Dostoevsky Day

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
John 12:24-25

Let's talk about why this day was amazing.

First off I should say that it wasn't all good. It was actually very cold and rainy. That cold atmosphere-just-sneezed-on-you- kind of rain. Ew. And the metro was giving me motion sickness (I plan on writing a a discussion on the Metro vs Marshrytka. Later.).

But it was Dostoevsky Day and the day began with a splendid dramatic reading of a scene from Crime and Punishment. We walked around the dodgy part of St. Petersburg (because Fydor wrote about the lowly people of society and lived among them) and saw several apartments where he lived, the apartment and place where the pawn shop was from C&P, a cemetary where D and other famous Russian artists are buried. I've come to the conclusion that while I may have a serious crush on Puskin (who didn't?), Dostoevsly writes my heart and soul. Love the poor and outcasts. Confess your sin. Lose your life. Choose Jesus Christ.

And then most of the good things happened in the evening.

We rushed back to the hotel to change, for tonight we attended a ballet performance of Don Quixote at the Mariinsky Theatre!!! It was quite spectacular. Better than the Bolshoy in Moscow, I must admit, although I'm going to need to stop saying things about St. Pete being better than Moscow, since I'm going to be living there this summer. The lead guy and girl were absolutly amazing. I don't really know anything about technique, but they had great stage presence and were not only dancers, but also actors, and I thought they were fantastic. One of the lead girls was absolutly anorexic. It was hard to watch her. It lasted 3 hours, with 2 intermissions. And Pamela Anderson was sitting near my friend Jess. I am not lying. All the men in the theatre were taking pictures of the poor overly tanned woman who apparently forgot to wear pants.

After the ballet it was after eleven and we needed to find a taxivan to get to the metro to get back to the hotel. We saw fireworks in the distance and started walking towards them and ended walking all the way to Nevsky Prospect where the metro is, anyway. We never found the fireworks, but we did walk through a motorcycle gang of Russian youth playing hackysac in rollarblades, almost got hit by cars crossing the wrong street (cross with the green man, not the green arrow!), my shoe fell off in front of the Hermitage. the girl riding a horse outside the Hermitage, a cello player in the metro, and many other strange things. We went to McDonalds for midnight McFlurries (even though it was only 11:15. It closed at 11:30pm). They thought I said Big Mac instead of McFlurry, but when I told them what I really wanted they returned my money and let me keep the Big Mac. I gave it to Andrewshka. They started playing "Kiss By a Rose from the Grave" and "Strong Enough" and I sang to both and was happy.

And right now I'm eating a very delicious plum from the ринок (food market).

Oh yeah I forgot to mention that two days ago we got robbed by a gypsy in Кофе Хауз. Ask me to tell you about that one in person.