search for art and grown up things

As the weather gets colder and colder, the Russians are pulling out their warmer coats. These coats come in many colors: black, black, and black (and sometimes red or red).
Enter Kara, strutting down the streets wearing a green jacket, purple hat, purple gloves, teal scarf, and teal bag.
I think I stand out a bit.

Lately I've had this strange feeling of being invincible. I can't decide if this is good and means that I feel comfortable in Moscow, or if this is bad and means that I feel too comfortable in Moscow. I feel like I'm starting to understand more of what's going on around me. I can pick up on conversations I hear on the street and understand what they're saying. Homework doesn't seem as hard and even if I don't know every word, I somehow know what's going on because I can sense it.
Little things don't scare me anymore, either.
Answer the phone when my host mom's gone, and explain that she's stepped out and I'm not sure when she'll be back? No problem. Ask the маршрут (mini bus) driver to drop me off a little farther down the road than the normal bus stop? Yep, I can do that. Make small talk with people who, like myself, couldn't squeeze in the metro train because it was already packed like sardines? Child's play.

This is all good, yes. But....I feel like since it's so good, it can't actually be that good. So many things are going so well, something bad has to happen soon. I like it here so much, so something is bound to happen to make me second guess myself.
(They should make pills for this.)

Until then, I'll enjoy every minute.

The third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art has been going on for the past month, which means, among other things, photography exhibits! I've been wanting to go to something other than a history museum for a long time and it's safe to say that I'm addicted to photography exhibits.
I happened to learn about the first exhibit from The Moscow Times, a newspaper printed here in English. The exhibit was at the New Tretyakov Gallery and featured photos by Vladimir Sychyov. The photos were, in a word, amazing. They showed ordinary people as well as nonconformist artists in the Soviet Union during the 1970s. Sychyov actually left the Soviet Union in 1979 and took all his photographs with him; this exhibit is the first time these photos have been shown all together in Russia. Read more about the exhibit here.
I also went to an exhibit put on by the Moscow House of Photography, by photographer Boris Mikhailov. It was awesome. I can't really describe in a blog how good it was, it was more a had-to-be-there type thing. The pictures made me think. I liked it.

Another student and I decided that next semester we want to take a photography class at the university. How cool will that be?!


I also got a job. The program director's neighbor has a 9-year old daughter who is studying English in school, so they pay me to come over twice a week and speak in English with her for an hour. Awesome.


You know how basically everyone says that the time you study abroad will change your life?
They're right.
I don't know if it's that I'm in a huge city and away from the sheltered little Dickinson campus, or if it's the different culture I'm living in, or that I'm just growing up, or a combination of all these things. In any case, something big is going on here. I don't know what. I don't know why. But something's happening.
I can feel it.