Maslenitsa Part 1

On Friday morning I woke up all ready to teach my kids at 10. We got a phone call around 9:30 saying that we wouldn't be teaching, but the school needed us to come at 10:15 to prepare for the Maslenitsa performance. Now, we had no idea what this entailed, but we bundled up and headed over to the school. When we got there we found all the kids bundled up and heading outside, so we followed them.

As it turns out, Maslenitsa is a celebration of the end of winter and beginning of spring. Ironically, we were all dressed in our warmest attire to usher spring in. The kids were adorable all bundled up. Here are Andre and Nikita dressed as a bear and a tiger:

The gym teacher stole the show with her jester costume. According to her she was dressed as a blini, which is basically a crepe, so I don't see the resemblance too easily.

This is Masha, a cute girl from my basic reading class:

There was lots of singing and dancing and we joined right in. It was a blast!

Here is a little snippet of the experience:

We all held hands and bounced around in circles a lot.

Here are cute Sonya and Tioma in their winter getup:

Lonya headed up the group on horseback:

Vlad found me in the crowd and came over to say hi and do some dancing.

One of the activities was a race to dress of two of the kids' fathers in these bright yellow outfits. Dancing of course followed.

Here are Nastia and Liza mid-dance:

Alina, Arina, and Monya:

Such a blast!

The Crazies Have a Cute Side

Meet Sonya. Front and center in this picture:

She is either 2 or 3 years old, but she has already mastered the puppy dog eyes. She has a tendency to revert to speaking Russian, and if I remind her to speak English, she just looks up at me with those big eyes and lifts her shoulder up to her chin. It's about the cutest thing I've ever seen. 

Here are Liza, Rita, Mariana, and Vika. Sometimes they are crazy. Ok, most of the time. And yet, they are just so darn cute!

We made little pig finger puppets the other day and the girls LOVED them.

Sonya and Liza were probably the most excited of the bunch.

Too cute.

Now my homeroom class is full of troublemakers, but they are really cute troublemakers. Here are Ildar, Nikita, and Nika:

And here they are with Sabina. As you can see they can behave themselves. Except Ildar, who always just has too much energy.

One more with Ulia in it too. 

I love them.

A Piece of Egypt and The Menshikov Palace

On Saturday Sveta taught us how to make a Russian apple pie. As it turns out it is more of an upside down apple cake or apple bread than it is a pie, but if was super easy to make and really delicious to eat, so no complaints there.  

After we finished our pie, she took us into the city to see the Menshikov palace. Just outside of the metro station she pointed out this nice little monument for the first trolley-type car, though it was pulled by horses.

We had to walk a ways to the palace, so we saw some lovely things on the way there, one of them bing this pink church.

We walked along the Neva river for part of the time, which has a beautiful view. Here is our whole group just loving Russia:

The view across the river was incredible with the cathedrals and palaces that lined the other side of the river. Also, I was pretty excited to see that the ice on the river is melting!

Right by the palace are two sphinxes that face each other. The sphinxes were brought here from Egypt, so they are legit. Apparently it is bad luck to hang around them for too long, but I wouldn't mind because they were gorgeous.

This little mythical creature was at the foot of the sphinx. If you pet its head three times and then put your hand in its mouth you can make a wish. Obviously I did.

He is just so precious.

The other sphinx:

Group hug.

We couldn't take pictures throughout most of the palace, but it was beautiful. It was nowhere near as grand as the Winter Palace at the Hermitage, but it was still pretty incredible and it is much older. Menshikov was really into Dutch things, so most of the palace was constructed and decorated in a dutch style. The best part was that there were several rooms where the walls and ceilings were completely covered with hand painted dutch tiles. They were white tiles painted with different designs on each on painted in blue. It was stunning.

We were allowed to take pictures in the large room upstairs, so I definitely did. Here we are near the entry of the room:

They seemed to be pretty concerned about the floors, so we all had to wear these lovely felt slippers over our boots. Embarrassingly enough, I barely found some that fit.

The whole room:

The group with the clock at the end of the room:

Not too shabby, eh?

Kiddos

Lately only 2 or 3 kids have been coming out of the older ones at the private school I teach at, which makes the lessons really easy and fun. The other day only Sonya and Anya were there in the older class, so we learned to play volleyball together and they loved it. Here we are:

The younger class is always significantly more full. Here are Dosha, Alina, Dosha, Costya, and Mila:

Aren't they just so cute?

Spilled Blood

This has to be one of the most beautiful sights there is to see. The straight lines of the frozen canal contrasting with the whimsical onion domes. I just can't get enough of this church.

Me, Megan, and Samantha on the bridge by the church:

There were some classy old fashioned looking people hanging around for photo-ops.

Me and Spilled Blood from the side. Aren't the colors incredible?

This is the front of the church:

We decided to try our luck with our student cards, and lucky we did because we got in for free! The interior was incredible. The colors are stunning and the images inspiring, but the most incredible thing about the church is that the entire interior is covered in mosaics. 

The mosaics depict different scenes from Christ's life. Here is one kind of up close. The detail is amazing - shadowing in the faces and the folds in the fabric, but as I said - all mosaics.

The center dome contains this beautiful image of Christ:

The iconostasis is unique because they are usually made of wood, but this one is marble. It is gorgeous.

Here I am in the church:

Loved it!

So happy to live in St. Petersburg!