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. :)