Easter^2

Easter we planned to invite lots of people over - but it ended up that this year there weren't really many people who needed a place to go so it was Alister and I and our friend Jura.
Western Easter was Our Palm Sunday and I made Hot Cross Buns. Easter dinner cresendoed with my first ever Black Forest cake. I made only half the cake - but I think I could have gotten by with only making a quarter - the thing is so rich that a "normal" sized piece is a meal in and of itself.

Another Haggai walk

A few weeks ago we tried to Haggai on a walk again. The poor thing was scared spitless. Wouldn't even come out of his bag. I think he enjoyes all the smells and the fresh air - just all the sounds were a bit too much. At one point he did try to venture out - but at that very moment a group of people went by on motor bikes and that was the end of that.

Ballet

We went and saw a ballet the other day.
La Bayadere - or Bayaderka in Russian.
It was fabulous - I liked the servant - one of fakirs - the best. You can see his performance towards the middle end of this youtube clip- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlNEKBf1qsE

The ballet is about a young warrior who falls in love with an Indian temple dancer. Meanwhile the Temple priest is also in love with her - And at the same time one of the Lords is planning that the Young Warrior should marry his daughter. The father and daughter decide that the bayadere must die and the Bayadere chooses to die rather than betray her love to the young warrior and marry the priest. So you have plenty of intrigue. The clip below is of the daughter Gamzatti as she dances at her wedding.

The most interesting thing - reading up on it on Wikipedia is that this is considered one of Russia's most important ballet but because of Soviet times - it didn't "get out" of Russia until the 1960's and even then not all of it got out and parts of the music were lost and other parts modified because western dancers couldn't achieve the poses that the Russian dances could or the western stages weren't as large or spacious as the stage that the Ballet was originally written for. So this ballet has probably more interpretations than your average ballet.

Another interesting thing is that the last scene is sometimes left off. Instead of ending with the underworld revenge and temple collapse, it ends with a dream where The young man sees his dead beloved in the underworld and dances with her a last time. at 2.5 hours - (with pauses) it was a long ballet and so I imagine the original ending would make it very long and difficult for the dancers - they had quite a few jumps that they had to undertake in the score.

Easter is in the air

Easter is coming. I realized it last week. Not because of big pink bunny rabbits decorating store windows (there aren't any), not because of pastel colored peeps lining the checkout isle (there aren't any) Not even because of a plethora of Easter baskets and Easter candy assulting the buyer entering a store (there aren't any). No, rather I know that Easter is coming because on the street people are selling green onions, a weird leafy vegetable I last wrote about here and radishes. Soon after I noticed the radishes, I also realized that more cake ladies had sprouted on street corners and the other day I saw a man running around with his hands full of woven baskets (but not with Easter bunnies- women will load them with ingredients for easter dinner and take them to the priest to bless on Easter Saturday or Sunday morning).

I decided that now would be the time to begin my quest to find and collect the plastic egg sleeves for decorating eggs. Because Pisanki is very difficult (and you can't eat the eggs) Easter eggs - in the form we know them are still all over the place here - but aside from using colors (very very bright strongs colors) they also have a very wide variety of interesting egg sleeves with traditional designs, paintings from fairy tales, as well as icons. I didn't buy the icons. Last year they sold out really quickly and buy the time I figured out that they might make fun and orignial gifts, they were all gone. So I am congratulating myself for being ahead of the game this year.