited, hopeful, romantic, and single than before I left. I have no regrets, but know it would have been wonderful to meet my boyfriend’s family and to speak Russian with them if all had worked out as expected. But miraculously enough, everything I hoped I would experience with his family in Riga has already happened here, with my friends and their families. Life, the universe, and all the sneaky, etheral cogs that keep them moving are amazing.

Радость в Петергофе / Joy in Peterhof

I’m falling consciously more in love with St. Petersburg and the people in it each day, and am glad for it. Bittersweetness has become one of my favorite aspects of life. Life will never, ever be perfect, but if we let go of our ideals of what satisfaction truly is, then it naturally finds us and scoops us up in new, revelatory experiences. I’m sure of this.

I’ve made so much progress in my language skills but I naturally (?) feel that it isn’t enough, that there’s so much more to learn and I absolutely want to continue. Having many contacts with whom I can talk/write in Russian is wonderful, but there’s nothing like immersion, like speaking lots of the language everyday, like growing accustomed to its twists and timbre. For all its difficult grammar, multisyllabic structures (in Russian, it takes 14 syllables to say “in 1978″), plethora of irregular verb forms, and the fact that my tongue can’t always keep up with my head, I love it, I love the way natives use it, whether they rudely spit it out, use its tenderest diminutives to coddle nearby loved ones, or tell a great story or anecdote, enjoying the fullness of their eloquence with gusto and verve, filing up their sentences with round, passionate syllables and throwing a genuine smile onto the end of them. It’s so beautiful.

I don’t even know what kind of culture shock to expect when I return. There is so much beauty and freedom in living an expatriate life with few possessions, open eyes, and a heart like a sieve, in which much more flows into you than out. Friendship makes life in any country, under any conditions, no matter what the hardships, make sense. Wherever we are, we are bound to treasure it just as much as we are bound to live.

Park of Lenin / Парк Ленина

Celebrating with my Elementary Students

Hello, dear readers! June has finally come to St. Petersburg, while summer most definitely has not. We’ve had a springtime that’s recently verged on late winter here, with plenty of sharp winds and nagging rain, wet boots and all. The weather forecast, which in St. Petersburg is never to be believed, predicts warm weather next week. Time will tell!

I thought I’d drop some news into your digital bucket, so here it is:

My Elementary and Pre-Intermediate classes have ended, making way for adventures in teaching a Beginner INTENSIVE — sixteen academic hours a week teaching everything just beyond the alphabet to a group of wonderful, bright, humorous young women. It’s a wonderful challenge, and I love it. With a sense of humor and un-selfconscious creativity, there’s nothing that can’t lift off and start soaring.

I had a mind-crushing (think of a planet being crushed into a thousand stars and scattered across the universe, that’s how lovely a crush it was) realization last week that, over the course of five intense months in Russia, I have miraculously accumulated a generous number of genuine and wonderful friends here in the city. This is no small wonder and gives me the hope that so much of St. Petersburg’s history might easily have stolen away. The fact that I can sustain, with my linguistic skills (which occasionally still resemble a fawn on wobbly legs, in between long-distance cheetah sprints), friendships with St. Petersburg locals amazes me when I remember to think of it, and I can’t even begin to describe the wonderful thrill that comes out of conversational practice, uncorked creativity, and the odd, smiling buoyancy that brought me here in the first place. My friends here are incredible, genuine individuals, who care for their families, friends, significant others, and for me with a concentration and purity that can only have been born out of the shadows of history. If there is anything that has embraced me, and coaxed me into loving it, it’s the heart of a people who have been oppressed throughout history, thrust into and throttled by political, economical, and psychological regimes which, through their destruction, have forced all that is worth living for to rise to the top, unfettered by distractions and self-absorption. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, something which I will never be able to pull up by the root. I will miss my friends very much. Thank goodness for the internet, thank goodness that love takes on a life of its own even when we have no energy left.

Windblown in Vyborg with lovely former students, Sveta and Masha

Big surprise: due to a haphazard (though I don’t mind it) miscommunication, of which I was unaware, and which cleared up today, it turns out that I will be changing my return ticket to the United States and leaving St. Petersburg one week earlier than planned, in accordance with my contract! This means, a revised trip to Riga, the capital of Latvia where I’ll live with my boyfriend’s family for a week and put all my Russian studies to the last big test (I’m not worried anymore, just waiting and smiling), and a return to Bay View, Michigan two weeks earlier than expected!!!

This means…an increased sense of urgency under my remaining plans and adventures, the pinched gasp of the heart as it looks on those it holds dear and sews photographs into its memory, and making final peace with it all. 

I’m that much closer to Michigan’s pristine waters, to the arms and homesteads of so many people that I love, but as the sun finally sinks into the witness of the Neva, I feel the same. Wherever we travel, however far behind we leave the trees from which we’ve plucked our dreams, our lives still follow over us, certain and ephemeral as a pair of endless wings.

Good night to you all,

Rebecca

Love has its own life, and it fills us, only shells

Spring Tulips in the Summer Garden

So June begins, and the nights, ever brighter, make their way into whiteness. It’s a magical time of sunshine, ice cream, flowers finally blooming, laughing children, scolding mothers, horrendous mosquitoes, carnivals and holidays.

And also — a number of teachers from our school will fly home in the next few weeks, some for good, and some for a summer respite before returning to teach in September.

Nighttime has become my favorite time , with its midnight poet hour. Homesickness, gratitude, restlessness, and ambition all whirl together in a dizzying melancholy. The heaviest and simplest of existential quandaries demand to be explored. Far away as I am, I naturally miss my loved ones, the warmest aspects of the culture that prepared me to enter the world as an adult. I remember the problems as well, America’s abandoned social responsibilities, and I know that life can never be good enough — not in the land of the “free,” or anywhere else. But an overwhelming gratitude for the open environment in which I grew up pulls at me, and for my opened eyes and dehydrated heart, I cannot feel complete.

How many places? I can see, even from nearly 5000 miles away, my friends, abandoned ballet dreams and academic pursuits in Ohio; my bare feet caked with summer sand dancing to powwow drums in Michigan; my mother in California, and our cameras immortalizing ancient Sequoias in Yosemite National Park; a tiny piece of my heart which has recently migrated to Texas with my best friend; my grandmother, lovingly tending her garden amidst memories in Oklahoma; and my boyfriend in Virginia.

I can hardly imagine I’ve stood at the plateau overlooking this breathtaking landscape several times. What freedom. We’ve got to celebrate it when we recognize it.

Is this how we’re all destined to live? Gathering the most valuable of memories like pebbles in our pockets, constantly feeling the gnaw of longing for something no longer or not yet there, all the while striving to let it all go, let go of our hair, and relish the simplicity of sunshine through wind?

If honesty can be caught, like a snowball or a disease, then perhaps I’ve taken it into my keeping. I cannot help but share two phrases which will forever echo in my mind upon leaving Russia, as I’ve heard them repeatedly from St. Petersburg’s citizens, to arrest and make sense of so many situations:

Какой ужас – What terror!

Какая красота – What beauty!

Without one, we cannot recognize the other. But where does our serenity lie?

Rebecca

May evening on the lake at Северный Склон

My first English class (Elementary) will come to an end one week from Monday, and my second (Pre-Intermediate) soon after. I can say in all honesty that I will miss my students very much!

I imagine that living in St. Petersburg through the winter for 7 months would be a much more difficult experience, were it devoid of the opportunity to get to know such bright, humorous, and creative young people and to help them to learn and achieve comfortability in a new language. It’s truly been an incredible experience, and a ten-thumbs-up confirmation of my sneaky suspicion, upon graduating from university, that I want to make my career in teaching.

It strikes me as nothing short of incredible that, within a strict pedagogical framework backed by sufficient training, one can enter an empty room with nothing but a thoughtfully constructed lesson plan and all one’s energy and make magic.

I’ve developed an unofficial theory: the more one can keep one’s students riding upon waves of laughter, the more they will pay keen attention to the subject at hand, the more emotionally involved they are in the conversation, and the more easily they can recall the material later, due to having genuine associations with it. Perhaps that, or perhaps I simply love to laugh. In any case, I’ve lately observed that, in my classrooms, there seems to be a ubiquitous atmosphere of amusement, relaxation, downright plucky humor, and the unforgettable gems that fall out of translation.

In any case, it’s a classroom environment which I would have loved to spend more time in during my previous years of schooling, and one which I’m determined to personally maintain during upcoming years of economic turmoil, global warming, and other calamities. Perhaps I took something from my Russian professor at the University of Cincinnati, who was also quick to laugh, and who on occasion would laugh so hard (for example, in response to almost every student’s failure to correctly pronounce a Russian sentence as simple as, for example, “He plays football”) that she would drive herself to tears and excuse herself from the room until she had composed herself. Though perhaps that’s an extreme example of classroom hilarity, but one of my favorite stories, regardless…

For all my bouts of icky and time-wasting depression (when I’m not in the classroom, that is), I certainly cannot deny that incredibly good things have come out of my pinning myself to a spot on the map 5000 miles away from home for 7 months:

• Confirmation of what I want to “do with my life” – to teach, not EFL for the rest of my life, but –– I have another sneaky suspicion –– literature at a college level.
• Increased independence and psychological resilience (though, unfortunately, not the severe allergy to crying which I hoped would come out of this experience — alas, I am nonetheless a 22-year-old and a tender-hearted woman.)
• Acceptance of myself as an American in the 21st century, capable not only of acknowledging my country’s shameful actions but also of joining the intellectual and work-forces determined to counter its wrongs and assume its abandoned responsibility.
• Humongous gratitude for the environment in which I grew up, rich to the point of saturation in the performing and fine arts. This environment has not only provided me with the inspiration without which I would find it difficult to live, but has perfectly prepped me to be able to live in an arts-rich city such as St. Petersburg with the ability to appreciate its museums, theatres, operas, ballets, plays, concerts, and symphonies for exactly what they are — testaments to why we live.
• The opportunity to face the scrawny remnants of ballet-induced anorexia head-on, and to learn how to go to the ballet and thoroughly enjoy a performance without then leaving the theatre with an almost irresistible urge to stop eating. Also, learning how to watch a gorgeous performance, for example Tchaikovsky’s immortal Swan Lake, with intense empathy (even now I can’t watch without practically feeling each movement I see in my own muscles, my memories are so sharp), but without the cutting frustration of missing the experience of sailing across a stage and pushing my muscles to the breaking point. I’m thrilled to be where I am now, in the audience, and with a wealth of life opportunities that simply would not exist if I had remained inside ballet studios for years.
• The ability to truly recognize myself as my father’s daughter, complete with an endless arts and opera appetite, globe-trotting tendencies, fast pace afoot, and an undeniably goofy sense of humor. Our ten-day romp around St. Petersburg was without doubt the most wonderful vacation I’ve ever had!
• Quite frankly, learning how to take care of myself.
• And, underlying all of it:
  • Immense gratitude for the fact that I was born where and when I was, was read to every night by my mother since before I was born (indeed), received an excellent and compassionate education, and have developed full fluency in the most sought-after language in the world. Not the best, or most beautiful, or even the most fun, but the most sought-after. I am thrilled to be literate and fluent in any language, after discovering first-hand how difficult it is to acquire competency in another. Of course, I would choose one of the more difficult languages to stick my head into. But I’ve come away with the indestructible conclusion that FLUENCY and LITERACY are the two most important tools for conscientious living, in our native language or in another. Let’s treasure what we have, why don’t we?

…That’s the news from St. Petersburg, where the women are long-legged, the men are born in leather jackets, and all the children are playful, laughing freely amidst clouds of cigarette smoke, their silhouettes illumined against a backdrop of alcoholism, sublime art, and the terrors of history.

• One last announcement, however incomplete: It makes as much sense to transplant yourself 5000 miles away from someone you love for 7 months, and expect to wake up contented each morning, as it does to…            (Here, words finally fail me.)

Love to you all,

Rebecca

Храм Спаса на Крови / Church of Our Saviour On Blood

I cannot understand the existence

Of beauty, or whose hands they were,

Which cradled Tchaikovsky’s mind

In darkness, and sculpted

His faith to create.

Oceanic joy, swarming in breathless evolution

Over a crust of grief.

At the slightest amusement or pleasant surprise, my smile used to pop brightly out of my face as though it had been released by a laser can opener.

If not for my wholly delightful English students, with whom I can laugh genuinely and release my ol’ Cheshire cat accessory from its hinges, I might have lost my musculature by now.

In any case, I’m striving to morph into a somewhat more fashionable lady before I leave here. Because practicality, in a society with so many dead ends, doesn’t always make sense, and I have never before even so much as walked through a city filled with so many dressed-up, stuffed-in, breathtaking and bewildering women. I wonder, is it working?

I hope you’re enjoying backyards full of flowers and jungle-like fauna…our tulips have just barely opened here, and I am hoping everything will finally begin to bloom by July!

I will apologize to you again for allowing so much time to elapse between blog entries. It truly does push itself to the back of my priority list without my noticing most of the time, but I must admit that recently, depression has kept me from blogging, out of fear that I might wreak some unpleasant havoc upon you! I’m determined to return to blogging (or rather, to turn to it sincerely for the first time!)

I am determined to stop depression/homesickness/hopelessness from casting any more dark magic over my mind, and to cease thinking about how my eagerness and relentless enthusiasm with which I arrived has been smushed, isolated, and yelled-at into a new and decidedly shrunken form. And I’m determined to write, so that the entertaining details of my last two months are not entirely tossed to the wind and away from my memory!

I’d love to know whether anyone is still reading, that would likely add incentive! And by all means feel free to nag me: “Why aren’t you writing?” I could use that kick in the pants.

Had an absolutely LOVELY visit with my father over the May holiday — ten days of cushy, hostess-less hotel living and incredible, incredible sightseeing and theatre-going. More details and photos coming soon.

Good night!

It MUST be springtime when you can see a man such as this one fishing in the Fontanka. I can't...well, yes, of course I can think of a number of things more unsanitary, but nonetheless you've got to applaud his instincts to return to nature.

Hello, dear readers! I hope that springtime has found you / splashed you in the face wherever you are. I am thrilled and honestly surprised to say…that spring has finally come to St. Petersburg!

The temperature neared 50ºF today, and we’ve had an  increase in sunshine and a decrease in frigid wind. The energy of most of the city is gradually softening up, if only for a little. It seemed to me today as I was crossing Sadovaya street that maybe, just maybe, the drivers on the road actually seemed to consider stopping for pedestrians. Extraordinary!

Much, of course, has transpired since my last (Circus!) entry, but to keep it simple, here’s a list for you:

Last Saturday I dragged myself eagerly (how’s that to sum up my still complex love-hate relationship with ballet?) to an absolutely magnificent dance gala, “Stars of Ballet / Dance Open,” a huge international concert held at the large October Concert Hall. Incredible. Famous principal and soloist dancers, individual artists and couples, from  Cuba, Germany, America, France, and Russia came together to perform in one spectacular gala. From excerpts from Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Le Corsaire, and Manon, to modern ballets set against French jazz and even Klaus Nomi, the variety was magnificent, and the dancing for the most part supreme.

Диана Вишнева - Kirov/Mariinsky legend Diana Vishneva in Moses Pendleton's "F.L.O.W."

In this poster you can see the incomparable Diana Vishneva – a People’s Artist of Russia and an integral element of the Mariinsky Ballet. But I decided, upon seeing the gala, that Irina Kolesnikova, a dancer whom I’d previously also admired, is my favorite living Russian ballerina. Her performance as Odile from the Black Swan Pas de deux in Swan Lake, Act III, was absolutely scintillating. Stunning. Bewitching. Luscious. Incredible!!!

But the dancer who ABSOLUTELY stole the show was none other than the American-born New York City Ballet principal dancer Daniel Ulbricht! Shown here in one of what I’m sure is his most typical positions — perhaps ten feet up in the air!! A complete explosion of energy, charisma, love and passion for his dance, and appeal, Daniel Ulbricht drew countless audible gasps and spasmodic applause from the audience. Absolutely incredible. He’s actually quite short, shorter than I am, even. And yet he jumped higher than any other dancer I have ever, ever seen. Amazing. One of his other incredible moves was a sort of tiger-like leap into the air that culminated in a smooth-as-butter somersault headfirst across the dance floor, and then a weightless rebound back into mid air. Absolute magic. You can see him here, in Jerome Robbins’ Fancy Free, at NYCB:

Daniel Ulbricht of NYCB in Fancy Free

Spectacular.

In any case, what’s with the perturbing blog title? Well, I’m tired of making absolutely positive or negative announcements about my unique home situations, but it just might turn out to be the case that my second homestay will end up being my last, a.k.a. survivable and more or less ok. After already requesting that my manager at work scout out a new homestay, things at “home” in the last few days have seemed to more or less even out, with no verbal attacks on me/my diet/my body/my culture, no shrieking incidents, and increased peace of mind on my end. The location is truly incredible, ten minutes from the largest market in town, and the same from a number of the city’s largest stores, and I’m living right next to a beautiful, large park. It’s wonderful to be able to remember what trees look like! We have internet now (which should make for less excuse-making in the future as to why I haven’t blogged often!), which is marvelous. My hostess gives me generous breakfasts, and has picked up on the fact that I will eventually stick up and defend American culture if she picks at it too much, and I’m learning how to sleep more soundly. I still can’t talk on the phone at home, listen to music out loud, or have the daily luxuries that a twentysomething year old woman might indulge in on her own or with peers, but what the heck. This might work, and I’ve realized:

that the more you move, and the more you have to completely disentangle yourself and adapt to new situations, it obviously gives you more experiences on the whole, more emotions, more associations to draw upon when you eventually return home…but it drains your energy and makes maintaining your rhythms in your city of living extremely tricky!

In any case, I think my high-and-mighty, you-can’t-scream-at-me-like-that-and-get-away-with-it-or-deserve-my-money attitude has somehow deflated. Against my best worst intentions, I seem to have stopped judging my hostess so harshly, and feeling so harshly judged. Everybody is entitled to the rhythms and obtuse idiosyncrasies of his own life. Why bother pecking at cracks when you can go out and walk in the (yes, we have it now!!!) sunshine?

Love to you all.

Becca

Birthday celebrations for Tatyana, my Russian teacher, with fellow work-study Andrew at our favorite local French bakery. Hot cocoa is always good! На здоровье! (To your health!)

Hello, there!

I’ve been meaning to write for a week — we only had wifi installed in the apartment about two days ago, so once again, apologies for leaving you hanging!

As always, surprises, difficulties, and frost are in the air! But let’s save the difficulties for later. Check out the photo!!!

The best of the 200+ pictures I took at the circus tonight, at the left, is of one of the mermaid dancers from the Brothers Zapashny’s Circus production of Camelot. A beautiful water sprite with obvious ballet training…

Isn’t the lighting spectacular?

Tonight I went to the circus with my dear friend Lena. I’ve never officially been to the circus before, and expected to feel colossally depressed at the sight of circus animals.

As it turned out, I was only mildly depressed at the sight of a handful of beautiful horses, EIGHT tigers, TWO lionesses and one big, ferocious lion! Of course, it’s a thrill to see them, and to wonder whose head could at any given moment end up in their mouth.

If there is something I’ve noticed in Russia, it’s that people not only support the arts with incredible passion but that they plainly and simply know how to have a good time. Whether it’s having the courage to get up and dance to live music without thinking twice about it, having the stamina to dance through the night at clubs every weekend, clapping supportively and singing along with guitarists, worshipping the gods of imported American cinema, or simply knowing how to throw a wonderful, warm party, these people are incredibly vivacious. It seems all the more important, in this particular culture, to live it up while you can!! The state of near if not absolute poverty that the vast majority of the elderly live in in St. Petersburg is heartbreaking. The light at the end of your life has an old, fizzling lightbulb, apparently, if you live out your years here. I’ve been told that, without the help of their children, the elderly in St. Petersburg would live very poorly indeed, on miniscule pensions.

Anyway. What did I say about leaving the difficulties for later? As I was saying, Lena and I went to see The Brothers Zapashny’s Camelot Circus — an import from Moscow, where the circus is based. The two brothers, both broad-shouldered, long-haired, shockingly talented tiger-tamers, tightrope-walkers, actors, jugglers, and on and on, are apparently the sons of one of Russia’s most famous circus performers whose name I’ve forgotten. I’ll do my best to get back to you. Check them out at zapashny.ru! However, the site is of course all in Russian. Anyway, they brought their gargantuan Circus to St. Petersburg last weekend for a two-day stand and ended up staying for an extra week, their success was so colossal!

And so was their Circus. They had a performing cast of maybe 150 people, complete with a live band, dancers, jugglers, acrobats, tightrope walkers, horsemen, clowns, exotic dancers, contortionists, and more. And then of course, a host of monkeys, parrots, horses, and, as I mentioned, the big, gorgeous cats. It was, simply put, amazing!!! I’d call it a “Circus Rock-Opera,” truly — the entire show was set within a “Camelot” storyline, complete with the two brothers dueling, one getting kidnapped by evil forces, and a sort of “quest-for-the-holy-grail” obstacle course to go save him. It was like a musical, with huge acrobatic numbers set between heavy-metal-arias. It had truly spectacular effect.

The cats were simply amazing. The audience gasped more and more loudly as each of the eight tigers stepped out from behind the curtain. Such gorgeous, gorgeous creatures. And, for the safety it’s worth, extremely well trained.

…And then came the lions!!!

This was the very last piece in the big cats act. One of the Zapashny brothers actually rode this humongous, ferocious, and very cranky lion from one hoop to the other, through the air. Much to the relief of however many thousands of people in the stadium, nobody was hurt. Incredible.

Curtain Call — each of the humongous cast took an individual, bounding bow across a trapeze, arms thrown high!

I’m thrilled that I went, and amazed at the ingenuity, effort, and talent that went into this production. The costumes were blowaway, the lighting and all technical effects extremely well-executed and cutting edge… And of course, the dancers were not only gorgeous but had wonderful ballet technique! (What else could you expect in Russia!)

So, good night to you all — the stories about the Russian circus are still true, it’s a thrilling and masterful work of creativity. On the homestay front, I’ve been here for a week and a half, have had a number of problems, am not allowed to talk on the phone or listen to music, and my hostess screamed bloody murder at me (for, I’d say, 5 or 6 minutes without stopping to hear my apology) several days ago after I made the tragic mistake of calling my boyfriend the night before. Fled to a friend’s apartment in tears and trying not to throw up, almost had a breakdown, didn’t, and am now learning the skill of wearing mental armor whenever I’m at “home.” Once again, I’ve found myself living with a sad and deranged elderly woman, and I can only pity her 18 year old daughter, who has no doubt been likewise screamed at during her youth. It’s essentially like living in a tomb where nobody makes any noise, but I try not to think about it. Considering my strange apartment luck, I figure that if I move again, I’ll likely end up with another frightening, pitiful old woman who needs the money, has an empty room, and has lost a good portion of her mind. I just don’t want to be verbally lacerated by a new crazy old St. Petersburgian woman, don’t think I could take it from three different ones without coming to the conclusion that the city itself was trying to spit me out. So, I think I’ll stay here and deal with it. The location is fabulous and I’m right next to Yusupovsky Sad – a beautiful park. What doesn’t kill you strengthens your mind and I’ve no intend of dying soon.

Love to you all,

Becca

Picture 1: Moscow, January. My friend Lesha and I were infinitely amused by the t-shirt in the souvenir shop (obviously designed to battle the ubiquitous Western belief that bears somehow roam the streets like stay dogs in Russia…!): “I have been to Russia, and there are no bears.”

(Well, MASSIVE amounts of Russian wilderness aside…)

Picture 2: Last weekend with my friends Lena and Nastya I glimpsed my first Russian bear at Северный Склон / North Slope, one of the many winter resorts nearby. They had a number of exotic creatures there, among them African ostriches (somehow still living??!)

…But of course, the star of the show was this poor little fellow, the sweetest and most lethargic bear I’ve ever seen. Mammoth, of course. Shortly after I took this photo, a nearby group tossed a container of варенье (berry preserves) into the top of the cage. The poor bear then contented himself with licking it down to the last drop. What can I say? Sweet, “ooh!,” and heartbreaking.