Two Paintings by Ilya Repin Hello, everyone. Today I wanted to write a short speech about these two paintings; they are attached at the end of this post. The first painting is King Albert at the Time of the Explosion of the Dam. At the beginning of WW1 Belgium maintained political neutrality, but the Germans broke it invading Belgium. When this happened, Albert became Commander in Chief. The German Army was much bigger in quantity, so Albert decided to blow up the dam across the River Isar, thus gaining the strategic advantage Belgium lacked. When Belgium had succeeded in defending itself against the German attack, Albert was pronounced a national hero. Songs, poems, paintings and other works of art were dedicated to Albert after his successful commanding of the Belgian army. The second painting is one of the three portraits of Anton Rubinstein by Ilya Repin. The painter was deeply inspired by music and made portraits of numerous prominent composers. There are three portraits of composer Anton Rubinstein made by Repin's hand. This one is designed to look magical and triumphant: the composer is shown standing above the onlooker, his arms are making wide sweeping gestures, his face exalted and solemn. He stands on the scene, his back against the audience. The venue is brightly lit, and it looks as if the air itself is glowing. In this work Ilya Repin succeeded in conveying the strong stature of Anton Rubinstein, the unique atmosphere his concerts evoked in the venue and the ardent passion Anton's art sparked inside him. I wanted to avoid being too pompous with my descriptions but I am not sure if I was able to. Thank you if you read this far, and please leave your comments/corrections. I am especially insecure about my use of tenses here: it was hard to decide if I should use past perfect or just stick to past simple. Have a nice day.

Working at a Museum Hello, everyone. Today I would like to tell you about the last three days, during which I have been working at our local museum of visual arts. This year's World Cup is held here in Russia, and the English proficiency of the local people is quite low, to be honest. Most people coming from abroad tell us that it is very inconvenient that they cannot communicate with anyone here. My friend and I were among the people who volunteered to work as translators for non-Russian visitors. It is a great opportunity to talk to a lot of interesting people. Speaking of our job itself, it originally was to greet people who do not speak Russian, guide them through the rooms, and translate things for them if they ask questions; but then we started doing simple tours so that they can get at least something about the exhibitions and their showpieces. So far we have met people from Denmark, Australia, Uruguay, Israel, and a lot of other countries! All of them were really friendly and pretty interested in the paintings, most of them. The most popular exhibition o the museum turned out to be, unsurprisingly, Russian Art. Though some visitors were not interested in it at all and preferred to see something fresh and modern, such as Illustration by Local Artists and things like that. I will cut it at this point so it is not too long. Thank you for reading if you made it here, and please leave a comment about this piece. Have a nice day!