labor daybor

I found out that, sadly, Labor Day is NOT and internationally recognized holiday. So while my friends in the states have been enjoying a long weekend, my weekend was regular-length and is already over. I did enjoy it, though. On Saturday, I went to the Russkii Muzei (Russian Museum) with a couple of students from my program. The museum is hosting a ginormous Chagall exhibit until the end of the month, including works on loan from other museums (including my beloved Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow!) and private collections. As cool as the Chagall exhibit was, I think I got more of a kick out of the museum's regular collection. Since the museum exclusively hosts works by Russian artists, I got to see many paintings that I had previously only known from my language textbooks. It was really neat to finally see the full-sized murals as opposed to the 3" by 5" prints they wedge between boxes of verb conjugations.Yesterday I went to the gym for the first time since I've been here. I got a membership to a gym called Galaktika. :) It's adjacent to the Petrovsky Stadium, and gym members are allowed to use the stadium's track (provided there isn't a soccer match going on). Since the weather here is still unbelieveably nice, I spent almost two hours out on the track. There's something about a completely empty stadium that's so zen. I couldn't leave. I wanted to stay out there for as long as possible-- just me, the blue sky, and a couple of stray tabby cats that found their way into the stadium.After hitting the internet cafe to check my email and read the news (Bush gets to appoint ANOTHER Supreme Court Justice?! WTF?!), I had dinner with my host family and watched some TV with my host sister's boyfriend, Mitya. He's a pretty cool guy. They started showing that ABC show "Lost" over here (dubbed, of course), and Mitya's almost as big a fan of the show as I am. He kept asking me what was going to happen-- they're only about halfway through the first season over here-- but I refused to give anything away. "Ya nye skazhu! Eto surpriz!"Today-- Labor Day, ahem-- we had our first official day of classes. It went a lot better than I thought it would. While I'm still pretty sure that my Russian is the worst in the group, I don't feel like I'm hopelessly behind. We have two 90 minute classes, followed by an hour one-on-one with a tutor. My tutor, Olya, is really nice. Since it was our first session, we just introduced ourselves and talked about what we would work on this semester. I told her that I really want to focus on improving my conversational Russian. It's always been my weakest area. I know that my problem that I'm so self-conscious about my speaking abilities in Russian that I end up staying pretty quiet during any conversation, and I don't get the practice I need. She assured me that we will work on it and that soon, I will feel comfortable speaking Russian. She even told me that the Russian I *do* speak is almost totally correct, and that I barely have an accent. Zuh?! Um, thanks, but are you sure you're talking to ME, Olya?Do vstrecha!