December 31st

Just a quick post to say I made it home from Moscow! I don't even feel as bad as I thought I would, considering the 24 hours of airplane travel, 12 security checkpoints, and 11 hour time change I just endured.

Everything here is wonderful and beautifully decorated for Christmas. I sort of forgot that Christmas came and went for most people, seeing how uncelebrated it is in Russia. We're opening our presents tomorrow, though : )

I'll put my pictures from the trip up soon!

12/9/06

A week until I leave for Moscow!

I'm getting really sick of Grinnell and ready to leave it for a while. Its not just the end of the semester work load, its that plus dealing with everyone else in that situation too. I mean I love the people at Grinnell, but I can't wait to be around non-college students for a while. Next semester's gonna be pretty great, I'm definitely looking forward to that. It'll be my last semester here, springtime, Max'll be back, my classes should be good but not terribly difficult.

I'm done with my 5 papers, though one is not yet sent in, so technically I could edit it more and clean up the footnotes. Next week I have finals on Tuesday and Wednesday and that's it! I'm going to start studying for them today since my whole goal for the end of the semester is to get plently of sleep and not be too stressed out so that I can smoothly adjust to Russia.

I've found more out about my internship, which is at the Mossovieta Theater. I want read some plays before I go (in English) so that they'll be more understandable when I see them in Russia. I'm supposed to attend all the rehearsals for "The Damned" by Mazzoni so I'll definitely read that one. I'm excited to see some of my favorites like "The Government Inspector," "The Minor," "Uncle Vanya," and "Woe from Wit." Unfortunately we're also seeing Gorkii's "The Lower Depths" which is pretty much the worst play ever...hopefully watching it won't be as painful as reading it since I barely even made it through it!

Winter Waltz!

This was the closest Jaime and I could get to a photo with both of us smiling and having our eyes open. We ended up getting ready to go out just the two of us-- everyone else went out for dinner, but we were writing papers and didn't have time. Notice Jaime's gorgeous peacock feather decoration and my new hairstyle with bangs over the side.

Jaime and Lee Anne at a pre-waltz party in main. I only took pictures at home and here because I was afraid of losing my camera at Waltz itself!

Robyn & Russ.

Vera & Luke.

Happy...but also so damn tired. I have 5 papers due this week.

Jaime looking absolutely beautiful.