Russian folk music

So the cold has returned. We had a few warm days (around -10), in which we all enjoyed the ice slides that have gone up near our home. I also broke out my ice skates on Saturday. But alas, the last few days have been brrrr cold again. Yesterday I walked to class in -35. Today we took the family out in the taxi to our team prayer meeting. (Sadly the fare went up... 33%!).

I'm hitting a low point. I seriously can't imagine living my life out in this severe cold for extended periods of time. I really hope it comes to an end soon. If you're the praying kind, this is a really good request.

On Monday evening my teacher had invited me and some other students to a cultural performance at the newly renovated concert hall in the centre. (It was really quite fancy inside, except I hear that the budget was grossly overblown- still I have heard of the Victorian government handing out scandalous contracts also...). I left class at 5:30. Melody also left home at 5:30. My bus was caught in a traffic jam. Thankfully Melody found a shop to wait in for half an hour. It was already -30. We only just made it to the performance in time. I can't tell you how disappointing it is that this city is now continually plagued by traffic jams that make Melbourne look super organised.

The performance itself was very polished. After an hour, we had definitely had enough. It was awkward to leave though. My teacher would see us leaving. After an hour and a half we did leave. We needed to get home for the babysitter anyway.

To us it felt that the performance was polished, but plastic, lacking in passion. But my teacher assures me that this is because it was all humourous. We did see some of the humour, but obviously much of it went over our head. I would have realised it were more humourous if people laughed more. There I go again, judging a culture by how they laugh at their own jokes. Some of the songs were in Ukrainian. This is part of the humour. Russians love to make fun of Ukrainians. Still, I guess it's slightly better than making fun of Chukchi. Ukrainians are close enough, it's a little like us making fun of the English.