Copper Mountain

Copper Mountain, originally uploaded by laurichka.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Yesterday Mark, Ryan and I went snowboarding/skiing at Copper. No life lines and half a foot of new snow! What a great day.

Petersburg, originally uploaded by laurichka.

I'm back in Colorado these days and amazed by all the sunshine and blue skies!
Another one of my restaurant reviews was published today in the St. Petersburg Times. You can read it here.

Published

I've been looking for this link for days, and it's finally up! Here, at long last, is the article I wrote for the St. Petersburg Times about artist books.

A whole week has passed and I've failed to finish this blog entry- mostly because trying to organize this many pictures is a royal pain. But here it is!:

Thursday night Sasha and I hopped on the overnight train to Moscow planning to spend Friday in Moscow and head to Rizan, where her babushka lives, Friday night.
I have a strange relationship with Moscow, as half the time I see the city I'm exhausted from not sleeping well enough on the train ride there. This time Moscow was surprisingly warm compared to peter, 7 degrees (that's C not F) in the face of our fresh snow! Sasha's friend, Lera, met up with us, and the three of us spent the day walking around Moscow- and we were sure to check out the newest American chain to make it to Russia: Starbucks. That's right, Moscow now has a Starbucks, and it's completely bizzare to walk in because it looks exactly like any american- except that everything is twice as expensive! A medium drip coffee is around 4 bucks, anything fancy is 8 dollars or more.










Sasha and Lera in a park in Moscow




Below: Sasha and Lera pointing to the bright gleeming future, Sasha modeling her knowledgeable chopstick skills at the sushi restaurant

























Next- Sasha and I missed the express train to Rizan, and ended up having to take the bus. This was the longest busride of my life. The first two hours were fine- we were so exhausted from walking around all day in a groggy mess that we passed out as soon after settling into our seats.
I woke up from my nap to find our bus stopped and stuck in traffic, not far from where we had started. I became claustraphobic- the bus wasn't moving and the highly loathed Humour FM radio station was blaring. It was a mix of tacky jokes, obnoxious advertisements, cheesy russian synthesizer pop songs interrupted every now and then by the station's tagline: "Humour FM, laughter in the face of the crisis- sending the crisis back to America!" Great.

Sitting in the seat, I knew that after a couple more painful hours I would be off that bus- I knew the ride, no matter how painful, couldn't last forever; but sitting in my seat gritting my teeth through the sounds of horns blaring and laughtracks, there was no end in sight.

When we did finally make it to Rizan, the whole bus ride had been worth it. Sasha's grandmother let us in and welcomed us with big hugs and a table full of food! You will never know what overeating is until you've spent a weekend as a guest to a Russian babushka!
I also found this amazing picture of little Sasha at the beach in her glamorous sunglasses holding her friend monkey!

























The next day Elya and Natasha met up with us!













More pictures from the weekend:

rolling out

Sasha called me a couple of hours ago asking if I'd like to go with her to Moscow tonight and then on to Рязин tomorrow to visit her Babushka. I thought, why wouldn't I? So now i'm packing my bags and skipping town for the weekend. I'll catch up with all of you on Monday!

update on the water front:

We have hot water once again!!! It just came on about 20 minutes ago. Clean dishes, and now, after a good scrub down, a clean me!

empty pipes

Our hot water has been shut off all day. I can't shake this greasy, stinky and gross feeling. I considered for a second boiling a bunch of water for a bath... but that would take far too long. Oof, i hope we have hot water tomorrow, but if not, at least I can shower at the gym.

Endless nights

It's nearly 4pm here in Petersburg and the sky is already dark. Not a dramatic change from the grey clouds hanging over our heads all day. Night only becomes noticeable by the brightening interiors accross the courtyard contrasting more sharply with the outside walls. The nights are disorientinigly long. I find myself up until 4 am some evenings drawing, reading, writing or out with friends, not even noticing how much time has passed by. I end up sleeping in and missing the first few hours of daylight "sun". Colorado's promise of 300 days of sunshine a year will be the most jarring difference when I head home in two weeks.
Today i woke up with an onset of a cold. This means echinacea tea, a pot of borscht, mandarin oranges and theraflu for the day while i get through a good chunk of White Noise. Hopefully I'll kick this cold faster than the last one.
I saw a band from California, The Rubies, play this weekend at Achtung Baby. They were having a lot of fun playing in Russia to the shouts of "I love you!" in Russian accents from teenage boys. I talked to them after the set and they asked me how to explain "I'm a vegetarian but i want to eat more than just this dry plate of vegetables" in Russian. They gave up and said they were only here for two days anyway- one in petersburg and one in moscow- so they figured they would survive.
Kostya is back in Petersburg now after traveling around Russia. Vanessa, Kostya and I went dancing with a couple of people that work at SPtimes. Kostya is the most fierce dancer I've ever encountered. Next time i'll tape his dancing and post it on here because i lack words to describe it.