A Few of My Favorite Things

My favorite walk, one that I take multiple times a week, is to a church about 25 minutes away from my apartment. There’s an open courtyard surrounding the church, and there’s always at least a couple toddlers running around. At this time of year, even though it’s still autumn and not too cold yet, most of the kiddos I see are dressed in full-blown snowsuits. Yesterday, there were about seven of them, all of the same height and all in various colored snowsuits, stumbling, laughing, and chasing the birds in the church courtyard, as their moms looked on. They resembled a toddler army. A tiny group of onesie warriors, who all fall down a lot and are easily distracted by pigeons and stray cats. A drunk, colorfully outfitted gypsy band, overly prepared for windy weather.

Aside from the tiny, drunk people, this church also boasts a bunny hatch full of happy, ginormous bunnies. I actually only noticed the bunnies two days ago, and it was such a spot of sunshine in my week. As I was kneeling and talking telepathically with my new bunny friends, one of the little toddlers clambered over with his grandma, who was talking on the phone. I saw him coming from really far away. He had such little legs and had to kneel down a lot to pick up various leaves and sticks along the way. It was a long journey for him. Busy guy.

We crouched together and stuck leaves into the cage wiring, which the bunnies, to our mutual delight, would grab with their little bunny mouths and munch away on. It was so fun! Kids are so fun! We basically only need to communicate by pointing and smiling. I love them.

There’s also a calico cat who always hangs around the church and similarly seems to enjoy the child snowsuit army. I usually see her running around their miniature legs, stopping every few minutes to graciously allow one of her many admirers to catch up and lavish her with attention. This courtyard is a really cozy place to sit outside and people-watch and hang out with bunnies and cats and feel at peace.

^^ There's even a little house for the church cat!

Yesterday, as I was sitting on a bench, watching one Snowsuit Child gleefully scooter through a congregation of pigeons, two guys asked me to take a photo of them. After they asked me, it took one of them a while to open up his iPhone camera, during which time they started speaking really quickly, and then I got flustered and dropped my phone, then my headphones, and it was a whole ordeal and I finally felt it necessary to admit to only speaking a little bit of Russian. They looked at each other and had a conversation along the lines of: “Do you speak English?”... “No, do you?”… “Kind of.” … “Really?”. It was amusing to stand there as they had this back-and-forth, complete with lots of shoulder shrugging and semi-frowns, until I finally said that it was fine and I could understand them well enough.

Both were very nice and supportive of my studies in Moscow. I sensed kind, gentle vibes from them, very different from the boy-who-gave-me-his-literal-heart on the metro. (If you are confused, then do read back a few posts.) They left, wishing me success in my future endeavors, only for one of them to return a couple minutes later to ask if I had Facebook. It was all very sweet.

Below are some photos from my semi-regular walk, so you can feel like you are walking with me, or a few steps behind me, or are stalking me from across the street! Whichever floats your boat is fine.

This really big, black statue with a golden leaf crown thing on the top, that I thing is dedicated to friendship or something... I'll look closer next time.