“Ill be Home for Christmas.. if only in my dreams”
The mall seems to be the only place where Christmas music is playing, and lights are sparkling, signifying that it is the Christmas Season.
Second Christmas and New Years in Russia.
What is that all about?
Last year I spent in Chukotka. The land of darkness and freeze, and not only temperature and nature wise, but spiritually in the hearts of people there. It was quiet an experience. This year I am in a mega polis. The city is roaming with people, spending money. The life is extremely different here. I love observing this culture as if its not my own. And its not. I don’t belong. Not that I feel like I belong in the States either. But this is foreign. I don’t know this Russia. Russia RICH with things and people wanting to spend, spend, spend. This is not the empty shelves and lines of the Soviet Russia that I remember from childhood.
This nation is developing extremely fast. The cities resemble so much like the States, except the contrast within the city is so drastic. 
What shocks me most is not the conditions, but the contradiction within which people live. The city streets are full of lights, and upscale downtown living. Having Louis Vuitton, Dior and other designer stores on one street, and a couple of blocks away there are private little homes with smoke going up from the chimneys, bathrooms outside as holes in the ground, and lack of indoor plumbing creates a need to hustle water from the well at the corner of the block. It’s quiet extreme!
The craze of shopping is somewhat fascinating. Now there is an overabundance of ‘things,’ and people are running wild, purchasing everything and anything. The Hypermarkets have 90 registers working, and each have a line (Russians love Lines;) ) There are constant restocking going on, because the stores are running out of things, as well as the cleaning lady trying to push thru the people on the cart. Price checks are run by clerks on rollerblades. It’s unbelievable, unpredictable, extraordinary.
Russia.
The NEW Land of Russia.
No further comment. 
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