Closer to the End Than the Beginning

It's been a while since my last blog post here. It's been about...a month since my trip to St. Petersburg, and I've been busy with classes for most of that time. My only time I have free is only on Sunday's, which is the day I use to recuperate, relax and catch up on any homework that might be due for the next week. So here is my current status of where I am at in Moscow.

Entrance to the Flea Market

Last weekend some of my classmates and I went to the Flea Market, that was a really fun experience, besides for the fact it was snowing. Oh yeah...IT'S SNOWING!!! Previous students that went on this trip said that it would barely snow, they hardly saw it; it's been snowing for two weeks straight - and it's only the beginning of November.

Wolverine stood guard at the Flea Market

Back to the flea market, while there I looked around and saw hundreds of little trinkets and memorabilia that people found from all over to sell at some price or another. I didn't really buy anything, but a man really wanted to sell me a hat. His original price was was 3,300 rubles (which is around $50), I walked away and he followed me, dropping his price lower and lower till it got to 1,300. My cut off was 1,000 so I said no. It got to a good price, but that wasn't enough for me to buy the hat. There is something about people who keep trying to sell you something I don't trust, whether it's the authenticity of the merchandise or them as a person; I don't trust someone who's begging me to buy something, so they drop down to less than half their original price. I know the rules of the game is haggling is to get the lowest price possible, but, morally, I can't handle trying to deceive people to get a product at a cheaper cost. I would want to deal with a person who has confidence on what they're selling and knows that their price is right and someone will buy it for it's authenticity. There's my rant about haggling.

Besides that, we saw a few shows - don't worry, I'm going to post an entire post on my opinion on all the shows we've seen. We also "celebrated" Halloween, nobody in Russia celebrates Halloween, so it was kind of a dead holiday for myself. Some people in our studio put on a Halloween dance, where they invited some Russian students as well, so it was good to socialize.

On this trip, I've been exploring, trying to figure out what to make of this entire trip: I only have one more month in front of me, I'm half way through this trip and I'm struggling to figure out what to make of all this. I fight to find the meaning and the take-aways of this trip, but that might be my fault in it's self: I try too hard, that's what my acting teachers always have told me. It's the same situation here. I'll let you know when I figure it out.