Lala Tulpan

A lot has been going on lately, and I've been really comfortable where I am at. I really want to start taking my camera with me on a day to day basis and just take random pictures, but I'm still not comfortable yet with my abilities as a photographer to get good "every day" photos. If you follow me on Instagram you'll see I've been eating a lot of sushi and I just saw the Nutcracker. I've also been meeting up with friends. I've made some good friends here, but I was very sad when my friend, Alessia, went back to Italy.

I also have some exciting trips coming up! In less than two weeks I'll be in Madrid and then two days after I come back from Madrid I'm going to St. Petersburg! I'm so excited! I'll definitely be taking pictures, but I can't promise I'll edit them quickly. ;)

December 10, 2015
I met up with some friends for coffee on the 5th and mentioned to my friend Fadwa that I wanted to see Lala Tulpan. It is one of the biggest mosques in Russia, and I think right now it's the biggest one in Bashkortostan. I had visited Victory Park when I first arrived, but we never went to the mosque and I knew at some point I wanted to go back. Fadwa told me it was one of her favorite mosques and promised to take me. We were actually supposed to go on Wednesday, but I had to cover a class for another teacher and so we decided to postpone it a day. I invited my friend Katherine, as well, and it worked out because they actually met each other earlier in the year!

I'm not very happy with how the interior photos turned out, but they'll have to do. While we were there one of the prayers started and it was interesting to sit through it. I honestly don't know much about Islam, so I asked Fadwa a lot of stupid questions, but she was a good sport about it! The prayer reminded me of a Catholic Church service in a way, which makes some sense because Islam came out of Christianity.

We then took a quick walk through Victory Park, but it was so bitterly cold. Downtown had a really eerie mist over it. It reminded me of something you'd see in a post-apocalyptic movie when the camera pans out after a nuclear war and the fallout is settling down. I also really like the last picture of Lala Tulpan in the distance. Does it not look like something out of a fairy tale?