Entry 7: Every Russian Dance Now!

The next morning, we find ourselves glad to be approaching our final destination. We reach Barnaul, the capital of the Altai region, and hang around the train station for a bit while they switch our car. The conductress didn't want us to leave, for fear that we wouldn't be able to find our car after it had switched tracks, but we turned out to be a bit more clever than she'd given us credit for, which we let her know in no uncertain terms. After reboarding, I spend most of time looking out the window and watching the scenery go by: Beautiful rolling hills and gentle valleys covered in birch trees and chamomiles.
Finally, Brett decides that it's time to accomplish our biggest trip goal for the Trans-Siberian Railroad: host a dance party and get Russians to join us. We bust out the iPod and speakers and get it all set up in the corridor and then get down to business. Our first song, we decided, would be the macarena, as it had massive international popularity and a simple dance move to along with it. Who could resist that sensual Latin beat or those undertones of nostalgia now inextricably attached thereto, or those pre-kindergarten dance moves specially designed to make even the biggest Klutzy Klutzerovich feel at home? Russians, apparently. We danced single-file in the hallway, reveling in our absurdity and gathering a large number of curious, questioning glances from bemused lookers-on, but no actual participants. Fine, we expected as much. Our next song was "Jai Ho" (the Pussycat Dolls version), which allowed for a lot more leeway, so far as dancing style is concerned. The saying goes: "give a dog enough rope, and he'll hang himself," although, so far as my dancing goes, it's something more like "don't tie a dog up at put him on suicide watch, and he'll hang himself". But it didn't really matter; I'm pretty sure a large part of our goal was to make complete fools of ourselves (successfully, it will be noted, by anyone who has the opportunity to see footage [!] of the event). Ever the diplomats, we obligingly removed ourselves from the path of passing conductresses only to secretly grind up on them behind their backs.
There was the most adorable little five-year-old girl named Sara, whose parents were a German man and an Argentine woman, who was quite curious about the whole matter. We could see her bopping along to the music in her compartment, but she resisted all attempts to get her to dance with us. At long last, Devan succeeded in convincing her, and she joined us for a Latino song which we had selected specifically for her pleasure. Once "Thriller" came on (with all of us doing the famed zombie dance), our good friend "Michael Jensen" came out in full force... I still haven't exactly figured out whether he was drunk, a bit touched in the head, or -- most likely -- both. Also, we got Michael Jensen's friend to dance for a bit, though reluctantly -- Devan's doing, yet again. All in all, it turned out to be one of the better dance parties I've been to in quite some time (excepting two particularly amazing dance parties in in late January which turned out to be of great consequence ; ) ) [sorry that emoticon came out double-chinned, but I suppose even emoticons are not immune to America's growing obesity epidemic].
Eventually, a less-than-amused conductress crashed the party and made us return to our compartments. We noticed that Sara was still bustling about outside and invited her to come hang out with us. At this point, she had already overcome the better part of her shyness and thus willingly obliged. An extremely clever girl, Sara proceeded to show us how high she could count in English, Spanish, German, Japanese, and Majorcan [someone noted that all of us volunteers spoke very diverse languages, but that Sara knew all of them], and played peekabo with us, as well as a hand-game she called "Нndio, Mapache", and one where she repeatedly poked at my hand and said "pico, pico, pico" before surprising me [or so we let her think] and tickling me as hard as she could. Sara showed us all her impressions of animals and the sounds they make (including a particularly adorable cow, where, spreading out her fingers and opening them from her face, she made her eyes as wide as possible and said "Mwaaaaaaaaa!"), and starting to get quite attached to us, started jumping from person to person, putting her arms around our necks, hugging us, and showering us with kisses. Words can't even begin to describe how cute she was, so hopefully this picture can give you a better idea than can my description. As we finally pulled into our stop in Biysk with Sara around my neck, I thought to myself, "If any of these kids I'm going to be teaching are half as adorable, friendly, and clever as Sara, I've got some extremely rewarding work ahead of me..."