Happy Russia Day... from Russia!

Hi all, sorry it's been a bit longer than I meant since the last post. Let me start by clarifying the new pictures: from the bottom on up, we've got St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square, the main entrance to The Moscow Art Theatre's main stage, the entrance to the Moscow Art Theatre School where I study pretty much every day, and finally a statue of Anton Chekhov. Russia Day was actually yesterday, but I decided to sleep last night instead of write this, so it's all coming to you a few hours after the fact. After a nice relaxing boat trip down the Moscow River, I spent some time relaxing in my dorm room and around 7 PM, some friends and I decided to head towards Red Square to see what this Russia Day was all about (let's be real, we heard that there would be fireworks). From what I gather, it seems to be sort of equivalent to our Independence Day and it was a madhouse at the center of the city! I've never seen such a strong military presence in one place. Once we got through certain gate checkpoints, we realized that we couldn't even technically get into the square without a ticket. When we went to turn back, it was harder to get out than it was to get in! They were holding people up, checking passports (which of course we didn't have as the school holds on to ours and hasn't given us our copies yet), and passing everyone through metal detectors. This may have been one of the scariest days to not know the language. But we finally figured a round about way out and still enjoyed the adventure, even though we never did see any fireworks. Classes have been pretty intense for the past week. Our group seems to be fullfilling the "lazy American" stereotype pretty well in a country where your worth is only measured by how hard you work. Hopefully we all realize that we need to pick up the pace in order to avoid disappointing every Russian with whom we have a personal relationship! I have also seen some pretty amazing shows such as "Three Penny Opera", "Marat/Sade", and maybe my favorite so far, "K.I. from 'Crime and Punishment'". This last one was an incredible one-woman show elaborating on the life and death of a small character named Katrina Ivanova from the novel "Crime and Punishment", and the woman was an incredible actress... very moving show. Well it's off to a Russian torture... eh, I mean movement class... I promise to write more frequently and more detailed soon:)