It's hard when living on your own for the first time to enjoy the simple pleasures that were once so common place at home.
Fresh milk always in the fridge.
Long talks with my dad at cafes.
Amazing coffee.
Peanut butter.
It's especially hard when you're immersed in an art that values self-sacrifice as much as ballet does, and which encourages working tirelessly, without rest or distraction from our dancing. The Russian ballet community speaks with an odd kind of pride about the fact that dancers here have "no life outside of the theatre", that they don't read books until they are injured, that they have two weeks of holidays in the summer and work from 11am until midnight every day.
I greatly admire that kind of work ethic, the love that drives these artists to live an almost ascetic life so much in contrast to the flamboyance of the extravagant productions they perform in. Ballerinas live rather like nuns in their cloisters, serving their community silently with their beautiful acts of charity, and with only their fellow sisters for company.
But at the same time, and while it is a worthy thing to pursue such a passion with such single-minded intensity, I think it's important to find small moments of respite. It's hard enough for me having to do all these adult things for the first time, like buying fresh fruit every day or combing the city for new toenail clippers (essential to all dancers, especially women en pointe), without denying myself small, simple pleasures. A chocolate and an afternoon coffee, or an evening off from studying tonight, are not over-the-top allowances. Yet, now I'm on my own, I find I have to remind myself every day to make time for them.
One of the things I began to crave almost as soon as I arrived here in Russia was peanut butter. And let me tell you, there are few things that are more difficult to find here.
After a couple weeks of searching in every grocery store I came across, I finally decided to try the Finnish department store "Stockmann" on Nevsky Prospekt. They have a grocery store on the underground level, and I was hopeful.
I found it.
At almost $10 a jar, I paid a dear price for it, but even just the very first spoonful (which I ate plain, right out of the jar, and in ecstasy) was worth it. After a day of being spoken at in a language I don't yet understand, being lost in an old building I don't know my way around, and buffeted about in the cramped metro, I realised how soothing it was to taste a little bit of home. It was then that I resolved to find even more simple ways to let myself enjoy my peaceful moments in my flat, away from the conservatory.
Juicy raspberries and ripe bananas from Stockmann, with cornflakes (gasp, carbs! I know.) for dinner is nothing short of heavenly.
Green tea with a late lunch, the afternoon sun streaming in the window as I sit quietly and collect myself after a busy day, or take notes on that morning's classical training class and ballet mastering lessons. A soothing end to the day.
All work and no peanut butter makes Jack a dull boy - one of the life lessons I'm learning from living here in Russia, "with Peter".