Two Stories for the Price of One!

Okay, so because I've gotten behind, you guys will get two updates in one. Because of that, it's a longer post, sooooo sorry. [edit: I ran out of time, this is only the first half. The other will hopefully be posted tonight.]

First, last Saturday we had a trip inside the Kremlin, which is the "official" residence of the President of the Russian Federation (I put official in scare-quotes because I think my tour guide said something that made it sound like he didn't actually live there... but I couldn't hear her super great, so this might be wrong). It has a lot of old monasteries and includes four palaces (each tsar built a new one(?); again, I may or may not have mis-heard this) and other governmental stuff. Now, because I'd taken my nice camera with me for the trip, which is in a camera bag, I wasn't able to take my camera inside the Kremlin (my camera bag looks like a backpack, and backpacks weren't allowed inside—only purses). BUT with my student ID I can get back inside the Kremlin any time I want, and the things I won't be able to see without buying a ticket (inside the Monasteries) are places you can't take pictures of anyway. So it's not that big of a deal.

Anyway, the monasteries are all Russian Orthodox, which is for Eastern Christendom what Catholicism is for Western Christendom (except it never had its own Martin Luther). I really don't know much about the church, but I do know it is similar to Catholicism at least in its heavy iconography (so, so, so, so many saints), except the Russian Orthodox Church actually shares some of its saints with Islam, which I find interesting. The "home" of the church used to be in Constantinople (/Istanbul), but moved to Moscow in the 17th Century. This issue of Moscow being the head of a church ended with the USSR, but I'm not really sure what's going on with that issue now that the USSR is kaput (in all fairness, Russian tour guides talk really quietly, and it was crowded and loud, so this is why I didn't hear all the details).

Anyway, the insides of these monasteries were amazing. You walk in, and every inch of every wall is covered in a mural. All the columns have murals painted on them, and the alter and the "prayer boxes" (spots where tsars and tsaritsas, or now the president, get to pray, but nobody else) are etched with designs. The majority of the paintings were of saints faces, so there are a bunch of bearded dudes looking at you. I think the coolest thing in their murals, though, was their depiction of the devil. He was on the back wall of Annunciation Cathedral, where it looked like they'd used a different technique for painting the wall; instead of being a "normal" painting, where you use colors to differentiate details, entire bodies of the wall were in one color, and then details were etched into it. So the devil was all black, with his feature etched in, and all around him was red, and you could see rows and rows of people standing behind him, and then he was holding a small child (that was a tan color). I was later told that he was holding the soul of Judas, which I find both interesting and a bit repulsive. He's also sitting on this creature that at first looks like a normal bench, but is really a two-headed something-or-other (I thought it looked like a dragon, even though I know better). Then, coming out of one of the "dragon's" mouths is a serpent, that stretched up to another part of the wall, where there's a mural of adam and eve, and so the serpent is the serpent that tempted eve.

Anyway, it's time for me to get to class. My second story is about the ballet/folk dance we attended last night, and I'll try to get it up tonight.

Also, if you missed the photo that I posted only on the blog (meaning, it's not on facebook), click on the title of the blog at the top, and then scroll down past this article to see my previous post.