Winter-- it's no joke
Winter in Russia is tough. Just ask Napoleon. Or Hitler. But somehow I hadn't internalized this fact. I've been to Russia a bunch of times in the winter so I thought it would be no big deal, but this is the first time I have spent the entire winter there. At first I was just mesmerized by the snow-- we never get snow in Arizona-- and the gorgeousness.
I threw myself into winter sports.
I celebrated all the holidays. First was New Years:
Then Christmas (January 7th on the Orthodox calendar):
Then Old New Years (January 14):
And then….it was dark. It was cold. Classes were out at the university, and there weren’t any good movies in the theaters. So I started to get depressed. As it began to warm up, I thought my mood would get better, but warmth, unfortunately, made things very ugly:
It doesn't look so bad in these photos because at least the sun was shining. But that's because I could only bear to take photographs when there was at least a little beauty. The end of January and all of February were rough. My mood was incredibly low, I didn't feel like going anywhere or doing anything.
Why am I telling you all this? So you will understand why I did what I did next.