The Moscow Ballet

I had two very excited girls; to be honest; Tony had three very excited girls looking forward to the ballet. We did not know what to really expect, but we knew it would be beautiful. I got the girls hair ready the night before, did school on Monday morning and ballet class, then we finished getting ready. I also did Noel’s hair and managed to get the girls and Tony fed. We grabbed a taxi with our tickets securely packed in my purse from the day before and nice warm clothes for the bus ride to Chernigov and back. We got to the bus on time and nothing was forgotten (except I didn’t get to eat, but that’s just part of what Tony and I refer to as the Ukrainian diet). Ahhh, sigh of relief, the day was going quite smoothly and…according to plan. We got to the theater and handed our tickets as we entered just as the other American family did before us. She seemed to look at our tickets a little longer, but…she tore the end handed them back to me and we entered the theater. The girls were twirling and taking everything in! I felt as giddy as a school girl and wanted to twirl with them. We took a quick potty break and of course they had squat toilets, which we still have not quite mastered and was even more difficult with the full length “semiformal” dress that Ellie had on. It was a chore, but we came out clean and we beat the big crowd!

As the girls and I entered the theater I looked at my tickets to find our seats but was having trouble finding any seat numbers, I also noticed the tickets were blue and had a blue water droplet on it, I thought “that’s a strange ticket”, but I was still too excited to think much of it. Since Tony was already in the theater and it was a pretty small theater I figured we would just look for him. Within a minute we found him. This is when all the pieces come together. As we sat the Smith family and Tony were just grinning and staring at me, I found that a little peculiar. Then Tony asked if I looked at my ticket, I said “ya”. He asked if I really looked at them, I replied “not really” and I agreed that I could not find a seat number. Then we discussed the water droplet on the ticket and if I remembered that from something else…finally it connected, the tickets I grabbed (to be sure NOT to forget) were from our trip to Kiev two weeks earlier to the water museum! So, we either got in on our good looks, or they just didn’t want to deal with the dumb Americans! Honestly though, the Ukrainian people argue about everything, always, so it’s nothing short of a miracle that we got in without an incident! Good thing Tony had at least remembered the row we were sitting in from when he brought the tickets home. Turns out we were 3 seats too far over, but it happened to be one of his coworkers and his family’s seats, and they didn’t mind sitting on our left instead of on our right; like I said, “nothing short of a miracle”.
The ballet was amazing, the four prima ballerinas and partners performed a medley of pieces from very famous ballets (Swan Lake and so on). The Ukrainian crowd, claps to the beat during some performances, gives flowers to the dancers immediately after a dance and their applause turns into a rhythmic clap; strange yet fun to us and normal yet expected for them.
We were dropped off at our neighborhoods at the end of the night; turns out they missed our stop by a whole neighborhood. We carried our sleepy princesses three dark and uneven blocks home. Turns out I had never seen the tickets that Tony brought home; they were still sitting on the desk in the envelope where he had placed them several days earlier.