C Новым Годом!

Happy New Year's! I have yet to understand why grammatically, in Russian, the way to wish someone well on a holiday is to say literally "with" the holiday, but it's what's done.

Anyway, in all seriousness, we do wish all of you a very Happy New Year. I can't take credit for the above picture, sadly, since we weren't at Red Square for the festivities, so I shamelessly nicked it off the BBC's website. The best way to prevent anyone like the BBC from suing you, I find, is to not have any assets for them to take away, a concept I stole from Randy Alcorn. Somehow I think we're safe.

New Year's, as I think I've mentioned on here too often already, is a VERY big deal in Russia. And if there's one thing that Russians really do well, it's party. When the holiday and the Russian people collide, the result is intense merry-making. Interestingly, one of the things they've incorporated into their holiday is fireworks (I assumed they had always done this, but I am assured that it is a relatively recent addition to the festivities by several Russians, or at least has grown in popularity recently). They take their fireworks very seriously. None of these sissy "Cherry Bombs" or the wimpy equivalents that they sell only in certain states in the US. Here, you don't need a license to acquire any size firework, even the massive, starburst ones that Americans reserve for professionally engineered displays with firefighters standing by. If you can afford it (and apparently everyone can), then you buy it, and shoot it off late New Year's Eve when you've gotten as drunk as possible.

You'd think that would be a recipe for a health risk nightmare, but the most dangerous display of the night came from the only sober people on the block (more on this below). The rest of our neighbors put on quite a show for us, starting about 10 at night and continuing until 5 in the morning. It was really impressive - just one after the other of spectacular fireworks for hours and hours. We had friends over, so we just turned out the lights and watched as our little park turned into Ground Zero for the night.

Of course, our friends, not being the type to sit idly by and let others have all the fun, had to go out and fire off some of their own. We accompanied them and had a good time watching the kids wave their sparklers (see below photo).

Our friend Ivor, though, had purchased a couple of the better ones so that we could at least have a small taste of the satisfaction of lighting up the sky, and so we watched as a few rockets showed their red glare and some bombs burst in air. Then, on box of rocket fireworks #3 or so, it got interesting:

I decided to film the event so we'd have something to put on here, but when one of the rockets misfired and tipped the box over, we ended up getting more than we had bargained for. It's a little hard to see in the dark, what with me shaking with laughter and, well, the darkness, but when the box of rockets tipped over, it somehow aimed itself directly for the parking lot in front of our building. One of the rockets manages to explode on the edge of a snowbank, and another snuck its way under one of the cars after bouncing off said snowbank. Fortunately, all the damage that was done was setting off the car alarm. Quite funny, so I hope you enjoy it and can tell what's going on.

Other than trying to destroy our neighbors' cars, we haven't been up to much. Had a bit of a cultural excursion today to a souvenir shop park and a bookstore, and I can report that it was fun but cold. Maybe I'll put some pictures of that up next time. Also, I'll be sure to take a photo or two tomorrow when we go back to our friends' Andrey and Iulia's place. We're going to spend the whole day there, so it should be a good time for learning more language and culture stuff.

Oh, and I almost forgot - our fantasy football season ended last weekend. It's odd that I know way more about the NFL this season than I did when I lived in the US, thanks to some friends back in America setting up a team for us. It was fun, and we came in second (and would have won had it not been for our friend Dave's donation of 30 points from one of his players to our finals opponent!). Thanks for letting us play, gang. It was a good time, and congratulations to Katie who pulled out the victory.

Edit: I also forgot to post this the last two blog posts, but fortunately Crystal's comment reminded me - we're having a girl! The MD seemed pretty confident, so we're planning that way. Of course, there's always a chance they're wrong, but for those of you who've been wondering, that's the theory.