Day 40 (Fri March 18th) Dnepro - Get Passport and go to the Ballet

As is our tradition, we were lazy in the morning.  We got a phone call from Luba not long after noon saying our passport was ready and Masha could pick it up anytime.  She headed over there to do that and it looks so good!  Very neat.

Later that afternoon we took a trip to a different part of town to meet a lady that volunteers at the orphanage and wanted to say goodbye to Ira.  We went to the same cafe (though a different location) that we'd gone to the night before and had some lunch.

Instead of taking the bus, we took the tram!

Here is Ira with Valentina.

When we got back from that we stopped off at the opera house to see about tickets for the ballet.

Opera house

Since it didn't start until 7 (instead of 6 like we'd thought) we went home for a little while.  Pretty soon it was time to go and we walked over there.  It's right across the street so not exactly a long walk.  Getting our seats was a chore.  There was a group of people sitting there and we asked them to move since they were are seats.  They refused.  Masha went and got one of the ladies that works there and she asked them to move.  They refused.  She went off and came back shortly to ask them to move again.  Again, they refuse and argue.  She told us to go ahead and sit closer if they wouldn't move, but there weren't 5 seats together so that wasn't going to work.  Again, she asked them to move, which they again argued, but finally sat behind us.  We weren't the only ones with that problem either.  There was a couple having the same problem a few rows down. LOL

I wasn't too sure about the ballet at first.  It was slightly boring, just showing kind of the "backstage" life of a ballet house.  It started to get more interesting as it went on though.  Except there was one scene where two guys were dancing together.  It was weird and didn't fit the rest of the show at all.  Neither Masha or I could figure it out.

At intermission the lady in front of me turned around and asked if I was from England.  I'm not used to people talking to me and actually understanding, so that was cool.  I told her we were from the US and she asked if Masha and I were sisters.  She said we looked a lot alike.  I told her just very good friends. :)

The second act was AMAZING!  There was a cool scene all the guys did while they were "building" the set for the ballet they were rehearsing.  Then the lady that had been cleaning the floors came out and did an awesome dance to Total Eclipse of the Heart.  Then they "put on" the ballet they'd been rehearsing and it was really, really good.  Pretty red costumes all done to Bolero.  Ah...I loved it. :)

Once it was over we needed to get train tickets.  Yura offered (having just got back in town) to take us to the train station to do that.  We'd planned to get them today, but Natasha had been worried we wouldn't get tickets if we didn't hurry.  In the end, I just went because Masha and the girls wanted to stay.  We had wanted tickets for the Sunday night train (like we'd done on our way down here) but there was nothing, just like Natasha had said would probably happen.  We ended up getting Sunday morning ones so we leave at 6:37am.  Ew.  Night would have been much better.  Ah well.

Masha had told Yura he needed to come cook the rest of the pork we'd bought before or it was going to waste, so after we got the tickets we did that before he went home.  It was yummy. :)  The girls had started a Hillery Duff movie with Russian subtitles as well (guess I get to start knowing all the teeny bopper music and movies...) and it didn't get over until 1:30am.  True to form, even though it was about 2 when I went to bed, I still woke up at 5:30.  Grrrr.  This is getting really old.

I told Little One she could play a little bit on PBS kids so I will have to blog about today later.  TTFN!