Happy Maslenitsa!

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Well, Spring is still trying to fight her way through the snow. It seems that Winter isn’t quite ready to back down.  We had maybe three cold, but wonderfully sunny days and now, four days of thick, wet snow.  My snow boots have been walked in so much that the seams are wearing down—now my feet get damp. Thank goodness, they are able to mostly dry out while I’m teaching. Nannies are once again helping me take off my layers and put on my layers—making sure my scarf is tied just right and my hood is on. I really do appreciate it, especially when they greet me at the door with a cup of tea and some biscuits.

Thursday was a particularly snowy day. I was feeling ill and had to get up early to teach at a kindergarten. I stumbled through the snow to the metro. A bear was coming up the metro stairs—scared the bejesus out of me—not to mention, I was really confused as to why a bear was walking up stairs on two legs. Turns out it was just a very tall, large woman in a fur coat with a fur hood—damn those long-haired fur hoods! They are better than the double tailed coon-skin caps that some men like to wear here.

I was really disappointed when I found out I had to teach kindergarten, but I will admit, it is kind of fun. This kindergarten is not like the others I have seen in Moscow. This one is less institutional. I love walking through the mural forest halls to the clearing (intersection of two halls) where the dwarves’ house is and up the stairs to the fairy tale tree with the mermaid tree topper. Also, these kindergartens have awesome play houses—like the kind you see in Russian illustrations. Any way, we had lots of fun singing and dancing and learning about animals and I got a group hug afterwards.

After the school fed me some delicious blini (crepes), I put on my layers and dodged children on skis. The snow was coming down harder. I made it back to the metro, past the woman beggar who had been sitting out in the snow for these two hours and past the beautiful soaking, wet Burnese Mountain Dog who had smartly gone into the metro to get out of the snow. This got me thinking about the fact that humans will allow a dog to block half of the metro entrance but are annoyed when a fellow human takes up half that space. And I am just as bad, because while I felt sorry for the woman, I actually stopped and wanted to help the dog.

After kindergarten I headed out to Gorki-2, a wealthy suburb of Moscow. Just as I got off the bus, traffic halted. The president was heading somewhere and traffic was stopped. After that, the traffic was so jammed that it crawled. I was waiting outside for 45 minutes in the snow, waiting for the driver to be able to come pick me up. We then took some country roads, but unfortunately, so did everyone else, and we were waiting for another 45 minutes. When I arrived to the client’s home the nanny brought me directly into the kitchen for some soup and tea. Both the Pomeranian and the Maine Coon Cat (google it) scolded me for not telling them hello first. I need to get a picture of them together—the cat is twice the size of the Pom.

Last night headed out for a few games of pool. Nice to get out to a bar for a change and even more luxurious to take a cab home! Now I am waiting for people to wake up so we can go to a park, freeze our butts off, and eat blini for the big crepe and butter festival called Maslenitsa! I will freeze for blini. Of course, I could just make it, but I’m working very hard to break this strange view of women my male coworkers seem to have.

This brings me to last week and International Women’s Day. It is a huge deal in Russia. For three days men and women were walking around with huge plants and flower arrangements and giant boxes of chocolates. I was one of those women! My students gave me chocolates, flowers, chocolates, champagne, chocolates, cake, chocolates, mascara, and did I mention, chocolate. Anyway, long story short, I found out how some of coworkers feel about women (these men are all raised in Canada and America). It wasn’t very nice what they had to say, so I won’t repeat it. But they were completely shocked when I said I don’t like masses of children who aren’t potty trained—apparently, as a woman I am genetically programed to desire and love cleaning up after masses of poopy children. Also, as a woman I am genetically programmed to want to get married and spawn masses of poopy children. And apparently, as a woman, I am genetically programmed to desire each one of my co-workers as a potential mate. Basically they told me I fail as a woman--all I can say is if that is what being a woman is, THANK GOD I fail!

Oh, on my wanderings I discovered a really run-down, but cool building (really only cool because I haven't seen many like it in Moscow). I didn't have my camera, so I didn't take a picture, but I typed in the address and apparently, it is by a kind of famous Russian architect/engineer (designed mainly prisons and hospitals).