How we spend our weekends...

So without Angelika Film Center and Fun Asia for movies... how do we spend our time on weekends?

Well, this past weekend, we took in a few more museums. The Pushkin Museum was marked with this Pushkin statue on the left. He was quite the interesting character. He was part of the Moscow 'court society' and he grew increasingly jealous upon hearing stories of his wife conducting a scandalous affair. He challenged her alleged lover to a duel and died an untimely death when he was mortally wounded. He was known as a social reformist, and under the increasing scrutiny of the Russian government, he was exiled to Southern Russia. He spent 13 months in Odessa during that time. Who needs movies when you can hear about epics like this?

I guess the interesting thing that came out of the little museum trip was my Russian practice with the curator. I've become quite adept at steering conversations towards topics in which my vocabulary is strong. I'm particularly fond of families, for example. I also frequently talk about the weather. So I had a good time asking ALL kinds of questions about Pushkin's family:

"Eta ego Xena?" and I point to a portrait of a young woman.

[Is this his wife?]

That's actually what prompted the whole barrage of Russian about the lover etc.

I had a solo trip out to the Odessa Fine Arts Museum. It was really a rather nice collection of Ukrainian and Soviet art from the 15th century through contemporary works.


Finally, we went to an Odessa version of Sea World.
It was pretty fun, but of course we couldn't laugh along with all the Russian jokes and commentary throughout the show. Oh well!