Laughing all the way

After the delicious Ukrainian dinner, we decided to go to Red Square so my mom could really feel like she'd been a tourist in Russia. We took lots of pictures and decided to head towards the bridge where some of my favorite views of the city are--Red Square, one of the seven sisters, Moskva river, Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and the Kremlin. After this we headed down for a boat ride on the Moskva River.

On the way there, walking on the banks of the river, my mom decided she needed a few more pictures of the view, and Tyler and I thinking we needed a new pose decided a piggy-back ride would be the best way to go about doing this. So I jumped on his back, we took the picture, and then he took off skipping with me. My mom tried to get this recorded, but only caught the dismount from an awkward angle. I said something like, "Oh, good job! You did it!" to Tyler, to which my mom replied, "What, did you fail kindergarten because you couldn't skip?" He looked at me with eyes that said, "You told her about that?" And I said, "I swear I didn't say anything!" He insisted that I must have--there was no way she would have just randomly said that. I was laughing and I said, "Mom--tell him. Did I say anything about skipping?" She looked confused and said, "No, lots of little boys can't skip." So he finally believed that I hadn't said anything, and we all had a good laugh over it. This was only the beginning of him realizing how alike my mom and I really are. I tried to warn him ahead of time!

After we stopped laughing about this, my mom decided to comment about me being a world-traveller. This unfortunately came out as, "Tyler, Kim is quite a tramp..." My eyes got really big, my mouth dropped open, and I was like, "What?!" as she finished with, "...she has tramped around many countries. Wait, travelled? Trapsed? What am I trying to say? I'm sorry--I haven't slept since I got off the plane!" I figured the best reply I could give at this point was just to say, "Oh my gosh--you just called me a tramp! I'm so blogging about this!"

The next good laugh came about 3.7 seconds later, when Tyler was telling me about something he was going to get to do, and I said, sighingly, "You're so lucky." My mom then said, somewhat offended, "Well I'm sorry I'm ruining your good time--you wish you were off kissing?" By this point I was way confused, then she pointed out that a couple had just walked past us, and they were making out, so she thought that I had seen them kissing and said, "You're so lucky." Apparently she hadn't been paying attention to what Tyler had just said. I'm going to chalk this one up to jet lag. Needless to say, I laughed a good long while about this.

As we were walking along this same river bank, this guy yelled up to us to come on a boat ride. I laughed, we went and bought tickets, and got on the boat. I think he didn't know what to do after we got on the boat--he probably didn't realize we had already planned to do this. The best part came as we pulled away from the dock. It seemed that almost immediately after my mom got in the boat, the engine died. My mom was sure she had brought the Lake Powell luck with her, and said, "True to form, the boat broke." We're pretty sure it was her fault. Luckily, the boat started up again, and Tyler was spared taking on the role of oarsman.

The boat ride was really fun, including when my mom decided to throw herself in between a couple so she could take pictures of us. Her comment was: "Here, 43 years after a gondola ride in Italy with a study abroad group of mostly girls where I swore I would never again be on a boat ride with out my "honey" in a romantic European city, I found myself as the 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th wheel, as the boat was exclusively filled with couples." She enjoyed the boat ride anyway, but missed having dad here with her.

We headed past the Tretyakov Gallery, grabli, and the Adam and Eve fountain as we made our way towards the Novokuznetskaya metro. We had been telling my mom about some of the random guys I had met, and the crazy situation I have found myself in here in Moscow. Suddenly, I got a call on my phone--it was this random guy I had met by the metro about a month earlier. "That's Aleksei," Tyler told my mom as I picked up the phone. He said he had just seen us walking by, so we went and met up with him. I introduced him to my mom and Tyler, and we chatted with him for a minute before heading home. I thought this was a perfect example of how random my life has been in Moscow.

We told Tyler goodbye at the metro and laughed about all of the funny things that had happened and had been said that day--and this was only mom's first! We knew right then that this was going to be an amazing trip. My mom was scared to see how dark it was where I walk home every night and decided some things are just best left unkown.