If anything could convert me to Russian Orthodox Christianity...

It would have to be the cathedral we went and saw yesterday. Amazing.

It was The Church of the Spilled Blood, which was built on the site of the assassination of a tzar; if this sounds familiar, it's because I talked about it a little before, and posted some pictures of the exterior. I don't have any pictures of the interior, due to not having a camera, but there is no way they would be adequate, anyway.

The entire inside of the church- walls, ceiling, floor- was covered in mosaic. The floor and parts of the walls were in mosaics of marble in sweeping designs, and with details in the semi precious stones that Russia is so fond of- jasper, lapis lazuli, et al. I am learning that well-carved stone is more beautiful than anything.

Most of the church was mosaics in fresco form, though- a sort of mosaic that uses small shards of glass infused with different metals to make the colors. There werу over 400 colors used in the church, and the making and applying of them is so painstaking that it takes a single artist an entire year to do one square meter.

As I said, the entire interior of the cathedral.

There were over 270 saints, larger than life size, as well as several huge panels depicting scenes from Christ's life. It was staggering in its detail and beauty. They also preserved the piece of street on which the tzar died- there's a sort of shrine in front of The Entombment of Christ, and if you look down into it there's just a piece of old cobblestone road in the middle of all that glory.

After that I just went home; soooooo tired.

Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Harry Potter. Rumor has it that there are three copies circulating- at least one should be free on friday, but the other two are shrouded in mystery. There is one store in the center of town that carries- or carried- it, but I have yet to trek that way myself. I'm trying to get dibs on one of the circulating copies.

And as for the movie, apparently it's got a good job of dubbing and is fairly understandable. However, when I'll have the oomph and the time to go see it, I don't know.

We had our translation workshop yesterday- SO FUN. My group spent an hour and a half on two poems- one really sappy 1800's love poem, and one Anna Akhmatova from 1915. I was very excited when, a couple of lines in, I realized that not only was the Akhmatova a poem that I loved in translation, but it was one that I had compared translations of in Intro to Poetry last year. It never occured to me that I'd be able to read the original. As I said, freakin' cool. I'm even passingly pleased with my translation. It turns out that a) the original is in iambic meter and b)rhymes. I managed to keep the meter, but my rhymed translation is a horror that should be expunged from this earth. (I'm still working on it.)

The translation teacher (who is also, incidentally, the knitter) says that she's going to try and get us at least one more session to fine-tune all of our translations.

Ugh... I couldn't sleep for the life of me last night. I was so tired, so glad to be in bed, so.... awake. Getting out of bed this morning, I felt like some sort of somnolent Sysiphus. Oh well. I have a freeish evening today, so I can write the essay that's due tomorrow and hopefully wend my way bedward at a decent hour.

I shall- I SHALL I say- try and take a bunch of pictures over the next week and a half, and hopefully upload a bunch. I don't know. Bleh.

BARBARA or LILY if you're reading this, please email me a little info about shakespeare this summer? your emails escape me for the moment, and I want to make sure I have some sort of idea of what I should be thinking about. This is assuming that I am still in the role of whiny guy with dog, of course.

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I hope that I won't have to wait until I get home to read HP- at the very latest I can expect to have it for the cruise.

As for the cruise, we'll be going north along the rivers and across the great lakes of russia, getting off to see some of the (apparently breathtakingly beautiful) area and historic sites. It's a cruise for russians, so it's still part of our language training. Should be about five days, I think.

Aaaargh.... cute lab images in my mind now. It was bad enough that I heard all the dogs over the phone yesterday. Mom put Shae on the phone, but instead of being happy to hear me, she seemed to think that mom was playing some sort of cruel trick, playing Aubra noises when there was no Aubra around. Need puppies!