8.11.11
It's snowing rather heavily. Snow is gathering on the earth and on top of cars. It probably won't melt soon unless the weather warms up again, which it might. The seasons' temperatures rise and fall like a pendulum oscillates. It was the coldest day of the season yesterday or the day before, it may warm up again before the snow stays for good. I don't really want that. Seasonal extremes are better than the changes. If it's going to rain, then let it be a warm summer shower, with a thunder storm if you like, otherwise for precipitation I'll take some cold winter snow that you can brush off your coat without getting the least bit wet.
Snow is beautiful too. If the wind isn't blowing too strongly, then it falls so slowly, that sometimes it even hovers outside your window, as though it's stopping to say hello. Or sometimes if a flake comes close to a large building, such as the one I live in, a draft of relatively warm air will make it float back up without destroying it, and it will apologize for initially hurrying by without wishing a pleasant evening before taking a vortex back into the colder, more inhabitable air.

I've worked too inefficiently these past two days. Yesterday was a Monday after a three day weekend - in Dolgoprudny I normally work on Fridays, but the fourth was a national holiday - and I foolishly put off grading a few exams until Monday morning. If there's one thing I've learned from previous experience, it's that I have to not think about work as long as I can, in other words, that I should enjoy my free time when I have it, which is what I did. But had I simply spent the hour or two I needed to grade those tests on Sunday instead of Monday, which would have been a mortal sin in my book, I admittedly might have been better off. I ended up committing another big sin by working around twelve hours yesterday. I guess the Book of Peter is as filled with contradictions as any other Good Book. I'll have to make some revisions. And today I spent a good four hours preparing for one measly lesson which I'll give this evening. Four hours of preparation for one lesson is too much! The problem might be that today I only have one lesson to give, and as some people say: your work will take as much time as you have.
One reason why it took so much time to prepare is because the grammar topic is rather difficult: placement of adverbs. The book always gives rules in the back section, called the grammar bank, which I usually find quite useful, but on this topic I found myself disagreeing with the book on a point or two. It's not a crime to disagree with the book, but if I claim the book is wrong, I should then explain my point of view, and most importantly, give examples. With such a difficult topic, good examples are hard to come by, examples which demonstrate when certain adverbs can go in certain parts of the sentence, and when not. I spent some time on the internet, and have found that there seems to be a lack of agreement on certain rules. For some reason this makes me happy. Call it Schadenfreude or what you will, it's good to know I'm not the only one confused. Now the trick is to get by my students without confusing them too much.
I probably won't spend too much time going into detail. There are other pertinent and more interesting things to do. Today we might talk about the best works of literature (within a certain genre), and then go into a colloquial listening section with an interview of a flight attendant and another of airline passengers. Then I might try to segue into a discussion about equality. How is that going to work? I was thinking of pointing out how flight crew are often dissatisfied with their work, sometimes they go on strike (do Russians ever go on strike? Why not?). I'll claim that their employers treat them unfairly (which Russians are treated unfairly?), and claim that everyone and everything should be made equal! I can ask them if this claim reminds them of any communist ideals, to what extent such an ideal was imposed back in the day, if it's good or bad etc. Then we can finish class by reading the beginning of a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, "Harrison Bergeron," which has everything to do about taking equality to an extreme. Hopefully my students will have a lot to say, and whatever we talk about will be thought-provoking for them. It already has been for me.

1.11.11
On the following day I walked in the same area, but mostly on the other side of the river. My route passes that of the previous day only once, and I saw a lot of things that I couldn't have seen the day before. I got off the metro at the Park of Culture station, and expected to find my whereabouts pretty quickly. I found the river without any trouble, but couldn't match my location with one I had crossed the day before. There was a large old-looking boat, that could pass as a pirate's ship, in one direction, and a glass bridge in the other. I had crossed that bridge yesterday, hadn't I? I set off for the bridge and quickly understood that it was not the same one.
The thing is, the river loops back and forth through Moscow. I think that if I had set off in the opposite direction from the metro exit, I would have come to the same river at the other side of one of its loops, and I might have seen the sights of the previous day. As it was, however, I found myself crossing an unknown glass bridge, approaching what looked the by one end of a large park. I suspected that this was the other end of the Sparrow's Hills park though I still wasn't sure, for if it was as I suspected, I couldn't understand how I had reached that point so quickly from the metro. I checked my premises, rearranged the metro line in a different orientation, and made sense of the situation. The park was indeed as I thought it was, I had only put myself on another side of the river resulting in a switch of south and north.
There had been a race in the park that morning. I saw signs directing competitors in the 5k and half-marathon. I had heard absolutely no news of any such event, otherwise I might have liked to take part. Some lagging runners were still coming in. The prizes were already being awarded. I walked on.
The road I was walking on had no automobile traffic, only pedestrians, bicyclists, and people running or skating on roller blades. I saw one athlete wearing, for lack of another name, roller-skis, which are to a skis as roller-blades are to ice skates. She had a long plank strapped to each of her feet, both ends of each plank had wheels, and she carried two polls with which she propelled herself as a cross-country skier would do. She must be dying for some snow. As it is she'll just have to wait.
I left the road and the river to climb up a small hill and get into a small yellow forest. The paths in the forest had been torn up a little. It seemed that the city was doind some renovation in the park. That didn't stop people from coming through, as the scenery was quite beautiful. The forest ended abruptly as I came through a low fence and found before me a broad highway, with a bridge over the river on my right, and the view to my left obscured by the final ascent of a shallow hill, and, across the highway in front of me, a large building which I recognized immediately. Its three or four towers are built out of about four giant blocks, one on top of the other, each the size of a small house, where the top block looks like a giant clock whose gears were constructed on the outside. One of the towers is in fact a clock tower, so maybe the architects were intending what I've described. Seeing this building before me, I knew that just over the hill on my left was Gagarin square, where I had started the previous day's journey. As I climbed a stairway which brought me to an overpass over the highway, I evetually could see the top part of the Gagarin monument, the bicentenial man.
I continued in the direction I had been walking and quickly came to the Sparrow Hills park entrance. One thing I'll not forget for a long time is a garbage can I saw right there. It had three opennings, one for paper, another for plastic, and a third for metall. There are such garbage cans in most European cities, and in many American airports, but in Russia they are very new and come across as something from another world. While in other countries people might name these containers something like 'recycle bin,' the one I saw yesterday in Moscow was titled "эксперимент" - "An Experiment."
Recycling is indeed a new idea for the Russians. I don't think people know what happens to their garbage in this country. We throw it down the garbage tube in the stairways of our flats and somehow it disappears. Maybe the tubes go to the center of the earth, or maybe there are garbage gnomes down there who process everything and make room for an unendless amount to come. To be fair, I, a haughty American who has heard and lived the word 'recycle,' don't really know what happens to my garbage, even if I do separate it into paper and plastic. Presumably it doesn't get thrown into a big hole in the desert, but I really don't know for sure. Anyway, one has to commend the Russians for taking an example from their wordly neighbors. That demonstrates a level of humility that I think America hasn't quite reached. Americans don't learn from their neighbors, beacuse America is the best and therefore has nothing to learn. Everybody knows that!
I kept walking and eventually came to the ski jump. I climbed the steep hill to the base of the column about three stories high where jumpers presumable take an elevator to the top. My path took me to a cobble-stone square where there were venders selling all sorts of street food, from popcorn to Shaurma, a greasy fast food featuring some veggies and fried recycled chicken breasts (ones which nobody bought at the stores; at least meat gets reused in this country), much like the Turkish hit 'Doener' that you can get all over Germany. I didn't get any of that trash, of course, but stopped to enjoy the view. On one side, in the direction the skiers jumped, I could see much of Moscow, with the giant olympic stadium on the opposite bank of the river, the cathedral of Christ the Savior not too far away, and Stalin's castles visible here and there. Then I turned around and gasped at the majesty of the Moscow State University of Lomonosov, which stood across a large avenue, the one I had taken from Gagarin square on the previous afternoon. I couldn't take its picture, since the sun was setting just behind it. You'll have to take my word for it, that it was quite a sight.
I set off for the Kiev train station to use a civilized bathroom, then took off in a similar direction as the day before. After buying some nuts and apples at the small market (which turned out just as filling and expensive as any fast food would have been) I crossed the glass bridge (the second of the day) and made my way towards the old Arbat street, which I hadn't walked along the previous day. There were crowds of people walking, some of the younger ones in costume to celebrate the upcoming foreign holiday. There magicians and artists, musicians, and book venders. I bought a collection of Nabokov novels, his lesser known ones, such as "The Luzhen Defense," for a little over three dollars, and went my way.
It was dark by the time I reached the Red Square. Part of me wanted to walk a little further, but I decided to enter the metro at the nearby station, and go home. Next week, I might explore the southeast portion of the metro's ring. I still have to connect Kursky train station with other portions of the city. That's the station you use to get to Vladimir. I've been there many so times before, but after arriving, I always took the metro to where I needed to go. On foot, that station has unknown fronts on all sides. The Red Square probably isn't too far away.