And now, I present a diorama photograph of a cosmonaut's new city

Hello, all! I'm sorry I've been such a slacker-- it's been a busy few days, and when I got a free moment yesterday, my Russian dad took me to the dacha to meet his daughter and cat. Can you guess which one I was more excited to meet? :)

So yesterday was our first day of class, but instead of class we had an excursion that went all around Krasnoyarsk to see sights. They used to print 10 ruble bills that have several sights from around Krasnoyarsk on them, but they stopped because it's basically worthless.. 10 rubles is roughly 33 cents.

This is a plaque on the clock that the people here refer to as "Big Ben", it reminded me of an English saying, it says, "Time is not measured in hours, but in heartbeats."

Another view of "Big Ben". Honestly, it's not that big. It has an hourglass inside though. 

 

Bjac and Andrew on a fountain edge. 

This is the fountain near the opera house. My host dad told me that at night it lights up at plays music. Shantel and I were talking about going to see it. 

This is "Krasnoyarsk" in Russian.

So the Yensei is a very big river, and 7 other rivers flow into it. These female statues represent the seven rivers that flow into the Yensei. 

The man in the middle represents the Yensei itself. 

Monument to Chekov. 

One of the HUGE beautiful bridges that crosses the Yensei. 

me. :)

This sign says "Infinity-- 459 meters". I thought it was great. 

 

Some Artsy thing that involves the river. Our guides didn't really understand it. Daniel had to push the last one so I could get the picture of it pouring out. It wasn't working like it should. 

The Matroshka represents Mother Russia. 

A Russian love story: A Russian is sent by the Tsar to go and establish colonies and cities in Siberia. He gets lost and instead makes it all the way to America, where he becomes acquainted with the Native Americans. He meets a woman and they fall in love. He decides to head back to Russia, and tells his love that he will come back and they will be married. When he reaches Krasnoyarsk, he somehow dies (falls ill, gets in an accident, whatever..) and he never gets to marry his beloved. And they live like Russians ever after. The end. Happy, right?

One of the neater functions of my camera. It makes a diorama photo of landscapes. Looks a bit like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood to me. 

This is the one of my school. It's the yellow-y building near the center. I had class for the first time today, and during break I went to go to the bathroom and upon entering it I thought better of it. Russia is a beautiful place, with neat people, but anything public has been very dirty. The bathrooms smelled terrible and were filthy. And the toilets were weird. Moral? I'm going to hold it until I get home to my host family's each day. 

Chapel on top of the tallest hill (mountain?) in Krasnoyarsk. The story goes that there was a watchtower built here so that the citizens could see invading enemies. A rich merchant (meanwhile) nearly drowned and while recovering he prayed to the patron st. to help him recuperate. He got better, and gave a boatload of money to have this beautiful little chapel built. It has a fence around it with locks similar to the ones we saw in Moscow. It's apparently a wedding tradition. If I get married, I want to buy an engraved lock to put somewhere to annoy people. Add that to my bucket list. 

So, see the smog that is in the air? Yeah, that's an INVERSION! Krasnoyarsk, like good ol' Salt Lake, has surrounding mountains that create a bowl that bad air gets trapped in, causing the inversion. My host dad was explaining it last night and I was like, "Oh my god! like Utah!" 

My dad took me to the dacha yesterday and it was beautiful, though getting there was a bit scary with narrow roads and such. However, I learned something hilarious. He was showing me different fences and said that the tall fences around a dacha mean that the people like to go around NAKED. Haha. Makes me laugh. 

We were also listening to music in the car and my dad was listening to "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode, and he said, "Chto eto? Reach out and touch face?" (The original lyric is "reach out and touch faith.") And so I explained it, then I had the hardest time explaining what "reach" meant. He said it made more sense that it was "faith" instead of "face". 

I got lost yesterday and found my house by speaking only Russian to a stranger. It's getting easier! I described my family and the man was like, "oh, yeah, I know Andre" but in Russian, and voila! I was home. 

I have a hilarious shoe tan line that made my host family laugh. It's good I'm not just hilariously bad at Russian, but also sometimes hilarious in the normal way.

Love you all. Go eat something super American for me. The food here is nothing like home. Except the wine. :) 

Do cosmonauts get airsick?

Sorry for the delay in post, all. Yesterday was an exhausting fiasco, and today I flew to Krasnoyarsk and met my host family. The good news is that I didn't get sick on the plane. I don't have to take a scary  Russian bus to school. My family has internet for me to use. And they asked me the magical question, "Do you like white wine?" (but in Russian), meaning that these people could be serial killers for all I care and I would still be their happy American guest. They might think I'm lingually retarded but it's alright. I'm here to learn, and learn I shall!

  My host parents are Andre and Natasha. They live in the top apartment of an old Soviet looking building. They are English professors, but speak mostly Russian to me unless it's something important, like when we drove my walking route to school and he made me tell it back to him in Russian and I got mentally lost. Andre also asked me what Americans say while "chinking" glasses. I laughed and said there isn't anything special we say, he shook his head and said we are strange people. I also had a great time explaining the special stores in which we buy alcohol in Utah.

So, yesterday, Julia, our host professor, dragged all of us around the city for 11 hours seeing sights. I saw a few things that I really loved. First, we went to Red Square and saw St. Basil's on the inside. Unluckily I only saw the bottom floor inside because some Russian woman started chewing Shantel and I out for 150 rubles and we couldn't get back in when she shooed us out. The rest of the group escaped unscathed. When we return we plan on buying another ticket when we return (it was only 50 rubles, 1 ruble = 3 cents) and seeing the rest.

Then we went to Lenin's tomb. It was weird and gross. He looks really fake, except his rotten fingernails on the one hand that is stretched out. It was free, then we walked the graveyard of Russian leaders and saw Stalin's statue. There are no pictures for this because they don't allow cameras of any kind. I had a really proud moment here when I explained to a guard checking bags in Russian with little error that I'm a diabetic.

Then we went to the Kremlin and saw all the Cathedrals and such. It was beautiful, and I got to practice my Spanish because in one Church the only map translation available was in Spanish and Julia had me translate the history of the crown and other ceremonies.

After the Kremlin we went to Arbat, an old street that Stalin built to drive his cars down on his way to work. It was interesting and hot.

My favorite thing we saw was Patriarch's pond and the Evil Apartment from Bulgakov's novel, Master and Margarita. The apartment is evil because it makes people disappear because it is so desirable and the devil lives there at one point, and Bulgakov lived in and used it as his inspiration. Patriarch's pond is another point in the story, where a man gets beheaded showing Ivan the 7th proof of God, the existence of the devil.

In passing we also saw the KGB torture building, and other historically relevant sites.

Bolshoi Theater

Shantel and I in front of Bolshoi Theater

St. Basil's Cathedral 

So, this bell was made for the Kremlin a heck of a long time ago. However, the Russians didn't anticipate that it was too big to lift, so because of this it was never rung. "Could the Russians build a bell so big they themselves could not ring it?" Timeless question. 

Top of one of the churches in the Kremlin. 

Me. 

The bell tower. 

That big chunk missing out of the unringable bell was caused by damage from a fire.  

It says, "In this home from 1921 to 1924 lived and worked the writer Mikhail Afanacervich Bulgakov. Here he developed the novel Master and Margarita."

The pond where Ivan meets the devil. 

Where Berlioz loses his head. 

Shantel, Andrew, and I preparing to get on our plane. 

In case of emergency break glass with mallet. Our bus to Krasnoyarsk from the airport was high tech, I tell you. 

More next time. :) 

Cosmonaut food and Touristy Adventures

Hello all!

I had a big day today. I woke up around 6am (I have insomnia in foreign cities) and decided to get ready. I plugged my curling iron into the converter, into the adapter and into the wall. After I turned it on I waited a few minutes, and then went to curl my hair to discover that my curling iron wasn't heating up and wouldn't turn on. After a minor panic attack I took the stupid converter off and just used the adapter. Ta-da! Like magic, it turned on. Any girl reading my blog can probably relate that the inability to do one's hair is a panic worthy event in most cases. The same thing happened to Shantel, and I told her what I did and she did the same thing and hers worked too.

Today (almost) all the other students arrived in Moscow in our hostel to join together as a group. (This also meant the really messy Australian people left. yippee!). So, because of my job, I got to be the creepy kid that knew everyone's name before they knew mine. We met with Julia and talked about the next two days, then took off towards a few touristy sights.

Walking around all day is exhausting. First, we went to a very old grocery store that has really beautiful architecture. Julia told us that the architecture and size of things really reflected how Stalin thought life should be. Some of the roads here have 9 lanes going across! This is very different than the streets in Spain, which seem abnormally small.

Here is a photo of the inside of the oldest grocery store in Moscow:

After that, we made our way to Red Square. This is where several big sights are in Moscow, including the MGU, Lenin's tomb, the Kremlin, and St. Basil's Cathedral, the candy looking cathedral with the colorful domes and turrets. I also saw where Putin addresses the public, but no sign of the big man himself. MGU is a giant mall that is very expensive, but also beautiful. It puts City Center to shame. 

Here is me at St. Basil's. It's really beautiful and neat. 

This is the man who founded Moscow. I can't remember his name as Julia only mentioned it to us in passing. 

Beautiful building.. 

Cosmonaut food! We ate at a Soviet Style buffet today. I purchased Cold beet soup with sour cream, a carrot and apple salad, and a peroshok with cabbage. I tried to describe them in my last post, but here is a picture of the inside with the cabbage. The other ones I have eaten have been more full, but I think the photo gets the point across. 

nom.

St. Basil's up close. 

A beautiful picture of the other cathedral, Christ the Savior from across the Moscow river on a big bridge. 

Soviet ice cream-- everyone has been telling us to eat Soviet ice cream, so we finally found some. 

It was like frozen creamy frosting. Delicious and only about 75 cents. 

A georgian food that Shantel and I shared. It's fried dough with cherries in the middle with sugar and cinnamon on top. 

After this we went to Treteyakov gallery, a giant art museum open to the public. Because we were using student discounted tickets, we had to pretend to be Russian, so as Julia was handing out tickets she said, "Act Russian! Don't smile!" and it made all of us have the giggles. It was interesting and had some beautiful pieces, though I was so tired I really couldn't appreciate them all. 

 Well all, I'm going to leave you for now. It's been an exhausting day. i will update more later. 

love! 

Kelli 

p.s. Talk about terrifying, can you guess what this is? 

If you guessed the WHEELCHAIR RAMPS available all over the city, you're right! Can you imagine flying down one of these? Scary, I tell you.