Happy Birthday to Leah!

February 21st was my 22nd Birthday, and the only one I will probably ever have in Russia so we had to celebrate. The day before I had been suffering with a wicked sore throat and was having difficulty talking so I took a sick day from classes (don't worry I got myself all caught up already) and stayed home to rest with the hope that I would be feeling better on Saturday. Luckily, this is exactly what happened.
Saturday morning, we all walked to Lenta (which is kind of like Costco in that it has absolutely everything, you just don't have to buy in bulk) where we bought a few groceries, sushi for lunch, a birthday cake and a bottle of "Soviet Champagne." A quick side note: it is actually illegal for this champagne to be called a champagne because it is not from Champagne, France . . . but oh well this is Russia. Plus it costs the equivalent of about $4 Canadian and tastes fantastic. While in Lenta I got a phone call from my best friend Chris, so I wandered around the store trailing my roommates and excitedly chatting away with him. Sadly for him it was 3 am, but it was fantastic to hear a friendly voice and to finally be able to explain to him in more detail what life has been like in Russia! I think he is living vicariously through me and is dreaming of his own trips to Europe even more so now.
After trekking home, and eating our sushi lunch, we headed to Nevsky Prospect (downtown) to see if we could take a city bus tour. However, when we got to the little kiosks for the numerous bus tours of the city, we had already missed the Enlgish tours of the day. Theoretically we could have taken a tour in Russian, but our vocabularies aren't overly great yet, and we wanted to be sure that we could take in as much info about the sites as we could, so we decided to wait and take a tour in English on another day.
When this initial plan didn't pan out, Ross, Laura and I headed for the Church-On-Spilled-Blood. It was fantastic! So glad we went to see it instead. Reminder: in a past blog I mentioned a bit of this church's history, it was built as a monument for tsar Alexander II who had been, before his assassination, attempting to set up a constitutional monarchy. It was actually built on the spot where, while he was driving through a square in his carriage, he was bombed. To this day, despite the floor throughout the rest of the church being made to look like a huge mosaic carpet out of various colours of marble (or maybe granite?), there has been left a large hole in the floor where underneath you can still see the old and slightly misplaced cobblestones which were dislodged in the explosion. On the walls of the church, covering all 6560 square meters (unsure of the conversion into feet sorry), are mosaic images of saints, biblical events and characters. It is absolutely stunning! I cannot imagine the amount of time it must have taken the artists to create such beautiful images and scenes all out of tiny, individually placed tiles. From floor to ceiling we saw images including: numerous orthadox saints; scenes from the bible such as: Joseph, Mary and Jesus' flight into Egypt; the Burning Bush, the Sermon on the Mount, Christ walking on water and healing people, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and on and on. On the ceilings of the domes, were the faces of Mary the Mother of God, John the Baptist, Christ, etc. The pictures are stunning, but in person this church is like nothing I have ever seen before. In my opinion, Alexander II could not have wished for a more beautiful monument.
After the Church-On-Spilled-Blood, the three of us who had gone to the church met up with Jessi and we all went together to an Italian restaurant for dinner (really great food, and nice wine!). Then, following dinner, we headed home where we sat down to eat cake, drink our champagne and toast with some vodka (this is Russia afterall). Heather, another Canadian student studying here with us, popped in to bring me some chocolates, and so she joined us as well. Jessi and Laura bought me a Jasmine plant, which is so fitting, because almost everyone knows how crazy I am about plants and for my last three birthdays now I have been given at least 1 every year. Sorry Ross, but the Crazy Plant Lady lives on, even in Russia. *(Question for Jeana: How are the plants? Ross especially inquires about the shamrock plant, the only one he loves.) Ross bought me a fantastic set of nesting dolls (matroshki): the largest one is of Lenin, inside him Stalin, inside that Khrushchev, inside that Gorbachev, and finally Putin. It skips Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Yeltsin, but oh well! It is a gorgeous set, all handpainted and looks far nicer than some of the mass produced ones we have seen in some of the shops. (Also from Ross, the Planet Earth collection, in Russian and Enlgish yay! so we can try watching it and see how much of it we can understand in Russian). - - - All in all, a great 22nd birthday, and one I certainly won't be able to forget anytime soon. P.S. thanks to everyone who passed along birthday wishes via my Mom, and happy belated birthday to Nichole, hope your 18th was fantastic(did you get my message cuz?).

Love from Leah