So we woke up the next morning after Laura hit the snooze several times and we decided that since breakfast was very soon, we should probably get up. I was mostly dressed and sitting on the bed putting my socks on when I looked over at the door, which was slightly ajar, or rather, it was closed, but not latched. So I asked Laura if she had opened the door either last night or this morning, which she hadn't. At which point she came out of the bathroom, "Oh my God, where's my purse?" It had been moved from next to her bed to over by the door. The thief took all the money that she had in her wallet, but didn't touch the rest of the stuff in her bag, like her passport, iPod, or digital camera. She didn't lose any cards or anything because a Petersburg thief got those about three weeks ago. All my stuff was there and my wallet was intact. Then we both realized that somebody had been in our room at night, while we were sleeping, and had taken Laura's money.

This is such a profoundly creepy thought that I can't even explain.

Actually, I can a little bit. It's just so creepy to think that somebody that I don't know was watching me sleep. And that they could have done anything to me, and I probably would have been so sleep-addled and scared that, you know, whatever. Somehow, I'm more creeped out by the idea that the dude was watching me sleep than the idea that I could have been raped or killed, because really, that could happen on the street here. But whatever. I'm okay. Laura's okay. Everybody's okay. Laura was only out about $70, which also wasn't that bad, all things considered. Anyway, at breakfast we found out that Margaret and Natasha had also had a nocturnal visitor to their room, and they had locked their door. Luckily Natasha woke up and saw the guy, asked him what he was doing there and then chased him out.

After breakfast and complaints to the hotel about the thief in the night, we piled onto the bus and headed out for the Raifa monastery, about 45 minutes or so from Kazan. The Raifa monastery is famous for housing the famous icon, the Georgian Mother of God. Don't worry if you haven't heard of it, because most people haven't. There are also Mother of God icons for most cities in Russia. This one is just special because it comes from Georgia. Like the country, not the state. Anyway, the monastery was pretty cool, but you all know that I like this kinda stuff. The two churches that we got to go in were disappointing, but the icon was nice. That sounds so weak. It was "nice." It was cool to look at, but it looks like most other icons of Mary and the baby Jesus with a really ornate cover over it. And I feel really weird looking really hard at it and trying to see what it looks like rather than saying a prayer and kissing it.




The coolest part of the trip by far was the monks that the tour guide had somehow coerced or conned or, I'm sure, paid to sing for us. These four monks sang some hymns and a few traditional Russian songs for us in the big church. The acoustics of the church were incredible and I was amazed at how much sound just the four of them made—they sounded like the whole choir. It was so beautiful. I looked at the icons and listened to the monks singing and not for the first time, but maybe the most profoundly, I realized why the emissaries sent out by that long-ago tsar said that the Greek Orthodox was the most beautiful religion. It is. Really.

Probably not many of you except maybe Joe know this about me, but I've been fascinated by God and religion for quite a while. Maybe it has something to do with not growing up religious and just being perpetually unhappy and unsatisfied with my life. And I've never found anything that makes it better. Probably because I think too much. But anyway, standing there in that church listening to those monks and looking at those icons was both overwhelmingly beautiful and overwhelmingly peaceful and overwhelmingly agitating at the same time. So when they were done singing, I had to go outside and have some quiet meditation time. And Joe, you'll appreciate the irony of this I'm sure... The first bench across from the church was in front of a small stone pillar with a cross on top of it. And I sat down in the first seat, directly in front of this cross. And I was so preoccupied with feeling strange and overwhelmed that I didn't even notice until after I'd sat and thought for a long time.

I'm not sure that I decided anything, but I cried a little and that seemed to help. In fact, crying seems to help most things in life. Life is still the same and as confusing and horrible and awful as ever and I don't think that's going to get better. But I really like churches because they're pretty and they smell good. Which is kinda like my criteria for choosing dudes, come to think of it... Anyway. I figured that since I like churches, God will probably not strike me dead if I go and stand in a church for awhile once a week. Especially if it makes me feel better. But who knows. Joe, I'm sorry that you weren't there and I really missed you a lot while I was sitting on that bench in the cold. Because maybe you would have known what to say.

Moving away from the heavy personal stuff, the ride back from the monastery was uneventful. The city of Kazan reminds me a little bit of Portland, but also not. They have very strange divisions between urban and not-urban, by which I mean that they seem to not exist. There would be dachas for about a mile, and then a field with some cows in it, and then some more big apartment buildings. Some of the neighborhoods that we drove through reminded me a lot of old-town Beaverton, and not necessarily in a good way. However, Kazan's got the big communal Soviet style apartment buildings that the Portland metro area still thankfully lacks.

Something else that I noticed while on the way back to the hotel is that almost no drivers get out of the way of emergency vehicles with sirens and flashing lights. I've noticed this in Petersburg too. I'm not sure why, because sometimes people yield, but a lot of times they don't, and it doesn't seem to be a law that they have to. I asked Lena about it one time and she just shrugged and said that people were always happy to slow the police down. That I sort-of understand, but the fire truck? The other thing that puzzles me about the emergency vehicles is that they very rarely seem to be in a hurry. Which maybe makes them less urgent to get out of the way for, I guess. Oh, Russia. Here's where I sigh and shrug my shoulders.

We had lunch when we got back, and today, instead of the usual normal Russian food, we had some Tatar stuff on the table. So I had the Tatar version of a fruit roll-up, made with prunes, apricots, and nuts, and a chak-chak. I'm not even really sure how to explain what a chak-chak is, so I guess I'll start simple. It's a desert, and it's made with honey, and some macaroni looking things, but they're not macaroni because they're more bread-like. Anyway, these macaroni things are all stuck together with the honey and it's really dense and sticky. Actually, it's kinda like a rice krispie treat with honey instead of marshmallow. And the macaroni pieces are bigger. But yeah, same idea. It tastes kinda weird, and I'm not sure whether it was good, or whether it was another "interesting experience."

After lunch, I went on an unsuccessful expedition to find a particular souvenir for those of you with houses and stuff. In the mosque, they had a tapestry with a big blue glass circle with an eye in the middle of it. My mom has one of these in her kitchen, only minus the tapestry. It's supposed to bring good luck and to ward off the evil eye or spirits or something. Anyway, the mosque didn't sell just the blue glass circles with the eyes, and neither did the rinok outside. So I started out with Margaret and Natasha and Brandon, but Natasha got called back for a meeting with the hotel director to talk about how whack it was that there were strange men breaking into (or just walking into) rooms at night and stealing (or attempting to steal) things. So we walked up to the Kremlin while we were waiting and ran into a large group of students that I really really really didn't want to see.

Because by this point in the trip, I'd had it with pretty much everybody. Actually, that's a lie, but I'd had it with more than half of the group, and I just kept running into the kids that I really just didn't have any interest in seeing. Because that's the way my life works. Finally Natasha was done with her meeting and we were able to make a get-away from most of the group, but we picked up two that are not on my list of favorites: Claire, and the awkward Eric. Remember Eric? He's the weird one who likes to sit by me on the public transit. Yeah. I put on my mean face and nobody except Natasha and Margaret talked to me (well, Brandon did, but I talked to him first) and I even had worked out how to say, "You know, honestly, I'm just not really interested in hanging out with or talking to you" in case Claire wanted to try to be friends. And really, it's probably better that she just kept to herself. Because I'm just charming enough that I probably would have said that to her. Why am I such a bitch? What's happening to me? Oh, right. Living in Russia.

We walked around for awhile and Natasha and Meg bought insane numbers of chak-chaks to take back to people in Petersburg. I bought a small-ish one for my host family because they really like sweet stuff. As do most people here. The desert industry is huge. Then we walked around a little more, and I looked at every souvenir place for those blue glass circles with the eyes in them, but the only kiosk that had them only had really really ugly ones that were too ugly to buy, as cool as they were. They were so ugly. Really. I would have been ashamed to bring them back for you guys. Somewhere along the line we lost Claire and acquired the super-obnoxious Laura F.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped for hot chocolate and blini at a café with froofy desert drinks. Everyone else had pudding hot chocolate, but I wasn't feeling so down with the pudding. So I got something with a lot of coffee, chocolate, and enough whipped cream that I should have had a heart attack right there at the table. It was yummy. Then to the universam that happened to be housed in a gigantic pyramid. I don't know, so don't ask. Here's the pyramid at night, and that's the cool Laura in front of it. She probably also doesn't know that she's on the internet, but that's okay.


I bought extra food for the infamous 27-hour train ride because I figured that Laura would have forgotten, or wouldn't have gone out. And as it turns out, I was totally right. She had stayed behind when the group went out, and then she was the only one, and she didn't really feel like wandering around a strange city by herself. I don't blame her—I don't really even like wandering around Petersburg by myself, and at least that's somewhat familiar (or, rather, I have a map). Then I took a shower, and I totally took advantage of the hour that I paid $2 for and shaved my legs. Because there's no point in paying for an hour if you're not going to use most of it, and they don't let you use half at a time. Also: there were really only two showers for the whole hotel. I pretty successfully managed not to think about how gross this is. The billiard room was right next to the showers, and I was very tempted to go down and ask whatever Russian dudes were playing to teach me how to play Russian style. But when I looked in, they were all of fourteen or fifteen, so I changed my mind.

When I got back, Laura made me do crime scene reenactments with her. This meant that we turned off the light to assess how dark it must have been when the thief came in, and whether Laura could have seen him from where she was laying. And then she had the great realization, "Oh my God! His face was right by my head! That's so creepy!" Uh. Yeah. Can we turn the lights back on now?

So we thought happy thoughts, locked the door, and went to bed.