I included some of the things that Dima taught us and so if it gets boring then skip to the next paragraph.
Saturday we stayed in the two groups. Marci, Sydney, Courtney and Ty were all too
tired to leave with Megan, Jessica, Katie and I because they stayed out really
late. I worked things out with the former Sister Zakharova so that her husband
would give us a tour and show us around Moscow some. Dima was incredible nice and knew a lot of
things. He was the one that told us
about Minin and Pozharsky above. He also
was able to take us to the open market so that we could get some souvenirs.
On the way to the market we passed these apartments/hotels
that were built for the 1980 Olympics that were there in Moscow. I realize now that I only took a picture of
one of the buildings. Dima was great on
the market! He was able to get us better
deals on the things that we bought and was able to help us avoid fake products. He would say things like “It’s no good.” or
“Bad product.” “It’s a good price.” “It’s expensive but it’s a souvenir.”
There was a time when I got separated from everybody else
and he was kind of worried for me. But then Megan got separated from the group
and he was even more worried because Megan doesn’t speak Russian like I do. We found her and then Dima helped her buy her
souvenirs. Dima helped everybody. He saved me from buy poor quality shoes on
the market. I did buy some gloves and a
present for my mom at the market.
Dima also prevented me from buying shoes on the market. I currently walk around with holes in my
shoes and so they get water inside very easily.
Well this weekend it has rained a lot.
So my shoes were wet. I was
picked out and they had ‘new’ shoes and new socks on me but we were beginning
to discuss prices when Dima showed up.
He then talked about how you can’t trust the quality of things on the
market. There are no guarantees. Dima said that he only buys clothes abroad in
Europe.
After the market we saw what Old Moscow used to look
like. I have only a couple pictures
because my batteries were just about dead.
Between that and the fact that it was raining I didn’t use my
camera. But I took a couple pictures on
Katie’s camera.
From there we went back on the metro to go see another
statue. This statue was to the men that
worked in the factories and the women that worked in the fields during Soviet times. It was huge.
Dima had a lot to say about this statue.
It was built in Paris but then it was taken apart and brought to
Moscow. If you look really close at the
statues of the man and woman you can tell that there lots of places where the
pieces are coming together. Paris, at
one time, wanted to buy the monument but obviously that never happened.
At this time Dima told us a soviet joke about how Soviet
people are tricky/ sneaky. One of the
things that made it funny was that he would say a line in Russian and then I
would translate it for Megan, Jessica and Katie. So the joke was told a line at a time. Here is the joke. During the cold war America and the Soviet
Union both set off atomic missiles. They
meet in space and had the following conversation. Soviet bomb said, “Hi.” American bomb said,
“Hi.” Soviet, “Where are you from?”
“America. Where are you
from?” “Soviet Union. Let’s have a toast to meeting each other.” So
then the Soviet missile pours two glasses of vodka and they drink them. Soviet asks, “Where are you headed?” “Soviet
Union. Where are you headed?” “America.
Look at us being good friends.
Let’s toast to our new friendship.”
So the Soviet missiles poured another glass of vodka for the American
missile and the American drank it up.
Then the Soviet missile said, “It’s time for me to be going now.”
American replied, “Me as well.” Then the
Soviet missiles proposed one last toast in hope that things would turn out
well. The American missile agreed and
drank another shot of vodka. Then the
Soviet missile said, “American missile.
You aren’t looking too good. Let
me take you home where you can recover.”
“Alright. Take me home.”
Dima then also gave the following analogy to compare
Americans and Russians. Americans are
like peaches. They are immediately sweet
and tasty. But if you eat more and more
than you get to the big pit in the center.
Russians are like oranges. You
have to peel them and clean them before you can eat the fruit. Then there are small, little seeds on the
inside.
The last place that Dima took us was the center of the
USSR. This was the place where each of
the different republics had a building and a shield on the main building. There were 15 countries in the USSR but on
the main building there are 16 plates.
That is because when the building was being constructed negotiations
were being made with the Bulgaria but an agreement was never reached. So now there in a empty plate which was
supposed to be for Bulgaria. Behind the
main building there was a fountain with 15 women representing each of the
republics in the Soviet Union. This place
did not function for governmental purposes because, as we all know, the Soviet
Union broke up and so now they don’t need a building for each of the individual
republics in Moscow.
Also on this complex was a rocket commemorating being the
first rocket to go into space. Dima was
saying that the whole goal of Soviet Russia was to catch up to America and then
pass them. So this monument to space
exploration was a shining moment in that attempt.
Before Dima left us he gave me some suggestions on places
that we could go that would be worthwhile.
I really liked his suggestions and so those were the places that we went
to.
The first place we went was Arbat Street. Arbat Street is this really famous walking street
where normally there would be street performers and all sorts of interesting
people. Unfortunately it was raining
when we were there and so there weren’t performers and there were less people
who were just as interesting though.
For example on the escalator leaving the metro before we got
onto the street we saw a group of four girls about 15 years old and two of them
were in costume. One was in an eeyore costume and the other in a bear
costume. We were behind them a couple
steps on the escalator. Then in front of
the girls a couple steps was a group of boys about the same age. One of them cat-called to the girls in
costume and in response she just turned away from them and flipped them off. I was surprised because that is a very
American thing to do. Russians have
their own way of flipping somebody off but she choose the American way to do
it.
On Arbat Street we found a Wendy’s. It was so good! I got a classic single with cheese and onions,
a cup of chili, and a chocolate frosty.
I really liked it. At this
Wendy’s there were 3 floors. You order
on the main floor and then there is room in the basement and upstairs to
eat. Megan got her food first and decided
to go upstairs to eat and so I followed.
When I walked up the stairs I passed this table with four girls about my
age talking English with a guy. I was
immediately intrigued because the English sounded really good. Then I sat down and overheard the girls’
voices more. Then Megan said, “Wouldn’t
it be funny if they were ILP teachers just like us?” I thought in my mind that their English is
too good to not be American and they don’t have strange accents so I don’t
think they are from England. So I
finished my cheeseburger with onions and then went and talked with them as I at
my chili. Turns out they were some of
the ILP teachers from Moscow that just happened to be eating at Wendy’s when we
decided to go there. How serendipitous!
We talked with them for only a couple minutes and then Megan
and Jessica wanted to go and so we went down to the basement to go to the
bathroom. We then saw the other teachers
again on our way out the door because they had come down the stairs by then
also. That was really fun.
We picked a bad time to leave though. When we walked out it was raining. As we walked farther down Arbat Street it
just rained harder and none of us had umbrellas so we were all getting really
wet. We finally got smart and found some
cover and made a plan. The plan was to
go back to the Hostel and look up some more things to do for tomorrw. We walked back and the rain started to die
down. By the time we got to the end of
Arbat Street it wasn’t even raining so if we would have just waited the 5
minutes under cover like we saw other people doing then we could have continued
walking down Arbat Street. But that
didn’t happen. We got back to the metro
station and changed our plans anyways.
Dima explained that when Lenin had the metro built the
original architects had three lines in place.
The lines were going this way, that way and the other. Lenin was drinking some tea or coffee at that
time and put his cup on the plans. When
he did this there was a circular line from the cup on the plans and so the
architects thought that Lenin wanted a fourth circular line. So that is what was made.
I really liked the metro in Moscow. It wasn’t forever deep like here in St Petes.
I liked that because then it doesn’t take forever to get from the surface down
to where the trains are. Another thing I
liked about the Moscow metro was that the metro stations were really well
decorated, especially the circular line.
That is why I really liked the circular line.
Once we got back to the metro station I expressed a desire
to ride the circle line all the way around and look at each one of the
stations. I really enjoyed it and really
enjoyed taking pictures of all of the stops.
Megan, Jessica, and Katie might have gotten bored with it but they
didn’t have anything else to do so they were out of luck. At every station I would hurry off and look
around and then I would start taking pictures of all the things that were
special about that specific station. I
would try and do all that before the next train would come. Usually the trains would come every minute
and a half to two and half minutes (1:30-2:30) so I had to be quick. I didn’t always make it but I just had to
signal to Katie to either get on the train or to wait. If nothing else they would go to the next
station and then I would come on the next train but that never happened. I took more than 120 picture of the metro in
the two hours we went around the 12 stops on the circle ring.
Dima told two stories about jokes that old missionaries
would play on new missionaries. The first
one was that they would take missionaries from the office to the circle line of
the metro and tell them that they had a long train ride ahead of them. Then they would have the mission ride the
line around two or three times. Each
time around is like 45 minutes so they would be on the metro for more than 2
hours while their trainers would come to the office. Now the new missionary wouldn’t know that
they didn’t actually go anywhere but would walk out and thing that they are a
ways away but that’s not true.
The other story was that an old mission would ask his
companion if he wanted to go to St Petersburg.
Then they would sit on the circle line for a while. Then they would exit and announced that they
were in Saint Petersburg when they were actually still in Moscow. The sticker we found that said Moscow – Saint
Petersburg was actually on a straight line and so was as ironic as it could
have been.
After that busy day we went back to the hostel and ran into
the other group. We all wanted to animatedly
recounted our adventures of the past two days since we haven’t seen very much
of each other. I was interested to hear
what the other group had done and seen and hear how it went. This is because when we are all together in a
group I frequently take charge because I speak Russian and can read signs to get
where we want to go. I do not mean to
demean the other group. I consider them
adept explorers that can find things also.
After we recounted our adventures then we talked about ideas
and some plans for the next day. Jessica
really wanted to go to Tchaikovsky’s museum.
The only problem was that the museum was an hour and a half train ride
away and being as we had a limited time anyways I didn’t want to have all that
travel time. The museum would have been
really cool but there were other things closer that we could do.
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