Married Women

Last week was pretty low key-  we had a trip to a local art gallery that had a ton of interesting local contemporary art and then a visit to the Lenin museum.  This weekend was super fun though.  Katya and I met downtown on Saturday morning and walked to the riverside to sunbathe!  We got to see Lovers Bridge (which I had seen before but unfortunately didn’t have my camera with me) and then headed down to the shore.  You have to be super careful there (there’s a lot of broken glass) but otherwise it was nice!  We spread our towels out and sunbathed for a few hours.  The only annoying part was that at one point two boys tried to pick us up.  After bothering us for about 15 minutes (asking for our cell #s, ICQ acct #s), they asked us to go on a walk with them, which we refused.  Finally I asked, “Plus,what would your husband say Katya?”  They asked if we had husbands and I said that they were in America.  They stopped to think for a minute and then said “Well, they’re in America, we’re here.  It happens.”  Finally they left  

Afterwards we went back to K’s place to shower and figure out plans for the evening.  We made an amazing dinner (salad and zuchinni and bread) and then met our friend Joseph at a Summer Cafe to have a few drinks before going to a club.  We had no problems getting into the clubs but they all wanted 350 rubles ($12) for a cover.  We decided we’d rather go to some other club where our friends were.  The cab took forever to arrive though and we just decided to call it a night. 

Sunday morning we met Lena to go to the Central Market.  They had a couple of really cool stores (think H&M) in addition to a bunch of cute little stalls.  I ended up getting a new purse, shoes, and dress – yay!  The one thing that is actually way more expensive in Russia is clothing.  Maybe it’s because most Russians have a few nice outfits that they recycle?  These stores weren’t bad though. 

This weekend my friends are probably going to be at the dacha but I’m really hoping I can catch some football.  It was the one thing I didn’t manage to do this past weekend!  Also, my host mom sleeps in the living room so she pretty much dominates what’s on tv or when we turn it off so she can go to bed. 

We don’t have excursions planned for tomorrow or Thursday so I’m hoping to try to catch part of this film festival (Future Shorts) that’s going on all week.  It’s at another huge shopping center so maybe I can pick up some more Russian fashions.   If the weather’s nice on Thursday I might try to go to the beach again….

In other news, I’m trying to go to Kazan’ in a few weeks with some friends.  The plane tickets are pretty cheap (around 100 dollars round trip) and I’ve heard there’s a lot of cool things to see there! 

It’s been unbearably hot the last few days so sorry I haven’t written much.  I just can’t stand the thought of turning on a hot computer when I get home from school.  :-/