A fresh month and it feels good! I’m relieved that we have begun November, because I can now officially say that I am coming home next month! I’m being careful not to wish my time away here, but there are no two ways about it- there is absolutely no place like home and more importantly, London is better than Yaroslavl.
Now that the clocks have gone back at home, we have a 4 hour time difference, which just makes it even more difficult to speak to people. The days are quite dark at the moment and the sky just looks grey. Trudging through thick, sloppy mud to school and back each day is getting tiring as well. I could write endlessly about things that annoy me here, but I am not going to...so don’t flick back to facebook just yet. On a positive note, I have seen a fabulous selection of berets in recent weeks. Prime beret territory is, naturally, on the wise old heads of babushkas. I have appreciated many an adventurous beret, and the furry leopard print number I spotted on ‘Ulitsa Balshoya Fyodorovskaya’ gets my vote.
The main event of last weekend was our trip to the circus. Moscow circus had come to Yaroslavl and we were lucky enough to get tickets. I was so excited about it, but actually left pretty disturbed. We were pretty much the only group there without children under the age of eight...but we’re tourists so it’s fine. The show opened with a guy performing some kind of miming story (despite it containing no Russian, I still failed to follow) and there was a lot of taking dogs out of bins and various dogs running on and off the stage. This was followed by very cute small pigs which were running around the edge of the circle and being made to jump over little hurdles. Look, I know this will all sound hilarious, the further I get into this description. But you have to believe me, when I say how sad it all looked. Obviously, most people (especially Russians) adore this kind of entertainment. But as this is MY blog, I will say what I thought of it. Then a massive pig made a brief appearance as well. We had general annoying plate spinning and people falling over etc. But things started to hot up when the bear made an entrance. I was so sad! He was such a cute bear and he was wearing dungarees. He was phenomenally talented (as were all of the animals) and I couldn’t believe some of the acts I was seeing. I don’t know HOW they train them to do some of these things, although I can’t help but hate it. The bear did a really long performance of a story alongside a man and a woman. And they also drove the bear round and round in circles in a car. After the bear, we also saw a horrible bird which swooped over our heads (could have done without that), followed by a few monkeys dressed in little outfits, dogs dressed up in full costumes (including their faces) and possibly the most surreal of all were the sealions. These sealions were huge. There were four of them and they slid around the floor before each sitting on a mini platform. They did all kinds of tricks which were incredible. However, I felt slightly better about the sealions because they weren’t wearing clothes. To be honest, if they managed to get sealions in clothes, I would give them credit.
Other things we saw at the circus were a big water fountain show, a really annoying man blowing a whistle instead of talking and banging a drum-kit and a boy doing some extremely impressive juggling with hats. I have to show sincere admiration though, for the acrobats. We saw quite a few performers doing that swingy thing from the ceiling and also an amazing pair who did some incredible acrobatic things. Can’t even describe it really! Had I not been in a rush after the show, I would have had a word with them and told them where they could improve next time. All in all, the circus was shocking and interesting in lots of ways. If I’m truthful though, I wouldn’t go again because I think it’s really cruel to do that to animals. I talked about it with Natasha when I got home, and she was surprised that they only had bears and sealions. She said usually they have tigers and elephants, so at least I didn’t have to watch that! She said that bears are terrible animals and they hate people. Especially because the Yaroslavl bear, which lives in the Kremlin tried to eat someone’s hand. That is not nice, I agree. But has anyone considered, that the bear might be a bit pissed off that it lives on its own in a cage in the Yaroslavl Kremlin? Hand or no hand, I am not sympathetic.
Moving on from the circus, I have realised that you don’t have to go to a strip club to see near-naked women. Spending some of Saturday evening in a simple cocktail bar in the city centre, we saw slaggily (word?!) dressed women dancing on the top of the bar. It was so unnecessary, but nevertheless we were all pretty astounded at what they looked like. They were so thin, it was quite annoying. We all told ourselves that they must be really hungry, but continued to feel a mixture of envy and repulsion.
As for this month, we have a few juicy plans up our sleeves! This week we want to visit a ‘hunting restaurant’ in which you can try all kinds of meat. Apparently they have bear on the menu there, which I would be willing to sample, providing it’s not served up wearing dungarees. I know this is quite hypocritical of me, after slating the circus but at least this bear will have been dead regardless of whether I eat it or not. We also want to spend a weekend in St. Petersberg at some point, which I am very excited about! And also hope to go to Moscow.
Well, I think I’ll wrap this blogski up and I apologise if it’s been a bit of a rant. As you can see, I have spiced up my page with splash of raspberry and various shades of red. I decided that blue was too cold a colour and I wanted my blog to match the exotic climates we are enjoying here.
Hope you had a good Halloween. I’m not going to hide the fact that I took great pleasure in trick or treating not being a Russian custom. Here’s to a November full of banter and hilarity. xxx
No comments:
Post a Comment