Soviet Circus

Sometimes it takes visiting a foreign country to really appreciate America. All of the regulations and political monitoring of virtually everything gets very frustrating, but at least we have people looking out for other people...and animals. We went to see the Circus yesterday night and it was very sad to me. Camels and bears and monkeys, young and old, were kept on chains for the masses to laugh at and take pictures. It was especially sad to see bear cubs being forced to sit in a chair when all he looks like he wants to do is to play, but instead is bopped on the nose so he'll sit and behave for the families to take pictures with him.

The stupid thing was that the Circus was so incredible as it was, it really didn't need animal acts (though they did have ferrets and I was somewhat interested in that since I've been around them before). The acrobatics and clowning by the performers was so entertaining to watch. There were two jugglers who seemed to possess seven arms and legs and at least two brains....some really complicated shit!

I got to thinking about how most really good performers get a raw deal. When you get to be amazing at something (i.e. tightrope walking), you're so good at it that it looks so simple. No one knows how hard it is but probably assume they could pick it up with a little work. Sucks to be them...

The afternoon was spent on a bus tour of Moscow. We stopped by Red Square and I took about a thousand pictures of St. Basils Cathedral, which is famous multi-colorded domed structure. It has eight towers, with a ninth rising highest from the center. The eight towers are representative of the eight battles fought in the fifteenth century. It was built from 1555-1561 for Ivan the Terrible, who was apparantely pretty terrible (killed a lot of nobles...and oh, that's right...HIS SON too!).

And in response to Brandon, there are actually 16 different Kremlins in Russia. It used to be that a town didn't have a Kremlin but a city did...they would build the walls of the Kremlins and then people would flock together and build a town.

We saw various other old buildings and got a good view of the city. The most interesting part was when we stopped by the cemetary which has many famous actors and influential figures from the Moscow Art Theatre, including Anton Chekhov and Konstantin Stanislavsky. Apparantly JT, our Month in Moscow program head, was there in 2000 when everyone important from the theatre world was watching the dedication of the cross on Stanislavsky's tomb. Pretty cool story. We placed a flower on both Chekhov and Stanislavsky's graves as a show of respect and appreciation. The history in this graveyard was pretty crazy to wrap my head around.

Oh and we stopped by a convent which was really quite beautiful. Very scerene and peaceful. But the best part was that I had Rob take a picture of Christina and I and just as he was snapping it I made a move as if to push Christina in the water. The picture pretty accurately represents the how she reacted, so i won't explain it. Picture...thousand words...you get it.

Russia Fun Fact: Moscow streets oftentimes resemble parking lots. Cars are everywhere. The reason? Parking fines are less than parking tolls. What a mess!