Ballet, Cinnabon, and a Cougar

Greetings Fellow Americans,

As you can tell by the first pic we had quite the party this week. What, with all the dancing Islams, skinny Russian ballerinas, Creepy Cougar Parent's Club, vended cigarettes, and Cinnabons we're lucky to squeeze all of this adventure-doused excitement into one blog post.

Bunch of Islams creatively singing the same two words, "Hari Krishna," over and over in increasingly catchy and different tunes.

Buying them from the store would just be too hard.
Shout out to Momma G and her TGI Friday's days!

This was a big market we found that sells anything from whole chickens to knock-off coats to fake passports for any number of different countries.

This is our favorite metro stop. It looks really cool, but once we got off we realized the cool metro stop compensates for the area's complete lack of anything cool. But we did see the missionaries here!

Tim Burton would be proud of this stop's design.

So about the Creepy Cougar Club of Parents (CCCP), it actually only involves one mom, but every Friday Jacob, Gerrardo, and I teach a parents' English club class. A few moms come and it's a lot of fun. Last week was the first time we taught so I was getting to know the class and asked each of them the question, "If you had a million dollars what would you do with it and why?"

The first two moms answer and when we get to the third she says her name is Tatiana and that she already has a million dollars so she wouldn't do anything different. I'm like, "okaaaaay" and then she goes off about how her husband is in the United Nations or something official and rich like that. So I do the logical thing and point out that if she can't come up with anything to do with her riches she can donate some to me.

After class she goes up to Kels and says, "Your husband is fantastic." She ups the creepiness a notch this week when she drops off her son and sees me. I ask her how she's doing and she replies, "Great. . . . after last weeks lesson." I take off running for Kels.

God has a sense of humor, because it just so happens that yesterday she's the only mom who shows up for English class. I'm peeing my pants. One-on-one with Tatiana. I catch myself secretly wishing I was one-on-one with Tatiana the scary lunch lady ("Noooo...... moooore..... sooouur kraut roooolls..... Understand? Good, can you say french fries?"). I make Kels sit in the classroom with us and I tell Tatiana the story about how me and Kels met just to be on the safe side. Tatiana must have moved on cuz there was nothing creepy going on. Phew.

A statue in another metro stop.
Today we went to a tourist street called Arbat street which is lined with street performers, souvenir shops, and nice restaurants. Check out the Hard Rock Cafe in the background.
"Hello Kelsey, tell Santa what you'd like for Christmas............."

Kels finally got sick of all the 'victory' signs I was throwing up in our pictures so she decided to turn up the classy with this pose. Woot.

Cool graffiti wall dedicated to the Kurt Cobain of Russia-- died and his fans still haven't gotten over it.

Kels said do something crazy. . . . .

Mmmmmm cinnabon. You can get a stomach ache and a cavity just by looking at this picture. Should I sit in it or eat it?. . . .

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Eternal Flame.

RED SQUARE!!!!

Apparently he's a famous Russian pop singer named Ilya. We find it hard to believe since the only people swarming him were American girls. After all the picture taking he creepily asked for all the girls' phone numbers. Creepa


The Kremlin Palace Concert Hall where we saw the ballet, "Sleeping Beauty"

The best part apart about the ballet for me is that during intermission they had a stand out in the lobby selling CD's and DVD's. They totally were selling $3 DVD's and we found Nacho Libre. So we bought it. Woot.

Momma G... do you recognize this song with the three ballerinas? Kels took this video because she knew you'd recognize the song from the three fairies in the disney movie of Sleeping Beauty!

Kels loved the ballet. I tried really hard to be open to the experience and after getting over the fact that it's a Saturday afternoon and I could be watching college football I ended up having a great time also. It was a lot of fun. In the process I decided that ballet and football really aren't that different.

1. Each requires a great amount of physical ability and skill.

2. Each involves carefully orchestrated plays or routines.

3. Thousands of people flock to watch them.

4. Everybody involved wears form-fitting, anatomy-revealing costumes.