People-watching in the states is great. People-watching in Russia is way more interesting and awkward. Interesting for obvious reasons (Russians are strange and different to me) and awkward because they tend to be silent, look down on the metro, and scowl a lot, so when I inadvertently make eye contact it's pretty obvious I am a foreigner (and I usually get a nice stern look from them). But I find that many of the stereotypes I thought of when I heard "Russia" are accurate, even more so than I imagined. The women are either unbelievably thin and high-heeled, or they are older and larger and wear these massive fur coats which literally look like a whole animal. Yeah, the fur is pretty ridiculous. A lot of the younger women wear it too, but the Babooshkas are the ones with the full-length-straight-from-the-bear's-back ones. Not to mention the hats.

I bought a fur hat the other day, actually. I pet it a lot. (But I have a whole new perspective on fur now... sometimes it still grosses me out, but in a climate like this, animals furs seem like a gift from God. My hat keeps me warmer than I thought possible.)

The past few days we've done so much I can't possibly do it justice. The ballet is one thing that stands out... We saw Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theatre, which is apparently where it was first performed, ever. (Though the main stage is closed for renovations; we saw it in the Small Hall). I loved it. Even though it's probably performed pretty often there, it was definitely one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. (I had my first run-in with a very irate Russian woman at the coat-check desk who wanted me to pay 100 rubles for upper class coat-checking. She was NOT happy when I refused, and it seems to be quite true than unhappy Russians are generally more frightening than unhappy Americans.)

Quickly, some of the other things I've done: gone to the Tret'iakov Art gallery (most famous gallery of Russian art... pretty amazing), observed at a Russian Orthodox church on Sunday morning, eaten ice cream from a stand out in the snow, toured the Kremlin, been to the museum of contemporary Russian history, gotten my picture taken with Lenin and Stalin (..impersonators), been to Pushkin square, walked the tourist-street Arbadt (where we ALMOST got on the BBC), found ourselves (myself and another girl) in an industrial back-alley of Moscow with a bunch of stray dogs, went to an outdoor bazaar (where I was really tempted to pay way too much for some nesting dolls painted like Steelers players) etc etc.

I barely got to describe any of the museums and cathedrals and the kremlin, which is what I began this entry to do, but I'm ridiculously tired. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to write a bit more about them.