Things You Shouldn't Do Unless You Are Jenny Durina

I've decided to start a new segment, because I feel like I get away with a lot of stuff that our fearless RD tells us we shouldn't do. I know this will catch up with me soon, so I'll relish in the moments of freedom now.

Things You Shouldn't Do Unless You Are Jenny Durina: Give sass to the Moscow Cops at 1 am.

Why You Shouldn't Do It: The Russian PoPo are notorious for being sneaky little buggers and extorting bribes from people all the time. They usually claim there is a fine for something, and they just charge however much money you have. We were advised to take 1 of 2 courses of action when confronted with this situation. 1) Argue and start crying like a baby until they lose interest and leave you alone. 2) Pay them. Option 1 is used when it's daylight and you're around a lot of people, Option 2 is used when it's nighttime and the PoPo stick is looking extremely menacing in the pale glow of the evil copper's eyes. Our main advice, however, was to never speak or make eye contact with the police. It is very forbidden to speak/argue/smart mouth a cop.

What I Did: So a few of us are in Red Square around midnight or 1 am and it starts snowing. It's more-or-less the first real snow we've seen in Russia. The atmosphere is romantic and lovely and christmaseyrainbowsareshootingoutofoureyes so we start dancing to celebrate being in Russia by St. Basil's Cathedral in the snow. We are the only ones there. Then a cop car housing 2 bellicose PoPos drives up and stops next to us. Here my innate diplomacy skills kick in.

Coppas: Why are you dancing? What's the holiday? You shouldn't be dancing!
Me: IT'S THE FIRST SNOW! That's why we're dancing! IT'S THE FIRST SNOW!
Coppas: MUMBLEMUMBLEMUMBLEMUMBLE (I could glean that it was not okay for us to dance in Red Square. Disrespect or something. Probably they were just protecting us from Zombie Lenin's nightly lurch around the city).
Kelsey, my brave warrior-ess: Uh huh, okay. Yeah. We understand. Uh huh. Okay
Coppas: *drive away in a fury

Later...
Me: Kelsey, what the heck did they say?
Kelsey: I have no clue.