Fun and Vaginas

So the snow is finally melting here in Moscow, which means the ice is as well, which also means that I can now walk safely from my dorm to campus, which is pretty awesome.  All of next week it's going to be sunny and in the forties.  I never thought I would consider that to be warm weather before, but after a chilling winter mainly in the teens and twenties, forty-two degrees feels pretty nice.

Today has been a pretty good day.  I had my second art lab today and it turned out to be fun.  Last week we had to conceptualize some sort of monument/statue to represent the present state/values of our society or something of the sort.  It was pretty much just recreating the Statue of Liberty but modernizing it.  So our group came up with the idea to create a tree and the base would be made to look industrial, representing how we currently are too attached to pollutants and destroying nature and the like.  As you go up the tree, there is a transition from the hard industrial look to a more natural look; turning into an actual tree, which is supposed to represent the transition that we as a society need to make the change to focus more on green practices and so on.  It turned out pretty well, which surprised me, because last week it looked like crap.  But after painting it, it started to look less like a broken rocket ship and more like it was supposed to be.

 After my lab ended my friend Catherine and I ate a late lunch at Denny's here on campus, which helped to brighten up my day a bit.  Shortly after a few people from my hall went as a group to see The Vagina Monologues, which was terrific.  I've never heard the word vagina spoken so many times in just an hour.  I've got to say, the best line was "why have a hand gun when you can have a semi automatic?"  Hilarious.  My friend John would periodically lean over to me and say, "I'm so sorry for you." and then, "Man, I wish I was a woman." and then, "I'm so, so sorry for you."  After the monologues and standing outside the theater laughing about everything we've just seen and heard, we headed to the local bagel shop to warm up and then to a coffee shop called Bucer's and sat in the back room just talking and laughing.  My other friend John let me try his drink and now I can say that I have another favorite coffee: white chocolate mocha.  Delicious.  

Today was a really fun day and I hope more of my weekends will end up like this.  I think maybe next weekend a few of us are going to go ice skating, which I've never done before, so that will be interesting.