A Wandering Family

The Wandering Boys

2012-01-24T17:59:00.001+04:00

So, normally on the blog we talk about what we're up to, and we occasionally mix in some pictures of the boys or something, but I thought today we'd show you what they've been up to lately. Mostly because that's all we seem to have pictures of this month, since the lovely Bobbie and I have pretty much been doing straight language study and not much else.

Anyway, it's been a while since we posted, so here's a shot of our New Year's Eve. We kept it pretty simple, stayed in and just watched the fireworks (the boys loved that; they would NOT go to sleep!). We did get together with our neighbors from across the hall, who came over to say goodbye to the old year with us. Not much of a party, and they didn't stay long, but we hung out and chatted for a bit before they left to ring in the new year in their own apartment.

Earlier that night we let the boys light off a sparkler. Well, I should say "boy," because Matthew was having nothing to do with letting something burn in his hand. He's too bright to think that's anything but a bad idea!

For Christmas we got a sushi kit, and Steven is a budding chef. Thus, it was only natural that he would want to help out whenever we make sushi. Here he's laying out the raw fishy bits for the roll. The odd thing is that the boys don't really like sushi, but they love making it. So do we, actually, as it's one of the only 'ethnic' foods that we can get the ingredients for here.

Matthew showing off the muscles that he gets every time he takes a bite of broccoli. We've managed to teach the boys that eating green food makes them "strong," and they think it takes an instant effect and have to show us their bulging muscles every time they take a bite of vegetable.

On the other side of the healthy/non-healthy spectrum, we had a taffy pull. It was mostly a test, to see if we could do it with some of our friends sometime, but the boys loved it. Matthew gave up after a few pulls, so we had to help him out some, but Steven did really well. We let them choose which color and flavor they would put into their taffy, which was a big hit. Steven's was red and vanilla; Matthew went for blue and mint.

Grandpa and Grandma in the States sent us some money for Steven's birthday a few months back, and we saved it until a really cold day. On Saturday we took the boys out to the indoor pay-per-play playground, which has an area like a McDonald's playplace that kids can play in. They had a fun half-hour running around (during which we forgot to take out the camera), and then we went out for pizza.

Seriously, Daddy, it was fun, but please put the camera away now. I've had enough pizza and now I'm tired:

In other big news, the other set of grandparents sent a hammock, all the way from Bolivia! It's like a slice of home, right in our living room. The boys LOVE it, of course, and so do I. I like to pull out the e-reader I got for Christmas and just lay in it, reading. Could anything be better than unlimited books and a hammock? If only I had unlimited time ...

The hammock has actually been quite a novelty for the folks here. Our upstairs neighbors came down for a visit the other day and couldn't get enough of it!

It was quite tricky to figure out a way to hang a hammock in concrete walls, but I had a handyman here putting in a new lock in our metal door, and I asked him what he thought. He disagreed with my idea of a brace drilled through the wall, which I admit was overly complicated, and came up with a solution I never would have thought of (but which is totally brilliant).

He thought for a minute, said, "We need a metal plate that we can drill in," and left. He came back with two of these, which are spare parts for a car (it goes somewhere underneath where the leaf springs and suspension hook into the axle, I think). It already had two holes, we drilled two more, and voila! A hammock hook hung with 4 anchored bolts, size 20cm by 10mm. Holds me and the boys, swinging. Pure genius.

And that's about it for the Wandering Boys. Next time, a post about ... I don't know. Whatever happens between now and when I leave for Thailand in a couple of weeks, I guess.

Shaken Up!

2012-01-01T06:11:00.002+04:00

Most of you probably don't know, but, on December 27th around 11:00pm as the boys slept and we were getting ready for bed, we had a pretty serious earthquake here (6.6 on the Richter scale).

Is started with a loud rumbling outside (sounded like a semi truck right outside our window) and then, all of the sudden the apartment started shaking, and then rocking back and forth. We ran into the boys room, grabbed them in their blankets, threw on our coats, and ran down 8 floors to outside where we joined other people who had the same idea.

The rumbling had stopped by the time we got outside but we didn't want to go back in since we weren't sure it was over. After about 40 minutes outside, Jesse and I decided it was OK to go back in (the fact that is was -30 and we didn't have our regular clothes on and the boys only had the blankets around them helped in making that decision).

There have been several strong aftershocks ranging from 4-5 on the Richter scale. Once we went back inside, we got our things and spent the first night at our office since it's in a 4-story brick building versus our apartment building which is 9 stories and made of concrete. As you can imagine the buildings here are not built for such things, since an earthquake that strong has never happened here before.

We are all OK, if a little shaken up (hehehe). Several teams have been going around to check buildings for damage. I read somewhere that they found 31 buildings with enough damage to evacuate. I'm not sure how true that is so I can't confirm or deny it. Our building is fine and there are only 2 minor cracks in our apartment (not serious).

But, we survived and we didn't lose anything. The aftershocks have stopped for the most part and life is back on track. Thank you for those who knew about this already and thought for us.

Christmas with the Wandering Family - a B post

2011-12-31T14:09:00.001+04:00

Well, first Christmas is over. Now, we are getting ready for second Christmas.

At least, that's what I call it. They call it New Year's here. They have the same Christmas figures and traditions as we do but they do it all on New Year's eve (now, some of you might already know this but just in case some are new to our blog I thought I would state it again).

Anyway, to recap what we did for our Christmas: of course, what's December without a Christmas party? So, being the party animal I am, I assumed the responsibility of hosting probably the only actual Christmas party here. We did it the Friday before Christmas and had our English Club over. I wanted to introduce them to some of the typical fun we have at Christmas parties like Dirty Santa and going for a treasure hunt. I don't think they got it. I basically had to tell them where to find the next clue. But, we had fun.

And, of coures, I had to bake, bake, bake. I'm pretty proud of this snowman cake if I do say so myself:

Our tree had lots of gifts under thanks to some grandparents, aunts, and uncles who wanted to spoil their grandchildren (I can't complain either since I got a ton of stuff to make me even fatter (again, not complaining). Jesse got the perfect gift: a Nook (an electronic book reader). More space for me to pack things when we come back, because he won't be trying to hog an entire suitcase just for his books.

Anyway, because of time conflicts, we did the typical present opening/cooking thing on Christmas Eve (we wanted to do it while skyping the grandparents).

So, we woke up, the boys helped make pancakes, and then we ripped into the presents.

By the end, the boys got the hang of ripping into the presents. The rest of the day they were busy playing while Mommy and Daddy crashed.

I wanted to start our own traditions and decided to make a Stollen bread (a German fruit cake). Since it takes 6 hours to make I probably will not make it except for Christmas. It was pretty good. The boys like it but ended up picking the fruit out. Oh well.

And, I had to take this picture of what the market looks like. The whole market is lined with kiosks looking exactly like this one. It was so crowded I wasn't able to take a picture of what the aisle looked like.

So, we finished up our Christmas. Now, time to celebrate second Christmas which included Christmas programs at school.

Here, the kids all dress up like Halloween for their parties. I had to have a pirate costume for Steven since he was in a presentation with the other boys as a pirate (look below). Anyway, I had forgotten about getting a costume for Matthew. So, I just dressed him up in Steven's costume since their parties were on different days (ain't he cute?).

So, like I said before, Steven's class had a program that included songs and dances from the kids.

Here Santa Claus is named Father Frost, and he has a granddaughter named Snegurochka (Snow Maiden). One of girls from Steven's class is playing her here (the one dressed in blue) and she looks just like the pictures of her. On a side note, Steven adores this girl. She takes really good care of him and has assigned herself as his protector. So, cute.

I knew about one of the songs Steven was doing, but what I didn't know was that he was going to sing Jingles Bells (in English) by himself. I wanted a video of this but by the time I got the camera out, he was already half way through. He did great (if a little quiet).

They had one of the dads dress up as Father Frost/Russian Santa so we had to take a picture of it.

Although we usually don't buy each other something for Christmas, I really wanted to get this for Jesse (or I should say, for both of us). It's a sushi kit. Pretty tasty, and we've already had sushi twice since Christmas!

We really tried to work with Steven to memorize his lines for this poem but he just couldn't say it fast enough. Besides, he was having way too much fun with his scarf to bother with lines.

Anyway, that's about it for Christmas-related post stuff. Tune in next year for more on New Year's, and until then, С Новым Годом!

Holidays

2011-12-15T05:38:00.001+04:00

I'm too lazy to write much, so I'm just going to let most of these pictures speak for themselves. Above is obviously family game night, with a tense game of Candyland won by, if I recall correctly, Matthew.

Except maybe these pictures I'll write something about, because they won't make much sense without an explanation. In an effort to get more time in the language, I've been trying to make some contacts in a nearby village. Finally, I was able to arrange to live with an older gentleman there in his one-room home. It gives me lots of language practice, and until he moved back to the city very recently, I was trying to get out there several times per week. Here's where he lives:

The inside looks like this:

I sleep next to the bag of potatoes, he sleeps on the bed where I'm standing to take the picture. It really is a very cozy affair (note the wellhead inside the house, so it doesn't freeze!).

This is the kind of thing we do there; go out and look for firewood to cut up and haul back. The coal trucks have been slow to come around this year for some reason, so everyone's trying to find enough wood to burn to heat things. It gets rather cool this time of year.

Back in the city, Steven's been working hard on learning to read, and he's doing really well.

Though he does take frequent breaks from his studies to wrestle with Dexter. By the way, Matthew seems to be allergic to Dexter, so he'll probably be leaving us as soon as we can find another home for him. It will be a sad day for poor Steven, who will lose his wrestling buddy.

Getting into the Christmas spirit by baking cookies,

and putting up the tree and the ornaments!

Merry Christmas from the Wandering Family!

Catching Up (a post by B)

2011-11-25T07:55:00.001+04:00

Well, it's been quite busy the past few weeks. So, we'll start with Halloween. It's becoming more of a known holiday here. I think it's just another excuse to party.

So, party we did - we invited over our friends in the English club, as they really wanted to see an American-style Halloween. I even decorated the apartment in a "spooky" theme with "spooky" food and all. There was quite a turnout and fun was had by all. An advantage of being here is that they haven't seen the type of food that is typically done for Halloween parties like spider cupcakes, eyeball eggs, and ghost toast. People even came dressed up which is always fun.

We then had a few weeks when it was a bit slower. In those weeks, Steven's class had a "mother's" presentation in which some of the students recited poems. There was one in the local language, one in Russian, and they asked Steven to do one in English.

We taught him a version of the "Roses are red" poem for mothers but I guessed he had Russian on the brain because when it was his turn, he started reciting something in Russian (still not sure what it was). So, I had to give him a prompt before he did it, but he did OK in the end. He even got a certificate for participating.

Sorry about the video, it got cut off a bit short (plus you might hear Matthew getting excited about Steven getting to talk):

We also found that the local meat market was open last week, so we went to stock up for the winter. This is when all the farmers slaughter their cows and sell the meat at a discount with no middlemen. They wait until it's freezing, and that way people can buy all the meat they want and just put the extra on their balcony (remember, our balcony is way colder than our freezer).

Because there's no difference in the price for which cut of meat you get, Jesse was able to get a beef backstrap for the same price as any other meat! So now we have some nice filet mignon waiting in our "freezer." The downside of this whole process is that they just cut off the part of the cow you want with an axe, and you have to do the butchering yourself at home.

Then came Steven's birthday. WOW! I can't believe he is 5 already. My beautiful baby boy is growing up. So, we continued with our balloon tradition and hid his presents under balloons so he could find them. We had several neighbors over to help celebrate the occasion which I think Steven's loved since there were several kids there for him to play with.

Matthew didn't want to be out of the loop for all the excitement, so he snuck in and tried to blow out Steven's candles for him!

Presents from the grandparents far, far away:

He seems to really like both of them!

We'll have to post next time on Thanksgiving, as this post is long enough already! The short version is that we had friends over and made all the fixings (from scratch, of course) including a goose. So, today, after I dropped the boys off at school, I spent Black Friday in bed doing nothing. It was all I hoped it would be!

In other news, our puppy is getting bigger and bigger. I've never house trained a dog before but he seems to be obeying more and more commands so I think it's working (he still likes to pee on the floor so I'll take suggestions as to how to manage this). The boys love him but we will wait for a time when we don't have anything to write about to blog on that.

And with that, I leave you with this thought - HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

Warning: This Post May Be Hazardous to Your Stomach!

2011-11-02T12:46:00.001+04:00

Due to an extreme lack of interesting things going on, or at least interesting things that we have pictures of, I decided to go back and post something that happened way back in August. I would have posted it then but we were in Moscow and there were other things to post, so I saved it for a rainy day. And it's snowing, which is close enough.

Anyway, I've started this post out with a picture of our cute new puppy Dexter, so you have plenty of warning if you have a weak stomach before you scroll down. Because this week, we're going to walk you through a traditional T event, the "sheep cutting," which is a bit difficult on Western sensibilities.

Are you ready? This is a picture of the neighborhood outside my language helper's house where I went for the meal. I know it's not that interesting; I post it as one final warning that if you have a weak stomach, now is the time to stop scrolling.

Still with me? Cool. Here we go:

This is A, my language helper. He knew that I had been wanting to help out in a T traditional sheep slaughter, as it's a big part of the culture. He invited me over when his family ran out of meat and were getting ready to remedy the situation. Above you can see him readying his knife, which is very important. You really need a sharp knife to properly slaughter in the T fashion.

Now, I don't have a picture of the actual killing, because I was holding down the goat (I know I promised a sheep slaughter, but it's basically the same thing). However, the thing to remember is that the T still practice the traditional central Asian slaughter method passed down since the time of Genghis Khan. The people believed at that time, and still do in fact, that the earth was sacred, and you couldn't pour blood onto it without offending the spirits. Therefore, you have to slaughter your animals without spilling their blood, which means you can't do the Western thing where we slice the animal's throat and let it bleed out.

Instead, you cut a small slit into the skin just below the rib cage, and actually put your hand into the chest cavity. When you feel the heart, you pinch the main artery just above the heart, which kills the animal quite quickly and relatively painlessly, if you know what you're doing. I had to help out by basically choking the goat at the same time A did all that, since he couldn't seem to get a firm grip on the artery, but it still went pretty quickly.

Anyway, when you're done you have a dead goat with all of its blood still inside. Then comes the hard work of skinning without tipping the animal over, so that its blood stays inside the abdominal cavity.

The skinning has to be done mostly with your fingers, as you don't want to cut the animal and risk puncturing and letting the blood out. It's a good workout for your knuckles; really hard to do in some spots.

Eventually you have a skinned goat, resting upside down on his own skin to keep the meat off the ground. Now you have to get the blood out, and since it's a major part of the feast, there are non-spiritual reasons for not letting it spill. Here you can see A carefully ladling it into a pot (more on what happens to it later).

The ladies always get stuck with the job of cleaning out the intestines. I'll leave it to your imagination what it is exactly that they have to clean out of there, or you can watch this video to have your worst suspicions confirmed. This is only really disgusting if you are watching it knowing that pretty soon they're going to fill them with blood and you're going to have to eat it!

It takes a lot of work, but I'm sure that they get at least 90% of the contents removed before putting it in the pot to cook. Leaving a mere 10% or so of the previous occupants of the intestines still there.

Leaving the ladies to their work, us men go over and start the fire to get a massive pot boiling:

While it heats up, it's time to prepare the blood. A bit of salt, a few spices and herbs, and then it's time to mix. This is my hand, mixing the blood up, which you have to do so it doesn't congeal before you can get it into the intestines. Texture? Indescribable, I'm afraid. Lucky you.

Now the ladling of the blood mixture. You have to do this carefully, and once a piece of intestine is full, you have to tie it off so the blood doesn't leak out.

Then all the bits of guts go into this big pot, there to boil until they are a sort of grayish-brown on the outside. Very appetizing.

See? If that isn't appetizing, I don't know what is:

This is a piece of the one from the video you watched above. To my great fortune, we were having this shindig right next to A's garden, and they had dill and green onion growing there, which were served with the "hot blood," as the delicacies are known in T. I've had this dish quite a few times, but the addition of the green onion really helped to cover the flavor. Somewhat.

You can't refuse - it's simply their favorite thing to eat, and they love to serve it to guests. Imagine if someone came to your house and gagged when you gave them pizza from your favorite place or something.

Below is the cross-section of that bigger piece from above. As you can see, the blood sort of bubbles up inside, leading to an interesting texture. Actually, the blood pudding-stuff inside the intestine isn't that hard to get down - it goes straight down. It's the outer intestine that is hard to swallow, as it simply doesn't come apart as you chew.

Later that night, this is all that's left. It really is interesting to see the way that different cultures and cuisines can shape differing palates. What to me is something hard to choke down is literally most T people's favorite food.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this photo walkthrough on a typical T feast. To those of you brave enough to read to the end, I salute you!

As for us, only one really big bit of news: our documents were accepted to apply for permanent residency! Now that the application is in, we have to wait 6 months to find out the decision, but at least it's out of our hands. Hopefully sometime next spring/summer we'll become permanent residents of T-land, and then we can enjoy feasts like this all the time!

Random Happenings

2011-10-26T22:08:00.001+04:00

Well, as you can see from the pictures, a few things have happened since the last post. For example, my plant is still alive. That's right. My beautiful plant that I bought about 2 months ago is still alive. Not only that, but it's even blooming!

Why am I finding this worthy to post on our blog? Because of my history with killing plants. I've even killed a cactus (who knew you shouldn't water them every day?). Well, I was pretty deteremined to keep this one so I did some reasearch and found out how to take care of it. Now, our house is full of the glorious aroma of my sussess (or maybe our Father just felt sorry for me and has kept it alive this whole time). Miracles do happen!

Another happening is our coworkers had their birthday a few weeks ago. Husband and wife having the same birthday (don't some of you husbands wish for that). So, since they love breakfast foods, my gift to them was a breakfast feast. I have to say I didn't regret it since I love to eat this kind of stuff.

One of the biggest happenings going on around here is our new addition to our family (no, i'm not pregnant).

One day we took the boys to a playground where a group of kids had 3 puppies and were trying to find homes for them. We had been talking about getting a puppy and this seemed to be the right time. So, we took the smallest of them and brought him home. His name is Dexter and he's a mutt. There are a lot of stray dogs around here so Dexter might be a mix of about 50 breeds.

He seems to be a gentle and kind puppy so we are hopeful. The boys, as you can see, love him. Matthew will just carry him around for a long time and then sit down in a sit with him in his lap and Dexter just goes with it. No fussing or fighting. He isn't that dirty anymore of coures. He has had about 5 baths in the past 2 weeks.

The other big happening is that my coworker, Erin, and I went to the nearest "big" city around here and just had a vacation for 4 days. I don't think the ladies have ever done that here so our men encouraged us to go. And go we did.

After the 5 hour van ride up there, we got to a hotel room and spent the next few days drinking coffee, walking, shopping (mostly window shopping), eating, and watching movies. There are a few nice restaurants in town, so we went to the Irsh pub that offered great food and entertainment. We ended up going there a few times enjoying it every time. And then waking up whenever we wanted and did whatever we wanted. SOOOO relaxing. A big thank you to our husbands for that!

Until next time, and thanks for reading!

Edit - additional note from Jesse: Please be thinking about our documents, which go in this week (or maybe next) for our residency application. We hope to have everything accepted for processing, and then we should find out in the next six months what the decision is.

Kindergarten

2011-10-03T16:24:00.000+04:00

So, we still have a lot of posts to catch up on (I know, I promised the one about the sheep slaughtering soon), but today we're going to go with a post about the boys. As many of you know, we were able to get them a space in a local kindergarten after some paperwork and hassle.

And what a blessing it's turned out to be! They've been going for a little over a month now to the building seen above, from 8 am until about 3:30 pm every day. We were planning to pick them up after lunch daily, but they take a nap from 1 to 3, so we decided to let them do that there and then pick them up after naptime (or тихий час, "quiet hour" as it's called in Russian).

Anyway, more on that in a bit. It has been really nice lately, so we've been trying to get as much out of the good weather as we can before it gets cold. There must be some sort of Indian summer going on, because it's October and it's still very nice weather. A few years ago, there was already snow on the ground at this time!

Matthew taking advantage of some of his time outside to get some exercise!

Whereas Steven prefers to play football with the other boys - a definite future Luis Suarez here:

There are some playgrounds around, and we take advantage of them as best we can, but none of them can compare to the playgrounds at the садик (pronounced "sadik," it literally means "little garden" and refers to the kindgarten/day care thing where the boys are going). Theirs are always well kept up and don't have broken glass laying around everywhere like the other playgrounds we go to.

When we first started talking about sending the boys to a sadik, the idea was that they would go to one class together. We thought that would minimize the stress of being in a new place and help them to adjust gradually. The main reason we wanted them in the sadik was to learn Russian, and it turned out that having them in the same class actually caused stress, and wasn't helping them learn the language.

So we split them up - Matthew had been going to the age group that Steven was in, and not getting much out of it. We are so blessed to have this lady as his teacher when he dropped down to his age group - she is fantastic! Very patient with him, and actually likes that he's teaching the other kids English as he learns Russian (the other teacher didn't care for that much). She's also been great at being patient with Bobbie as she tries to explain what he needs and what we need to work with him at home on, etc.

This is Matthew's classroom. He's in a group with other 3-year-olds now, and most of them are actually Russian (which is weird when you consider the T majority population).

This is Steven's teacher, or was until today. Some of these pictures are out of date already, because the school recently asked if Steven could move up a level to be with the other kids who are going to school next year.

We're not quite sure he's ready (they're all 5 and 6 years old, and he doesn't turn 5 until November), but since his teacher isn't quite as patient with him not knowing Russian we figured we'd give it a shot and hope for someone more willing to be flexible. Today was his first day with the older group, and Bobbie said he seemed to be enjoying it when she went in to pick him up.

Steven's former class much better reflects the ethnic demographics of the local population - I think they're all T except for him! Here he's enjoying his after-nap snack before he comes home with Mommy.

As for what they do there, it's actually quite interesting. The first thing the kids do in the morning is exercises in the gym. We had to get special clothes for Steven, including a pair of shoes that can only be described as ballet slippers, for him to have the correct uniform. They do jumping jacks, stretches, and all sorts of things (that's Steven on the right, trying to do the "bicycle" in the air).

After the exercises, they eat breakfast, then have a lesson (basic school stuff) and then "free play." Then they eat lunch, and then a brief time to play and then a nap. We come get them after their nap.

Last week we were invited for our first "parent-teacher conference." Or, at least, that's what Bobbie understood when they invited her. We showed up not quite knowing what to expect, but it turned out to be a mini-Olympics, with the parents getting involved as well. Here's Steven getting warmed up for his event (which didn't have anything to do with the circles, they were just there for the kids to jump into and out of to warm up):

Actually, he had to do a sort of "musical chairs" thing, which ended with him placing 3rd. Then, there were events for the men, the women, a crossword puzzle-type game, and a whole-family balloon-popping contest.

You'll be happy to hear that the Wandering Family took 1st place overall. We had a decidedly weak start, with several events we did poorly in, but then came from behind. I was confident when they announced that the first event would be "Strongest Dad," because looking around the room at my skinny competition I thought I would have it in the bag.

Then they said what the event was to be: how many pushups could you do in 30 seconds. I tried my best, but could only manage 22 and came in dead last. The skinniest guy there did 38 and put me to shame. Then we managed to win the crossword puzzle, despite the fact that it was in Russian. The only thing I can think of is that the other families didn't really know what to do?

After Bobbie finished second in jump rope and we won the balloon-popping contest, we narrowly took the victory. Yeah for us. Here's a picture of the leading competitors (actually, this is 2/3 of the entire field, so it's not like we had a lot of Olympians to defeat). Most of the families just picked up their kids and went home, so only 6 families or so were actually in the competition.

Mom and son recover from their exertions with a hot drink. It took our boys about two days to discover the joy of hot tea, and now they ask for it at home.

And I think that's about it. Thanks for reading, and see you again next week. If you're looking for things to be remembering, you could keep in mind our application for permanent residency, which we're hoping to get submitted this month sometime. We also have some "higher ups" coming in for a visit next week, so that should be interesting as well.

In Which I Stare Directly into the Gaping Maw of Death and Laugh

2011-09-23T17:39:00.002+04:00

Alternately, I could have just called this post "River Trip 2011," but, honestly, does that sound nearly as exciting? The idea of staring into the gaping maw of death and laughing is just so much more appealing, and though it may be poetic license, I think I'm just going to stick with it.

So yes, the topic of this post is the recent float down the Yenisei that I completed with my coworker David. There was indeed a brief moment of death-maw staring, but more on that in a bit.

The Yenisei River is almost certainly the biggest river you've never heard of, as the 5th longest in the world, and also the 5th highest in terms of volume of water. It's longer than the Danube and the Ganges put together. It's a big river, is what I'm trying to say.

However, like all rivers, up where it begins it's not so big. It's still the biggest river in T-land, where it starts, but it's small enough to be, um, exciting, in points. But enough about the river. Let's go to the pictures:

We live in a city built on the confluence of the two major sources of the river, and to make the trip, we had to get into a car to drive up closer to the mouth of one of them. Our car, as you can see above, was a Russian jeep/van called an Uazik, and it was not good to us. This picture was taken during its third breakdown, and that doesn't count us running out of gas. Twice. Sigh.

Anyway, we did get to the jumpoff point eventually. We had planned to float a few hours that first afternoon, but we didn't get in until well after dark, so we just set up the tent and waited for morning. The next day, we surveyed our map:

The total was 280 kilometers, which I think is about 160 miles. We had one bit of rapids to negotiate, but otherwise the plan was to just float down, fishing along the way. The purpose of the trip was for a "men's retreat" of sorts, one last time for me and David to hang out before they left to go back to Canada.

It started out beautifully, a bit overcast but lovely and reasonably warm. The fall colors were in, and it was going to be a great trip.

The fishing was great, at least for David, and he was reeling in fish within an hour of our departure. They may look small, but in the overfished rivers of Siberia the fish are often quite tiny. An 8-inch fish is a keeper, and is quite lovely when salted and fried.

Before we go further, maybe I should explain our equipment. Our boat was an inflatable 2-man raft, with no seats or anything. You can see it here below, and we used our supposedly waterproof duffel bags (more on that later) as seats.

I have never been a very gifted fisherman, and this trip did nothing to dispel that image, I'm afraid. The first few days I didn't catch anything, although eventually we did get to a really nice hole where I did OK.

Obviously, at the rate the river took us along, 280 km was not going to happen in a day or two, so each night we would set up this tent when we saw a nice-looking spot and camp. Oddly, the tent, designed to be immediately spotted from the air when mountaineering, blended in perfectly to the yellow of the trees, and we were almost camouflaged.

Unfortunately, on day 2 it started to rain. And rain, and rain. We set up a bit early, getting our tent up before the worst of it hit. However, the next day, we were trapped in our tent as the rain didn't let up all day. David went out and fished for a few hours, and I made a brief and futile effort to dry my jeans and shoes by the fire.

We did have the benefit of David's fishing skills to supplement our diet, and it turns out that frying fish on the fire makes them 10 times tastier.

Once we got back on the river, we began to see ominous signs that we were headed into the mountains. Snow-capped peaks began to appear in the distance, and grow ever-closer as the days progressed. It snowed rather early in the mountains this year, as normally there wouldn't be much snow in early September. It made for some cold winds coming off the mountains, especially when we were wet from rain.

At this point I was still getting shut out on the fish front, but David got on a hot streak and reeled in a massive taimen (we think).

It was the tastiest of all the fish we got on our venture, and I tried to take a picture of it, filleted and fried up with some mashed potatoes (made from dried potatoes we brought along). The picture isn't great, but you get the idea.

The fall colors really were splendiferous. It was quite an amazing trip in the scenery department, as each bend revealed something more beautiful than the one before.

After four days of floating, we arrived at a point renowned for being a prime place to catch fish. It was also one of the last places on the river to have any fish at all (once you get within a couple of days of our city there aren't many left), so we decided to stop and spend some time stocking up.

We got there a little after lunch, but since we wanted to spend some time there we went ahead and made camp. Then we started into the fishing. At first, it went like everything else on the trip and David caught fish while I flailed around hopelessly.

In fact, in the picture below I'm trying to see if it will make a difference if I try David's rod. He caught a fish the cast before this, then gave it to me to try. I cast (while he took this picture), caught nothing, and then he went back to fishing and caught another fish with his first cast. Sigh.

Eventually, we got the height right on my setup, and then I started catching fish. We took a picture with this tiny one just because we weren't sure I would ever get another one!

But I did, and David caught more too. At the end of the day, this was our haul - he still outfished me, but 7 of those are mine.

And that was it for fishing. Below that point, we had only the rapids, and then a couple more days to get home. We were happy to be bringing along a bucketful of salted fish, and were quite happy with the way the trip had turned out.

There was just one more wee obstacle in our way - the fabled rapids (dun dun DUN!).

David had actually floated down the river last year with our other coworker, and they had portaged around the rapids seen above. However, after their portage they had looked back and concluded that they probably could easily have managed (their decision to hike around having been influenced by extremely strong warnings from people they met along the river of the dangers).

So we had been toying with the idea of running them all the way down, and when we pulled out to see only what you see in the above picture we thought it looked doable. The right side of the big rock (it's the size of a schoolbus, but quite hard to see in the photo) was certainly not going to be possible, as the rapids were well beyond the capabilities of our small craft. But the left side - well, that looked like a ride on the wild side that we might have a chance of surviving.

We had spent the night before talking about memories that we had from childhood, including one of my favorites with a friend who decided late one night that we should go outside and run around in our underwear in the rain for the sheer purpose of "making a memory." I made the fateful decision as we entered the rapids, having carefully stowed everything that needed to stay dry in the "waterproof" bags, to shout "Let's make a memory, David!"

I think it can safely be said that neither of us will soon forget the 30 seconds that followed. The intensity of the rapids was well, WELL above what they had appeared from our upriver vantage point. We managed to stay left of the big rock in the middle, and were trying to get back to the right to miss another sharp rock when the river simply opened up and swallowed us.

Actually, it was more that a very large rock (say, SUV-sized) just under the water picked us up, and on the other side of it was a large "hole" that we hadn't seen at all from above. On the other side of this hole was another large rock, and we made it down into the hole but flipped onto that rock as we came out the other side.

David was thrown clear, and I, in the back, went straight face-first into the rock, with about 0.0001 seconds to react. The only thing I did was hold onto my paddle, some part of my brain deciding this was mission-critical for some reason. My baseball cap took most of the force as I went into the rock, though I had a swollen and abraided cheek and eyebrow for a few days.

We did come up, though, and then we struggled to the shore. My main concern was that the boat would be gone, because we were still 125 km from home and that sounded like a long ways to walk without any food. Fortunately, the boat was caught in an eddy at the bottom of the rapids. David, still having shoes on, raced down to get it before it was carried away. I had a concussion and was struggling with double vision, but eventually got it together enough to get over and help out (I had put my shoes in the bag to stay dry).

Once we sorted out that everyone was alive without serious injury (a minor miracle), we could look more objectively at our situation. First of all, looking at the rapids from the bottom, there was no possible way we should have been on those rapids in that boat. That decision, however, was long in the past.

We took stock of what remained - we had lost one paddle, a black bag (that contained my camping pad and our tent boat repair kit, among other things), all our fishing gear, and a few other bits and bobs. The plastic box with our food had somehow flipped upside down, thus creating an air pocket that kept it afloat. Our waterproof bags were caught in some eddies, so we had them as well.

They turned out to be less than waterproof, which was disappointing, but a wet sleeping bag is better than no sleeping bag. Everything was wet, in fact, so we decided to stop at a downstream island to dry off. On our way there (which was difficult, with only one paddle) we spotted the bag we were missing a few bends down the river, so we had our tent back.

So, we were grateful to be alive (seriously, it was a very dangerous situation) and doubly grateful to have most of our stuff back. We spent a couple of hours drying off, and then moved on. Oh, and I should note that all the pictures from this point forward are courtesy of David's camera, which was in a waterproof bag inside his waterproof bag, and thus didn't get wet. Mine, unfortunately, despite being in a sealed Ziploc, inside another plastic bag, inside a waterproof duffel, was toast.

At this point you might imagine that our heroes were due for some good fortune, and indeed, we had some. We pulled up to a nice beach after our spell of drying out, chosen because it looked like a decent place to camp and not because we had any knowledge of the place. We just happened to pull up right where there was a nice Russian hunting cabin in the woods.

The rules in these kind of places is that anyone can stay, and you do your best to leave more than you found when you got there. It even had potatoes and salt, and was in very good condition, though we left the food alone as we still had most of ours (having only lost the bread and things that could get wet).

We didn't have to face any of the resident bears, though this one had wandered through the day before.

This picture was obviously taken upon our return, but the one thing we did take from the cabin was a wooden plank that was on the ground. We left a lot of our food to "pay" for it, but we really needed a second paddle to keep the boat from going in circles with one paddler. I carved it with my pocketknife and a hatchet, and it served us pretty well!

Anyway, the next day we started the boring part of our trip. Boring because now we weren't distracting ourselves with casting and reeling every now and again in the vain attempt to catch a fish. With nothing to do but float and occasionally paddle around some minor (but, in light of our early experience, suddenly very threatening) rapids, we watched the scenery change from:

to:

After 6 days of floating, we finally arrived home. Our families were well, much to our relief, and, overall, I would say that it was a great time. Now, with the benefit of several days to forget about the constant rain and remember the glorious sunshine, I look forward to doing it again. Maybe in a few years, when the boys are old enough for me to risk their lives?

I leave you with some scenery pictures, since they're pretty and I thought you might like them. We'll start with one I call "floating mountain":

The Package

2011-09-13T17:56:00.000+04:00

When we came back from Moscow we had a surprise waiting for us - the mother of all packages. Look at this thing:

Of course, I couldn't wait to open it. Right after I took the picture with Jesse holding it, I ripped into it. I'm sure I heard the angels in Heaven start to sing!

The top item is my favorite comfort food in the world, Rice Krispies with marshmallows. I'm actually finishing off the last of the 3 bags of marshmallows and 4 boxes of Rice Krispies that was sent already. I'm impressed with myself that it lasted this long.

And, you ask, who would be such an awesome group to send such a package? None other than our family group in the wonderful land of F-V, NC. I mean, look at it all!

And, what's in the picture was only half of what they sent us. The other half I couldn't tear away from the boys long enough to take a picture of the massive amount of cars, trucks (including monster trucks which I'm sure I can thank Martha for), coloring books, CDs, markers, and toys, toys, toys. They weren't interested in helping me open the box until they saw those monster trucks. Then, I had to try to slow them down from throwing things out of the box looking for "their" stuff. It was a wonderful time.

I want to thank every person who contributed to sending this. I wish I could do it in person. But, then again, if I could do it in person we wouldn't of gotten the package in the first place. It's a small sacrifice to "give what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose". Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for this. We love each and every one of you (and not just the people who sent this but all of you). Your thoughts and support has been overwhelming to us. We could not be here without you.

Just so you can see, the last picture is the wallpaper our new neighbors put up in our mutual hallway while we were away. That type of decor is very popular here. Nice, eh?

Moscow

2011-08-30T15:32:00.008+04:00

Daddy, why are there so many people and cars?

Well, we're back from a taste of the big city. Not too long, but long enough to get some work done. OK, fine - we did have a bit of a break there too!

One of the things we needed to take care of was to get the boys new passports, as theirs are about to expire. Fortunately, the US embassy is located near the new Wendy's, so we stopped by for a taste of the US of A.

I took a picture of the cashiers' line to post, as it has to be the only Wendy's in the world with beer on tap, but it didn't turn out so you get this one instead. Swanky, no?

Unfortunately, we ran out of "family" tasks pretty early and then it was all language consulting for yours truly. The lovely Bobbie didn't have to do that, so she spent her days taking the boys out to play on all the wonderful non-glass-covered playgrounds! It did rain quite a bit while we were there so Matthew had to learn how to use an umbrella.

Our anniversary (yeah for 9 wonderful years!) is actually today, but we celebrated while we were there. And don't let anyone ever tell you that my wife is not a cheap date (Burger King was closed so we settled for Mickey D's).

Actually, we had babysitters for the evening, so for our date we went shopping. There are lots of things that are simply unavailable in T-land, so we stocked up. Honestly, we probably could get some of this here, but for more than double what we paid in Moscow, so it was worth doing it there and bringing it back. Check it out - Worcestershire sauce, saran wrap, curry, couch pillows: quite a haul!

Bobbie was lucky enough to get to hang out with friends quite a bit. I did see them in meetings and in between them, but it was hit and miss for me. Woe is me, in other words.

Actually, we did have quite a good time getting to catch up with a lot of our old friends from when we lived there. Steven loved our friends' guinea pig!

And it was another friend's birthday, so Bobbie went crazy and baked a cake with mint chocolate and coffee icing woven together.

Yet another picture of some of our friends getting together at the guest apartment we stayed in.

Alas, all good things must come to an end and eventually it was time to go home.

We opted for the train as 1) we were overweight for a flight and 2) it was less than half price and we were running out of cash. Here we are getting ready to board the train.

The way to save money is to ride 2nd class, called "platscart" in Russian. That means we didn't get a private room (called "coupe"), but instead each had bunks along an open corridor.

At first it was lots of fun, and the boys were SO excited (they love trains).

Around day 2 it started to get tedious, and the reality of being cooped up in a small space (with one chance per day to get out at a stop and run for 5 minutes before going back in) started to sink in.

By the last day they were running out of ways to entertain themselves and started to try Mommy and Daddy's way.

Finally, after 4 nights and 3 days, we made it. Well, we made it to a nearby city, anyway, and then we just had the taxi ride home:

We did get home in the end (and it's as beautiful here as ever, as you can see above). We're very grateful for His provision for our trip, and that we got here safely. I'm not feeling great, but we have a busy week this week (trying to resubmit some documentation for our organization, getting the boys' visas put in their new passports, and the boys are also starting kindergarten).

We'd like to thank you all for thinking of us while we were traveling, and to ask for you to continue as we get back to work! Thanks for stopping by, and we'll see you again next week (we have a couple of posts saved up from before our trip, so we definitely have things to post - perhaps you'll get to see the T method of slaughtering goats?).

Train

2011-08-24T17:26:00.002+04:00

So, this is just a brief post to say that we're about to get on one of these:

For a trip along part of this route:

And at some point, after 4 nights of travel, we get to the end of the line. From there we get to take a 5-hour drive home. And THEN we'll update the blog.

Probably.

Milk Lake

2011-08-05T18:31:00.010+04:00

So, last week we had a whole-family adventure to one lake to tell you about, and then this week I've been up to a lake with a bunch of T guys on a combination fishing-hunting adventure. I know that our lives must seem a lot more exciting in the summers than the winters, and that's because they are - the winters are so long and so harsh that when the weather gets nice people make up for it with a frenzy of work and activity!

But without further ado, because this is going to be a long post anyway, let's get into exactly what went down, mostly through the medium of pictures:

We left early one morning, after having postponed our trip a couple of times for various reasons (flexibility is absolutely key for people in our line of work). Anyway, we eventually did get on the road, and started immediately learning about T culture. The mountain above is apparently white because it was cursed a long time ago. It seems that a shaman had a spiritual duel with the spirit of the mountain (rough translation, but that's the general concept) and lost, and subsequently died. His mother put a curse on the mountains in revenge, and they've been the only white rocks around ever since.

A bit further down the road we stopped at a Buddhist holy place, where our friends will typically add a few rocks to the cairn. They are usually decorated with prayer flags of many colors (which color you put up for yourself is determined by a lama according to the astrological calendar of your birthday).

Here's something I need more information on, though - my friend got out a small container of powder and lit it on fire and walked the smoke around the car. I asked about it and was told it was for "protection," though I'm not sure of much else beyond that. These trips are great chances to get into the culture and really see so much of the things that the people believe but just don't think to tell you about unless you ask.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, and we arrived at the town where my buddy's uncle and aunt live. Along the way they pointed out a familiar (well, not to me personally, but some of you in the US can probably identify it) weed growing wild along the roadside. Of course, this was just for photographic purposes and I threw it away immediately thereafter - honest, officer!

Eventually, we got to the jumping off point for our hike. Now, I didn't mention it, but Milk Lake is quite remote. In fact, it might be one of the most remote places in the world. It's hard enough to get to our town, but to get to the lake you need another several hours in a 4-wheel drive vehicle and then a lengthy and difficult hike.

Here we're looking up at the imposing mountains. My friends with a sense of anticipation, me, the overweight foreigner, with a sense of increasing dread. I was only later to discover that the mountains here were just the foothills; we had to get past them to see the real mountains, which were perhaps twice as high. And we had to climb over them to get to the lake.

Anyway, my friend's ever-reliable Lada broke down for the trillionth time, leaving us without a starter for the remainder of the trip. Which was no big deal on that day, as we were going to walk anyway. On the way back it meant every time we stopped for gas or food we had to push start the lousy thing.

They loaded up most of the gear onto a pack pony and then busted out the vodka and cigarettes (clearly, you don't want to be hiking into the mountains without being mildly drunk and wheezing from lung damage).

At the beginning it was rather nice. It was a beautiful day, and I had no idea how far we were going, so it was just a pleasant walk.

The trail gradually grew steeper, and much more difficult. This is me about a quarter of the way up the hill, already drenched in sweat.

We wound our way along this ridge for quite a while, before finally leaving the river to climb straight up to the top.

This is looking back down the way we came; at this point we were probably a third of the way up the mountain, which is behind us and is considerably higher than those in the picture.

After that the pictures are few - I was too tired to get the camera out. At one point, on the point of total exhaustion, my legs were wobbling even when I was sitting down and I was beginning to feel like that triathlete that started to wobble and collapsed a few meters short of the finish. I literally wasn't sure I could go another 100 meters, and I sat down and told the guys that. For the 5th time, they said we were "almost there," and so I made up my mind to go another 100 paces. Fortunately, the cabin we spent the night in was only 103 away (it was right over the rise).

Once there we collapsed and dragged out some bread and sardines for a delicious supper. I reckon we walked 8-9 hours, entirely uphill that day.

The next morning we got up for the short downhill walk to the lake. We came up on the other three guys who were meeting us there (they had ridden in on horseback) waiting at the cabin:

That started off the really enjoyable part of the trip - 3 days just hanging out at the lake, hunting, fishing, eating, just generally enjoying the company of the guys.

This is how T people set up the food part at the campsite; it's rather ingenious, but it means that all they're going to cook is soup. For breakfast, lunch, and supper.

So, if you come for a visit, I hope you like this, because you're not getting anything else:

I will admit that I got a bit crafty after getting utterly sick and tired of overcooked (to my sensibilities; obviously every culture is different in its tastes) noodles and boiled mutton after three days. I volunteered to make the soup so the guys could go hunting, and cut myself off a couple of chunks of goat to roast over the fire. It needed a bit of salt, but after everything else, it tasted totally delicious!

Most of the meat supplementing our diet of noodle soup, however, came from fish. Before leaving we bought a couple of 40-meter nets and one 80-meter one, which were a headache to set up.

Eventually we got them out, tied to floating bottles, and in the right place. After a day of practice/learning where the best spots were, we were hauling in loads every morning. The fish just swim up and get stuck in the nets, so there's no involvement from the fishermen other than knowing where to put it.

We caught stacks like this every morning. After a while, we started salting them to keep for later, because we couldn't eat them all. The name of the fish is "Belyat," and if you know Russian you can probably recognize that it sounds quite similar to a common oath if pronounced a certain way. Well, that joke became the running gag for the whole time we were there; there was rarely a mention of fish without someone coming up with some obscene reference, followed by a lot of giggling.

I know you'll think this one looks delicious - fish intestines and roe, fried up with a few bits of onion. I can take most anything, but I only managed to swallow a small spoon of this and then pretended I wasn't hungry.

The other major food was pine nuts, though not so much for its sustenance as for the fact that it gave us something to do with our downtime, which, this being a vacation, was extensive. Here we're coming back from a hunt in the woods for pinecones. These are not the kind you see lying on the ground in the forest in the US; by the time they fall from the tree naturally they are long past having any nuts left. You have to find them much earlier in the year, when they're still attached to the tree, and shake them down.

As these two fine gentlemen demonstrate, the next step is to put them onto the fire (this toasts the nuts and also cooks out the sap; you can eat them raw but it's a very sticky operation). You can also start up a nice bowl of tea to drink with the nuts if you like.

Eventually you end up with the thing at the top of my hand. You can pull out the seeds, which look like the thing on the lower left. You crack that open to get the actual edible nut, as shown at lower right. Obviously, this is waaaay more labor than the tiny bit of food is actually worth, but it's quite a good flavor, and, as I said, gives you something to do.

The T drink a particular kind of strong tea, called simply "black tea," when out in the woods. To make it, take a bowl and put about 2 cups of loose tea leaves in. They should almost fill the bowl. Then, pour boiling water in, about 2 cups worth, and let it steep for 5 minutes. Then pour it back and forth from a cup a few times, then strain and drink.

You can only drink about two sips, it's so strong, so they make one cup for the whole camp. Everyone takes a sip or two, then passes it along. It's very bitter, but has loads of caffeine and will wake you up and give you lots of energy to get your morning started when it's cold.

Of course, when you're in the woods you can't forget "sat" (pronounced "saht"), which is just sap that is from one of the species of pine. You chew it - it's actually quite good, but don't forget to spit it out when the sun goes down or you will cause your mother to have liver problems.

That's about it for food. Not too varied, really. Mostly we sat around and debated whether or not to go hunting, or where to go, etc. There were two other people on the lake, a couple of guys who had managed to get their Jeep to the far side of the lake where there was a semi-road, and they were fishing in an inflatable raft.

They came over to our camp for a visit, and the guy on the left totally discouraged me with my progress in the language. He asked me several things, which I didn't understand and had to have him repeat, finally getting disgusted and saying "You don't speak T at all! I'm not even going to bother." Which was not what I was hoping for. I guess I need to learn to shrug things like that off, but it really did get me down a bit.

That was about it, really. The rest of the time was just spent sitting around chatting, eating pine nuts. I went on a brief foray around to get some pictures, but nothing too exciting happened then either.

One of the guys, drunk during the early days when the supply of vodka hadn't run dry yet, told me that "we can stay up here for 5 days or so, what do you think?" Which had me worried, as I had been drinking dodgy water and hoping that giardia wouldn't hit and that I wouldn't run out of my meager toilet paper supply.

But I needn't have worried. Cigarettes proved to be the limiting factor. Everyone smoked, and I even caught them all catching one last smoke before bed one night:

Sure enough, three days in, the last cigarette was gone. And, just like that, we had to leave. This man even went around the final morning, finding old cigarette butts and cutting them open for their meager supplies. One of the nearby abandoned cabins had an old notebook, which gave him something to wrap it in, and he made a large homemade cigarette for them all to get that last bit of nicotine before we set off.

Eventually we packed up and hit the trail. I was a bit worried about the way down, not quite so much as I had been coming up but it was still a long hike.

Remember those "imposing" mountains at the beginning of our hike up? That's them way down below us.

I threw this picture in just so my horse-riding friends Martha and Rachael can imagine riding their horses down this slope through the boulders. Very tricky footing, this, as under the grass the rock is very uneven. and you can't see it.

Eventually we got nearer the base of the mountains, and emerged onto the plain. I don't know if you can see it, but almost directly in the middle of this picture, way in the distance, is the town we need to walk to. At this point we're still a good two hour walk away, but you can see for a long ways.

One of the best moments of the trip was this river. It stands just outside the town where we were headed, and I wondered why we didn't call someone to come get us and our stuff and ferry us upstream to the bridge a few miles away.

Instead, they opted to take our pants and shoes off and put everything on our heads and just walk it across. It ended up being fantastic; after 8 hours hiking in the hot sun, I put my stuff on the far bank and went back in for a swim. A and A-K here joined me and it was fantastic - the cool water on our aching, hot feet felt unbelievable!

Eventually, triumphant, we walked into town.

And normally you'd think that's where the adventure ended. So did I, really, when, the next day, we got within two hour's drive of our home city. But then this happened:

This, for those of you not familiar with Russian cars, is the axle. And no, it's not supposed to be in two pieces.

Obviously time to call a tow truck, I thought. No, as it turns out, it's time to see who your real friends are. We did have one bar of signal, so we called all of A's friends to see who could go, buy us the part we need, and then come get it to us so we could fix the car.

None came, so I called my trusty coworker David and his Beast, which won't go into 4th gear, and he made the slow trip out. Now, I want you to imagine for a moment that you break down in the desert. Not just break down, but have your axle somehow break in half. Would you consider an axle replacement job along the side of the road?

Of course not! You'd have to have your head examined! But that's exactly what we did. It took several hours, but a lot of whacking and pinched fingers and tired muscles and sunburns (well, just me for that one) later, we were back on the road (again, after a push start, because the starter still didn't work).

Finally got home that night at 9-ish, I think, and I've never been so happy to see my family, or a shower, in all my life.

I took more pictures of the scenery, so I think I'll do like we did last time and just put up a separate post here on that. Enjoy, and thanks for visiting. See you again next week-ish, by which time we should have another post up.

Milk Lake Scenery

2011-08-05T18:21:00.005+04:00

Lake Trip

2011-07-23T18:08:00.008+04:00

So, in our last post we promised you pictures of our trip to the northeast corner of our republic, where we visited a beautiful remote lake with some T friends of ours. We promised pictures, so I hope you're in a picture-viewing mood, because we took a million of them.

The first thing we did was pile in the 4-wheel drive van, known as an Uazik, for the 8-hour trip from our city to the small town that is the capital of the "county" where the lake is.

The scenery didn't take long to change, leading to funny reactions from the boys. What are these pretty flower-things?

I like the pretty flower-things! And all the green!

After a few hours we stopped for a meal at a little cafe, and I was intrigued by the construction style, illustrated here. It's sort of finished log cabin with the gaps chinked by grass:

Then back into our friend the Uazik, for many miles of this. Well, not so much many miles as many hours, because the roads are not that great, so we were traveling quite slowly.

We did stop at the passes so the passengers could add rocks to the cairns:

It definitely wasn't all bad - the boys were a bit fussy, but some parts of the trip were fun.

When we finally neared the "county seat," we had to cross the Yenisei one last time. Since there aren't any bridges of the river anywhere within 100 miles, they've arranged an ingenious ferry system. The ferry functions with no motor of any kind, but is instead tethered to this cable. The operator loads the cars and people on (2 cars max), then moves the rudder so that the craft is propelled across. It doesn't drift downstream due to tension on this wire, so the effect is that it just crosses with pure river power. Brilliant!

We eventually offloaded and continued our way to the town, along with a few T ladies who had crossed the river earlier in the day to pick berries in the woods.

We spent the night with our friends' relatives, who have a lovely home there in the village. The next morning we got up and arranged all our stuff for the trip out to the lake:

Steven needed to make one quick last dash to the outhouse before we left (located through all the potato plants):

And then, after another hour of slogging along some terrible roads, there we were!

The lake itself reminded me a lot of Tahoe, in Nevada. Beautiful, blue as can be, and surrounded by wooded mountains for a really spectacular setting.

We were there for a few days, one of which we decided to go over to Green Lake (that would be the English translation), so known for obvious reasons:

There is a spring here with a reputation for healing lots of injuries and ailments, including joint problems and allergies, so if you fancy a trip to the absolute end of the world, you can solve all those problems by just coming over to visit and we'll take you out to get a bottle of the water.

People also like to swim in the lake, which really was an interesting place. There is a kind of white clay under the water that they would get out and smear on their bodies. I tried it but it didn't seem to have any appreciable cosmetic effects (of course, in me it wasn't getting a lot of raw material to work with). I was just mostly surprised to see that several dozen people had made the effort to get all the way out here - it really is a tough place to get to.

In fact, I'll throw a little video of the road on here so you can appreciate just how hard it is:

Mostly, though, we stayed at the main lake, where we had a great time. We tried fishing, but you need a boat to really have success. Some of the other guys going out were coming in with some huge ones, so they really are out there!

We just enjoyed spending time with our T friends, who had brought their kids along as well. Oh, and of course our boys enjoyed the time in the water.

Though we didn't catch any ourselves, our friends bought some of the smaller fish from those who did, so we had "fish on a stick" to roast over the fire. Yum!

Cooking with a T family can be tricky, since our tastes are pretty divergent usually, but Matthew is starting to get the hang of their food. Actually, Matthew gets the hang of most any food pretty quickly.

After a few days of enjoying ourselves (and a bit of a harrowing experience getting out!) we came back to our friend's hometown. She gave us the walking tour one evening.

Comrade V.I. Lenin approves of this sunset!

Eventually it was time for us to come home. Oddly, it was on our way home that we finally encountered reindeer. This part of T-land is known as the part where they herd reindeer (in the southwest they herd yaks, in the southeast it's camels, here it's reindeer, and everywhere else sheep and goats). However, there aren't many left who actually do herd them fulltime, and we didn't see any until we were driving home and a farmer was herding these across the road.

What we did see a lot of was wildflowers! I have traveled a lot in North America, and even in the Yukon and Alaska I have never seen them like this. Every little meadow is just bursting with color - it really was entrancing. I wanted to stop the car every 10 minutes to take more pictures, but we were going along with others so we couldn't. This is a tiny meadow where we stopped for a potty break, and some of the flowers I found in it:

It was really something to see huge fields just full of them with the mountains as a backdrop - made me thankful to know the Author of beauty.

And that should do it, I suppose. Here are the boys just so you can see how big they're getting:

So, as always, thanks for stopping by, and I'm going to just end with another whole post full of scenery pictures. Talk to you again soon.

2011-07-23T17:36:00.004+04:00

A Quick Post

2011-07-15T19:46:00.005+04:00

So, we're about to head out here:

Life is so tough, sometimes, isn't it?

Anyway, before we go we thought we'd throw in a quick post. Life has been going on as usual these last couple of weeks, and there's little to report outside of culture and language study. Much as I'm sure you're all dying to read about the weird way T handles the passive, or something equally as intriguing, I need to go to bed soon. Tomorrow we leave for the beautiful lake you see above, to camp there for a week with a T family. Pictures will follow in our next post, but for now you'll have to be content with the meager pickings on our camera since last week.

Aaaand, hmmm, wow, these really are meager pickings. The lovely Bobbie managed to contrive a way to make North Carolina barbecue here in T-land last week, which is quite a feat. Here it is, combined with some baked beans to make your tongue water a bit.

What else do we have? Here's a picture of the temple in all its summer glory. Really is quite pretty when all the flowers are in bloom.

I'm afraid that's pretty much it. The rest of this post is just pictures of the boys looking cute, so if you're not a grandparent you might want to just skip it. Check back next week for pictures of us at the lake.

Steven is doing pretty well with his schoolwork; here's a recent page of "A's" he managed:

I guess we'll let Godzilla have the last laugh. And thanks to the boys' babushka for giving us that homemade playmat; though the boys tend to destroy the city more often than anything else, they still enjoy playing with it.

Celebrations

2011-07-07T07:39:00.006+04:00

Since they don't really celebrate American Independence here, we decided that we would give the T people a taste of what we do on July 4th. So, we had the people from our friends' English club and a few other people who wanted to come over for a party. We made cheeseburgers, had coke, decorations, and even an American Flag cake (which I must admit, I'm pretty proud of). After eating we discussed a little about why we celebrated that day. We had a good time hanging out and getting to know our friends a little better. Thank you, Erin, so much for all your help.

The boys always like to "help" when I make dessert. Here is Matthew "helping". Notice the batter in his hair. Guess how that happened?

On another subject, most of you may have forgotten that my sister gave my twin and I the best birthday memory ever by taking us to Sea World. It was 4 days of ultimate fun and relaxation. So, what did I do for her birthday this year? I forgot it. Not only did I forget it, it was a week before I remembered. I feel SO bad. So, this is my attempt at making up for it. I love you, Andrea.

Note from Jesse: Your birthday cake was delicious, Andrea. Sorry you didn't get to eat any of it. :-)

Getting Outside!

2011-06-25T14:44:00.006+04:00

Eat your heart out, Rembrandt

So, I know it's been a while since we updated this, so I should apologize. Even though I've been making a scrupulous effort not to do that, since a friend told us a while back that our blog always started with an apology for not posting. This time, though, it's been three weeks, which really is excessive, so an apology is in order. And now I've managed to stretch it into an entire paragraph, which should really annoy that friend, which was my whole intent here. ;-)

Anyway, what is up? It's hard to post a blog just about language study, so I'm going to skip that, even though it's what takes up most of our time, and go straight to the great outdoors. You see, T-land really is a fantastic place when it's warm. It's beautiful, the weather is great, and there are chances to be outside doing fun stuff everywhere.

When the weather isn't nice, we spend a decent amount of time inside on our computers, and even the boys are starting to get into that habit!

So, when the weather turns and we can go outside, we try to do it as often as possible! We have climbing gyms, ...

parks to hike in ...
and beaches to visit!

Bobbie takes the boys down to the beach at least a couple times a week while I'm at work. It's great fun, and they really, really love it.

And who wouldn't, really? How often can you say you had a chance to get really muddy?

Of course, summer has its downside as well. One of them is "the fluff." We have these trees here, no idea what kind, that produce an unbelievable amount of it. Their seeds pop in the late spring and then all June we get this irritating white stuff floating everywhere in the wind.

I don't know if you can see it here in this picture taken at the playground where we take the boys a lot, but in the foreground it's swirling around.

But most of all everything is great. Just the other day we went with our coworkers out for shashlik. They found a new spot on our side of the river, which was beautiful!

We grilled up some chicken, so that was a bit different (usually shashlik is pork), but it was very yummy! We had a great time, just throwing an American (well, Canadian, actually, I think) football around. The other people nearby were quite intrigued as to what it was!

And of course we had a feast, and the kids played around. Including playing in the sand right next to the grill, and you only get one guess as to whether that ended with us eating sandy chicken or not.

Apparently they got enough energy out to take them all the way down to zero, because the ride home looked like this:

T-land really is a great place to live! We're SO thankful to the one who brought us here for the opportunity to live and work in such a spectacular example of his handiwork.

Thanks for thinking of us, and we will try to keep this updated more often. For now, it's just culture and language study pretty much all the time, so that's the main thing to keep in mind. We're still trying to find a way to get the boys into kindergarten, and we have some upcoming plans that we'll be blogging about soon (a trip to Moscow, some time upriver in a small village with some friends, etc), so we'll keep you posted here on all the latest with the Wandering Family's doings.

Remont

2011-05-30T18:26:00.009+04:00

Some of you have been following the Wandering Family around for a while now, and have seen many pictures of our glorious T-land apartment like the one above. It has been a great place, and we love it very much.

There was, however, one minor problem with it - it was very hard to have guests here! The kitchen seen above, you see, was a mere 2 meters wide (6 feet), and though it is plenty long and has plenty of cabinets, it's hard to fit a table into. In fact, just outside the left edge of the above picture is the wall separating the kitchen from the living room, a wall that meant that having more than 4 people sit down to a meal together was impossible.

Obviously, as part of our job revolves around spending time with people, this didn't work very well. We made do by carrying our table into the living room (a complicated process to get around the wall and through the door) each time we had company, but we dreamed of something better.

Enter the Russian term "remont." While it can be translated "remodel," remont can be anything from a new window to a completely redesigned floor plan. Our goal was simply to make our home as guest-friendly as possible, and we wanted to be able to host small gatherings in our home. So, the wall became the obvious target.

You can really see it better in this picture - a mere 15 cm separating our living room from our kitchen. Originally I remember looking at it and wondering if we could turn it into a bar, like you see in the US so often, but after some thought we realized this would be inflexible and probably culturally weird to the people here, so we decided that the whole wall had to go (well, barring 90 cm that we left on the end to hide the refrigerator and allow us to keep the two outlets).

So began a process that ended up being much lengthier than originally planned:

The first task was to take down the old wallpaper from the kitchen walls. This was actually fairly simple with a spray-bottle to wet it down first, but during the process the ceramic stovetop was cracked when a worker slipped and stepped on it. Then, to make matters worse the stove was left unattended with the microwave on top (the obvious thinking being that as the stove was broken, nothing bad could be done).

Of course, that gave the very sneaky Matthew just the chance he needed to slip in and turn the stove on, which hadn't been unplugged yet. Broken or not, the ceramic stovetop heated up enough to start the microwave sitting on top on fire, which we doused with water. Miraculously, though scorched the microwave manages to still work; how, I'm not sure.

But we hadn't even come close to reaching the end of our saga yet. The next thing we did, as seen above, was to cover all our furniture and move out in anticipation of the workmen coming the next day to take down the wall. It turned out to be cheaper to hire someone to come in and do it than to buy the tool it would cost to cut the wall, so we decided to hire it out.

Of course, that was only how it seemed initially. In point of fact, the workmen I had agreed a price with called in the next morning, reporting that they had drunk too much the night before (a holiday) and wouldn't be coming in. Sigh. So, I waited with anticipation the next day for their arrival, only to get a call, 2 hours late, saying that the sum we had agreed on (about $200) wasn't enough, and they wanted to double it. They were still planning on coming, though.

Well, I wasn't going to stand for the obvious blackmail, so I told them that I was no longer interested in their services. Fortunately, the company I had contacted to do the electrical rewiring once the wall was out was there looking over the job, and I asked him if they could do wall removal. It turns out the "electricians" were more "jack-of-all-trades," and for less than the original $200 agreed to add the wall demolition to their tasks.

So, finally, after four days of the family living elsewhere since all the furniture and cabinets were covered and/or taking up bedrooms, work began. I covered the archway leading to the rest of the apartment in plastic to minimize dust penetration, which was basically a futile operation. Dust got everywhere!

This is the wall, mid-demolition. We had helped our coworkers, who lived in an identical apartment, with a similar remodel job a year before, so we knew basically what to expect. However, in contrast to that job, we wanted to go all the way to the ceiling which was interesting.

We were pretty confident that the wall wasn't load-bearing (certain is a shade too strong for our confidence, perhaps), but we did expect to find the wall at least butting up against the floor above us. However, as you can see, what we really found was that it ended a few cm short of the ceiling, and was filled in with a kind of thatch which was then plastered around. Definitely not load-bearing, then, unless the engineer has a lot of faith in the structural support ability of twine.

Anyway, eventually the whole wall came down and we were left with this:

Now came the rewiring job, an interesting task in itself. I knew that the original wiring did not include a ground wire, having wired some of the apartment myself in the bedrooms. I wanted to add a ground wire to at least these two rooms of the apartment, just because it makes me feel all warm and cozy inside to know that something is done right, even if I can't see it.

My native electricians, however, were resistant. Finally, they told me why - "Even if we put in a cable with a ground, there's nothing to attach it to in your circuit box," I was advised. "The building wasn't wired for it when it was built, and there's literally no way we can ground it that way." I was advised, instead, to scrape some paint off the hot water pipe in the bedroom and run a wire to that "if you really want a grounded outlet somewhere." Hmmm.

Of course, the method for replacing the wiring left something to be desired,in my book, seeing as it was just channels cut into the cement wall. The wires were just laid into these channels, and then cemented over. Meaning, of course, that should I ever want to replace any of them we have to gouge the whole thing out again. Again, no alternative, I was told (even when I suggested at least cementing in PVC cable channels or something).

Eventually, a "master" (workman, in Russian) came and completed the final task I was paying other people to do; the plastering over of all the channels and gouges that had been wrought by the electricians. It looked about like this when he left:

At this point, we were clearly on the home stretch. Lots left to be done, though. First was sanding the plaster/cement as smooth as possible for repainting. The hardest part was the ceiling, where only sunglasses kept the dust from getting into my eyes.

The walls eventually looked like this and were ready to start painting:

We decided that the lavender of the previous paint regime was going to be replaced by the more neutral tan. We did both the ceiling and walls this color, and the painting part went by fairly quickly (2 days, I think?).

Bobbie and I took turns being cooped up in the office with the boys, with whoever wasn't with them coming over to keep working on the place. She couldn't do everything, so of course she spent more time with them, but fortunately our coworkers volunteered to watch them for a day or two while we painted, which made things go much quicker. Thanks, D and E!

Once painting and moulding was done (the moulding was super-interesting; it's just styrofoam that you glue on. Surprisingly easy except the corners!) we had new linoleum to lay. We really missed former flooring salesman David on this part; I accidentally bought really poor quality linoleum (not much of a choice, it was the only one they had where I could match the kitchen and living room) and we struggled to get it really smooth. Still isn't perfect, but we made the best of it.

That was the living room; then came the kitchen:

So, after all that .... I give you "The Completed Apartment!"

As you can see, things are nicely opened up into a great big space. We can move our table around, expand it (we can seat 10 when it's fully opened up), or even slide it away for big gatherings in the room. Just added the curtains today; we've been waiting until it was totally complete before posting up these pictures.

Looking from the living room into the kitchen; the wall stub there on the left used to expand across the whole photo and separate the two rooms.

And looking towards the prokhozhoye (foyer? is that a good translation?) from the balcony door:

We really do feel blessed to enjoy such a wonderful place to live, and even more so now that it's so much more guest-friendly! We hope to have many people over and have lots of chances to grow close to them in the place that he's given us here.

I'll conclude with one of the best things about our apartment, even before the remodeling job: this is the beautiful sunrise from our balcony window this morning!

Thanks so much for thinking of us during this somewhat lengthier-than-expected process. We're back to language and culture study again as of Thursday, and hope to really see some improvements this summer. We've already had a chance to use the "new" place twice to host people, and we're loving it!

2011-05-15T13:07:00.000+04:00

T-land Wrestling

2011-05-06T13:56:00.007+04:00

So, on May Day, a popular Russian holiday, we heard from friends that there was a big Khuresh (T wrestling) festival down at the stadium. We decided to go check it out.

It turned out to be a pretty big day out! I had been to a minor tournament before, but not one of the big ones so this was a whole new experience. It was a lovely day, though - perfect for being outside.

The day kicked off with a series of dances and performances, the first of which represented T-land's history. Above you can see the dancers representing the Mongols, as they lead their attack on T-land (represented by the white "yurts"). They were followed by the Chinese and Russians, in what had to have been fraught with political symbolism which we were fortunate to not really understand.

Anyway, the T people "won" in the end, and then all danced around what was basically a Maypole. Here's the concluding ceremony as everyone celebrates that T-land retained its culture:

This guy for some reason was chosen as the representative of the T people's resilient victory, coming in on a cart beating a giant drum. All of the announcing was in T and thus we understood little, so I'm admittedly piecing together the story as best I could, but I think we got the gist of it.

Then a proud moment - an acquaintance of ours and good friend of our coworkers', M, was chosen to hoist the T flag. He's a champion wrestler and in fact was participating in the day's main event.

Khuresh is really an interesting sport. Half Western-style wrestling, half sumo, it's about getting your opponent to lose his balance and fall. The ceremony begins with a brief dance, called the Dance of the Eagle, where the wrestler waves his arms high and circles. He will generally then slap his thighs, front and back, and get into position for the match.

The success or failure seems to come down to the hold that each wrestler takes, so it can be quite a cagy affair at first, with lots of circling and slapping the other man's arm down, etc.

Eventually, in most matches, some sort of hold is formed (the only exception being a successful trip, which is rare). If one wrestler has the advantage, he will use his leverage to try to throw his opponent. If they're evenly gripped, it can last a while as both struggle to gain an advantage.

Eventually, one of them gets into a superior position, either by strength or balance, and then tries to throw the other. Whoever touches the ground first with anything other than his foot is out. If both of them fall together, and it isn't clear who touched first, the crowd will shout "Deng!" (meaning "tie") and a draw is declared. Then they start again from the beginning.

Below I managed to get a shot of a throw in progress - you can see that the wrestler nearest to us is going to lose in about half a second, though you might have to click to make it bigger to see it.

Here's a video of a brief match - sometimes they can go on for 5 or 10 minutes, sometimes they're over just this quick:

It was rather a warm day, and the boys got a bit cranky (after all, they didn't seem that interested in the wrestling so it was just a day where they had to sit on some bleachers in the sun all day). Fortunately, Matthew slept a little in the afternoon.

The tournament was a knockout style with 64 entrants, much like the American March Madness college basketball tournament. Whoever won, advanced, and whoever lost was out. Our friend M made it to the final, meaning he won 5 straight matches, but he lost the last one.

Between each round, to give the wrestlers a chance to recover, there were performances of songs and dances. This is a dance which somehow mocked the wrestlers, I think, because it involved some of the same moves, but exaggerated, and the T spectators found it hilarious.

So that was that. I thought I'd put a few pictures up of the boys just for the grandparents, so the rest of you can feel free to go. These are from the continuation of Matthew's birthday celebration. We took the boys to the pay-per-play playground in town, and I think they really enjoyed it.

It's kind of a similar place to a McDonald's Playplace, though a bit bigger and with a little trampoline. Unfortunately, it's way too expensive for us to do regularly ($8 per kid for a half hour!), but it was fun as a special treat to let them play for a half hour on it.

Steven looks longingly at the arcade games, most of which I'm sure he couldn't figure out how to play even if we did let him!

So, that's about it. Thanks for stopping by - if you're wondering what you can keep in mind for us this week, it's remodel week! We've been wanting to take out the wall between our kitchen and living room (so we can have more company over) for a while, so we're finally doing it. Or will be, whenever the contractors actually come.

We had an agreement with one to do it, but then he called and said he couldn't come, and then the next day he wanted more money than he had originally agreed on. Now we're on to contractor #2, which seemed more promising at first but they couldn't come today because the truck that's going to haul away the debris is in the shop. Hopefully next week?

We'll be sure to put up some pictures of the work whenever it's all done. Have a good week!

Matthew's Кылбык

2011-04-30T06:21:00.009+04:00

In American culture, we have certain cultural milestones along life's path that we see as highly significant. Birth, graduation from high school, first job, marriage, etc. - there are certain events or dates that we view as transitions from one phase of life to the next, and we celebrate them accordingly.

T people have these dates as well, of course, though they don't always correspond with the Western milestones due to differences in worldview and lifestyle. For example, one of the T milestones is a man's return from his mandatory service in the army, which we don't share as we don't have mandatory military service. One of the most important life transitions is when a child turns 3 years old, at which point he/she celebrates a "кылбык," pronounced "kylbyk."

It's particularly important for a male child, as T people don't cut a boy's hair until he turns 3, because he's vulnerable to spirits and they don't want them to know that he's a boy before that. As a result, a boy's third birthday is a big occasion, and there is a hair cutting ceremony where all the male guests help to cut his hair and wish him a long and happy life. Well, I give you that brief T culture lesson because it explains much of today's post - Matthew turned 3 on Thursday, so we had a кылбык for him. But more on that in a bit.

The Saturday before the festivities, we went for a walk down at the park, and thought we'd share some of the pictures from that trip first. The weather has turned really nice here, and we've been enjoying the time outside.

The park is a bit grim still, as the green really hasn't started to shoot up, but the boys had a great time playing on the monkey bars and spitting into the water from the bridge.

It was a day for treats, so we took the boys to the stolovaya for supper and ice cream afterwards. Don't worry, we didn't let Steven eat all this by himself!

So, the party! We had quite a few of our T friends come over for the celebration - even S came in from the village to celebrate the important occasion with us.

Normally, T people would rent out a restaurant or dance hall and have the celebration there, complete with MC, dancing, and lots of alcohol, but we didn't want to go that direction. We sort of made it a combination Western/T birthday party, although the ladies seemed to spend most of the time looking at our photo albums.

The kids, of course, had a fantastic time. There were new toys, balloons, and it took them about 5 minutes to turn the perfectly clean and organized kids' room into a disaster:

Of course, we did still have the Western-style cake with Happy Birthday song.

Matthew was very proud of his new T vest. What a self-satisfied grin!

Then we all paused for Matthew to receive his well-wishes and have his hair cut by the men.

You can see this much better illustrated in the video below, in which my friend A gives Matthew a blessing (I can't really give you a translation beyond the fact that he wishes him wisdom and wealth at some point) and then cuts a small snippet of hair. The hair is supposed to be saved; it is a symbol of the "wealth" of the child - the guarantee, as it were, of the blessings that were pronounced upon him on this day.

Bobbie thought up a genius family tradition way back on Steven's first or second birthday - to blow up enough balloons to cover the floor and hide the presents among them. That way the birthday boy gets to play in the balloons while he looks for his presents underneath them. We didn't have enough balloons to really do it well, but we did our best.

Of course, after that the party was mostly about playing with the new toys (and the calzones and taco salad!).

It was a really good time. Matthew was even given a goat (a traditional gift at the кылбык is lifestock - it's when the child starts his herd, which he will increase over his lifetime)! So, by T standards, Matthew is now the richest member of the family, being the only one with his own herd of animals. We'll have to go visit it sometime and take pictures for you (it stays out in the village with the person who gave it to us).

Just an Ordinary Day ...

2011-04-21T17:21:00.008+04:00

When we were last in the States, I gave a series of talks on "A Day in the Life of Jesse and Bobbie." The idea was to allow people who had a general idea of what we do here to have a more specific understanding of what we do on a typical day.

The problem with this is, of course, that there aren't that many typical days. A day can be as simple as getting up and going to the office to study and coming home, or it can be as tedious as all day spent waiting in line at the bank to pay the water bill (only to find out that the lady who collects that particular bill isn't working today, so you need to go somewhere else, and then that lady only takes exact change, which you don't have, so ... and it goes on forever).

So, in that spirit, I thought I'd tell you about my interesting day yesterday.

First, it's important to the story that you know about Beast. That's the ironic nickname I gave to our coworkers' new car, seen above, largely due to its distinctively non-manly appearance. David was in a nearby (well, nearby by Siberian standards. It is a 13-hour drive, so it's not really "nearby," I suppose) city last week and bought it.

Having bought the car, he wanted to take it down to visit their mini-herd of sheep that they keep with some friends of ours out in a village. It's time for the sheep to be sheared, and David wanted to learn how T people do that. The friends who take care of the sheep said to come by some morning and we'd do it, so we jumped into Beast yesterday morning for the ride down.

Typical of T events or invitations, this one turned out to be misleading. The sheep were already out on the pasture when we arrived in mid-morning, so no shearing could occur. Since that was the whole reason we'd come, we decided to sit back and let the day take us where it would and just learn as much culture as we could while going along for the ride (this is actually an important part of culture study and a really valuable skill for those in our line of work).

We started off watching our friend S saddle his horses. Not having enough language to work out what was being said, David and I managed to understand something about a saddle that was left somewhere (we weren't at all sure why) and another brief statement about two lost cows. Saddling the horses requires catching them, so we watched S maneuver his lasso until he eventually roped the two he wanted and got them saddled up.

At this point we thought maybe we were going to ride somewhere, but no, instead two other guys left on the horses and we watched another cowboy scrape the winter coat from another horse with a stick:

Then S said that we needed to get into the Beast and go looking across the plain (possibly for the missing saddle? Or the cows? We didn't really know.).

We couldn't find whatever it was we were looking for, though, and ended up at an old Soviet "brigada," where a bunch of people used to live and farm wheat. Of course, as soon as they stopped forcing people to live there and work, everyone left, so what remains are the skeletons of a bunch of combines. Goes to show what happens when you try to effect long-term change without understanding the culture, I guess.

Anyway, we stopped and talked to the old guy who lives here with his family, and ate lunch with them. Still not sure what was being talked about, but lunch was good and everyone was nice. Then we set off with the old man with us in the car - presumably he knew something about what we were looking for?

Sure enough, he managed to take us right to where the saddle was lying on the ground. The cows were never mentioned again, so I suppose we misunderstood something. We picked up the saddle and continued back to the village.

But not before spotting this cowboy all by his lonesome in the beautiful landscape (he's the little speck beneath the trees).

Home, sweet home. Well, S's home, anyway - and the Beast was doing a fine job of making his way across the rough steppe roads, much better than I would have thought after just looking at him. I was beginning to think that the "ironic" part of his nickname might have to be dropped as he was proving himself worthy of the name full stop.

Another stop was made in the middle of the plain for S to get out and check this horse. I don't know how he saw it from 500 yards away, but there was a newborn foal lying on the ground and the mother was staying nearby. It was S's horse which he had turned out to feed a few days back and not seen since, so he was relieved to see that everything was OK with mom and baby. Not that he did anything about it; he left them out there to wander home on their own, which they did later that afternoon.

T men seem to spend a good deal of time just sort of sitting around in a group. I am still not very good at this (the way my knees are shaped I have a very hard time squatting) so mostly I stand, like the guys in this picture.

Eventually, a hunting trip was proposed. We agreed, not really having anything better to do, to go along to watch the proceedings.

The style of hunt for the day was a drive, meaning that some guys got out and waited at the edge of a forest while others drove around and deposited themselves every couple of hundred yards on the other side. Then, when everyone was ready the first guys would walk through whooping and hollering and theoretically scaring the animals out to the second group, who waited with guns ready.

When this proved unsuccessful, and the drive was completed, we packed up and moved on to another location and did it all over again. This is me during drive #2, I think.

Lo, and behold, drive #3 actually led to success! One of the hunters bagged a 7-point buck, in full velvet, so we all gathered for a portrait (except David, who was driving the car around to the spot).

What followed was a fascinating bit of culture, from the extremely interesting butchering style to the way the meat was processed, etc. Warning: the next few pictures might prove hard for Western sensibilities, so skip them if you don't want to see where your meat comes from.

The deer was hung similar to how we do in the West, but only after skinning the legs, which was done with only a small cut and the rest by sheer brute force (not even a circular cut by the hooves - you simply had to rip the hide free). The forelegs came off first, and the meat was just hung on surrounding trees while we worked, piece by piece.

We didn't use all the offal, but more of the innards were definitely saved than I've seen back in the US. The liver was particularly prized, and they sliced into it with 7 or 8 deep cuts and put it right on the coals (a small fire was started as soon as we started the butchering). In the lower right there's a small piece of backstrap that I skewered and threw on the fire just to have that as well.

Eventually there were enough coals to cover the liver completely, and it was buried in them.

Then they shook off most of the ashes and threw it onto the ground to split up. I would say it was about 80% cooked by this point, and the rawer interior was particularly prized (though not by me, it must be said).

Anyway, eventually all the meat was cut up into rough hunks and put into the car. I had thought that we were through, but the hunter who shot the deer had seen another buck run off, which couldn't be allowed. We piled into Beast, who was handling the steppe with utter aplomb, to go after it.

Alas, it was not to be. We tried another couple of drives after the escaped animal, but it proved wily enough to evade us. One would have to do. But at least I got to enjoy the spectacular beauty of T-land while they tried!

And that closed out the day. We arrived back at S's house around 9, drank some tea and headed back to the city. A long day, to be sure, but a great one!

David and I were talking about it afterward and I was marveling at the number of times people have told me "I could never do what you do." I guess we're all wired differently, because after such a fun day I can't even imagine having to go to work in an office or a bank or something for 40 hours a week, when I could be out hiking the steppe and searching for saddles and deer with my T friends instead!

Of Sandwiches and School

2011-04-01T17:41:00.008+04:00

So, my savvy sentient scholars, seeking a substantive scoop on the situation in Siberia - here you are! And with that, I've officially exhausted my capacity for alliteration and now refuse to use another "s"-word for the duration of this post.

Well, honestly, it's not that exciting. As you may have come to expect, we continue to acquire culture and language. It's progressing, nothing too exciting but nothing too depressing either. Perhaps I'll post a thought or two on the topic of why T can frustrate at a later date. But for now, this:

One of my favorite deli items is a Reuben. Yeah, I know, it's not really that important, but I had by one manner or another come to want one about a month ago. No problem, except that to make a Reuben, you need a couple of things which aren't available here. The first of these is kraut.

No big deal, as it turns out. Cabbage is readily available, and we even managed to find ocean-sourced (no, that doesn't count as an "s"-word) chloride-containing curing chemicals here. No idea why that is available for purchase in T-land, but it is. A mere 3-week wait, and we had fresh homemade kraut, which I must comment beats the canned variety hands down (even if it is made in a bucket, which feels odd to me).

Next on the list was corned beef. It turns out that "corned" just means brined, and though this was a bit more complicated, homemade corned beef is mostly about patience. Fortunately, the timing for the beef and the kraut was about equal, meaning I could begin them both and just wait 3 weeks for them to be ready. The beef admittedly doesn't look as appetizing as it normally does, due to the absence of the ingredient which makes it reddish, but fortunately that ingredient is only used for appearance and makes no difference to the taste of the meat.

In the end, after 21 days - a Reuben! A bit too intense on the flavoring, perhaps, but when I fried up the meat a bit and tried again it was better. Certainly more effort than it's worth, but it was more about the process than the end result.

Well, while I've been engaged these last three weeks in the production of a hoagie's cousin, what have Bobbie and the boys been up to? I'm glad you asked, as I was tiring of talking about me and I'm positive you were tiring of reading it!

Well, the lovely Bobbie has been up to a few activities with our coworkers' English club, as well as giving a lecture on American culture down at the university. Her reception was good, but even better was that of the cookies Bobbie brought along to demonstrate what true American culture is about - eating junk food!

Also, Bobbie has been educating our two boys. They've been doing really well, and our oldest is actually reading pretty well (one word at a time, granted)! His linguistic progress has been a bit torpid, but he is making progress.

At least one young lad is proud of his ability to determine "little" from "big."

Of course, they've been going outside to play as well. It's been above freezing lately, meaning that everything is just beginning to melt. This is really the worst time of year to be outside; it's easier to deal with -40 than it is to walk through the mud and icy runoff. But once you've gotten to where you're going - it's glorious!

The boys have in one fashion or another (I blame their mother) gotten into the habit of waking me up by jumping on top of me. Then they always want to play the game of "cave" where they explore a cave made by me crossing my legs under the covers. There are always new and exciting things to find down by the end of the bed (dragons and bears both reside there regularly, apparently) if you have an imagination!

Future chefs. Or present chefs, I guess. I'm not really certain of the exact criterion for "chef" certification.

Our eldest giving his best Macaulay Culkin impersonation:

Anyway, I think that will do it for now. Hope you enjoy your week, and make certain you check in with us again next time!

Edit: I have added a video, because ... well, just because I can, mostly.

B's Photo Post

2011-03-19T14:14:00.017+03:00

I was looking through our pictures and videos we took in the States and realized there are a lot of them that I wanted to post on this blog but never got around to it. So, since the only news here is that we are continuing our language studies and that J is helping a friend working in his cafe, here are some pictures/videos you can enjoy until our next post:

I love this picture. It combines the two joys in life, Christmas and fishing.

My crazy sister and me.

I was in charge of arranging the cupcakes for J's cousin's wedding. It was about to tumble over (very nerve racking).

This is how we spent one of our evenings with J's family - watching an NC State game. We had a good time (despite them losing).

This is what a plate of food will look like in heaven.

The Thanksgiving table:

This is how I found Matthew one evening. He loves sleeping on the floor.

I entered this in a photo contest on Allrecipes.com and won! No cash, unfortunately.

In our next post: interesting things. Even if we have to hurt someone to find some.

We're Home!

2011-03-10T20:11:00.004+03:00

... but we have been unpacking and haven't recharged our camera battery yet, so no pictures of home. Instead, I have a few pictures of our time in Moscow to tide you over.

We (or at least I) spent most of our time doing language consulting for the students there, but we did get to have a few "relaxed" evenings catching up with people or just visiting.

And of course, we had to take the chance to hang out with our old Moscow friends. Here's a sampling from our Sunday afternoon get-together:

And that's really about it. We did manage to take a whole bunch of horribly-lit photos of things for some reason, but I won't post any of them. Here's a cute picture of Matthew and little Violet, who seems to like him already! The camera battery is in the charger as we speak so hopefully next week's blog will have more exciting stories to tell.

In news, as I wasn't able to make up the bulk of the blog with photos like I usually do, we are pretty much settled back in. Both Bobbie and I have started meeting with language helpers again, and we're trying to refresh our memories of all the T we misplaced while we were in the US. It's coming back pretty quickly, thankfully.

The boys are doing well, and Steven has started his preschool work with Bobbie every day. He's also continuing his speech therapy, only with us doing it now at home instead of going to an actual therapist. Hopefully this will be able to meet his needs; he certainly seems to chatter quite a bit!

Oh, and we're sad to see our friends David and Christy and their 5 (soon to be 6) kids heading on to the next phase of their lives. We do know that he will be with them as they transition back to Germany.

And that's about it, I think. More pictures of north Asian life as they arrive, and in the meantime, thanks for stopping by.

Six Weeks in Pictures

2011-02-17T04:36:00.011+03:00

Well, it's been a while, but now that we're going home we'll try to keep this updated more often. Our last post covered our activities over the holidays, but here's what we've been doing since then:

Matthew and Steven both really enjoyed their trips to the museum with their grandparents. Steven in particular is going through a dinosaur-loving phase of his life, but Matthew enjoys them as well and loved the skeletons.

You can just hear him thinking "I think this thing could eat me ... where's Grandma?"

The giant shark - this thing could obviously eat all four of them without problem.

Playing with a favorite toy at Grandpa and Grandma's house:

Dancing with Grandma and cousin Aubrey:

No, Aunt Kellie, THIS is how you eat with chopsticks!

Steven's been going to preschool every afternoon, which has been great. Not only for us getting a bit of free time, but also for him to be in an environment with other kids and more structure than he usually gets at home. Here he is getting out of school:

Bobbie and her sisters and cousin Beth:

One of the best things about being here is the ability to go outside in the winter! I took Matthew and Steven to the park a week or so ago, and we had lots of fun.

Oh, and also in the last six weeks was Bobbie's ... um ... 23rd birthday! Yay for her!

Steven celebrates Mommy blowing out the candles like she's just won the World Cup. Matthew stares stoically.

Sneaky boy! Not to mention sneaky Mommy, who should have been spanking you instead of taking your picture!

Our farewell dinner (and last steak for a while) :*(

Matthew is here to say "Goodbye," and also that our next post will come at you from R-land again!

Random Photos from B

2011-01-31T08:45:00.007+03:00

More pictures I've been meaning to put up (mostly of our time in the mountains over Christmas).

Post-Holiday Post

2011-01-12T07:13:00.010+03:00

We're going to try something here. Last time we didn't post for a while we just posted a bunch of pictures with the next post and no one complained. Let's experiment by trying that again:

It occurs to me that perhaps the reason no one complained is that there is no way to complain. Without a comment function, the blog offers no recourse for disappointed readers to voice their concerns! Tyranny! We must revol ... message interrupted. This blog is now the possession of The Wandering Family™, and as such we are happy to announce that everything is right with the world and especially this page.

Ahem. So, the picture above is my brother S, in case you didn't recognize him. Along with his wife J (I'm not sure on the protocol on naming them, so I won't), he came into town for a few weeks, which we thoroughly enjoyed. One of the best things about this time in the US has been visiting with family. Speaking of which ...

My parents were also in town for the past couple of months. We went down and lived with them for a short part of that time, but had to say goodbye to them today as they flew back to Bolivia.

We also tried to get a family picture with them, but this is just a preview, as most of you will be getting our new card in the mail in the next few weeks, so I won't post the final picture here. This one will have to do in the meantime.

We did manage one with the whole family (minus my brother Gabriel). Look how cute we all are!

One of the fun things that Bobbie's family does is to rent a cabin in the mountains between Christmas and New Year's, a tradition that had started to fall by the wayside with everyone scattered around the world. However, with us and her twin sister Kellie back, they decided to do it again this year, and we had a great time.

Christmas presents were enjoyed by all.

As was the snow. Well, maybe I should say it was enjoyed by "most," as we see enough of it at home. We did have a good time playing in it, though.

And played indoor games as well, such as "shoot all the cans off the table with a rubber band."

The cabin did offer a spectacular view:

Surprisingly, kids and all, we managed a pretty good family photo with just one try:

We also went to a wedding since last we posted. Congratulations, Daniel and Jessica!

So, I'll leave you with that one of the boys, their cousins, and their great grandmother, who came in from South Carolina for a visit. More ... well, I'm not even going to promise a timeline any more. More whenever we have enough pictures and time to make it doable.

In Brief

2010-12-15T05:29:00.005+03:00

Well, it's not like I have nothing to say about what we're up to, but it's just that I haven't downloaded the pictures off our camera in a while. So, since I have so few, you'll just get a short post today. I did promise not to wait so long, so I thought it would be better to do a short one sooner rather than wait.

So, obviously, it's Christmas time! Which means that my wonderful and lovely wife needs to go borderline insane with decorating frenzy. This year she had a new accomplice - my brother's wife Julie. Together (and with some help from my brother, seen below) they put up all the lights. And before you go wondering why I'm not helping, I'll have you know that I'm opposed to the commercialization of Christmas and protest by refusing to participate in hanging lights. Either that or I'm a giant Grinch. I know which one Bobbie would say.

But really, I was at work, so I missed all the "fun."

And to be honest, if I had more pictures, I doubt I'd post these, but this is from a ladies' meeting that Bobbie went to last week. A cookie swap, actually - these are the aforementioned cookies (and other goodies):

And again, for lack of other options, the boys in Santa hats:

Edit: I felt bad about shortchanging you with this post, so I added this video from back in our trip. I tried to post it before, with no success, but here's Steven showing why he's going to be a world-class alpinist with guidance from our teammate back home, David.

If you're wondering how we're doing, the answer is pretty well. I'm definitely ready to go back home; it's not that I'm not enjoying my time here but it feels a bit like marking time until we can go back now. The boys are thriving under all the spoiling from the grandparents, and Steven is really coming along very well in his speech therapy. He's not quite up to where he should be, but he's miles ahead of where he was when we got here. Kudos to Bobbie for working with him so faithfully at home!

Matthew has visited several different therapists and evaluators now, all of whom have concluded that the initial diagnosis of autism was inaccurate, so we're thankful for that. He's starting to talk a good deal more as well, so it's possible he was just waiting for the example from his older brother!

Edit #2: I just discovered some more photos that I took with my phone. Terrible quality, I know, but still, interesting. I started working a part-time job at Honeybaked Ham recently (yes, the store that sells delicious, if overpriced ham) in the catering department. Mostly I just deliver the food to the businesses that order it for holiday parties, but I can make a mean ham tray as well now.

And I thought I would just show you what a great time we had with some friends last weekend shooting skeet. Who knew that I married one of the great skeet shooters ever? Just look at that form!

Fortunately, I managed to capture one of the few times she actually managed to hit a clay pigeon on video. The rest of the session was, well, not optimal, I think would be the generous way to say it. ;-)

Happy Birthday/Thanksgiving

2010-11-30T22:08:00.004+03:00

Well, when you haven't posted in forever, you feel like you should post a really long post to make up for it. But I started typing and got too lazy, so I was in a tough spot. It occurred to me, however, that "a picture is worth a thousand words," so, in that spirit, here's a 13,000 word essay on what we've been doing:

That's right - it was Steven's birthday! He turned 4, so of course we repeated our tradition of burying all the presents underneath piles of balloons for him to search out. Then we went outside and played on the playset with all the friends who came over.

Poppa was nice enough to make some burgers and hot dogs for everyone.

Which everyone loved:

The birthday boy enjoying some of his presents:

And blowing out the candles on his cake:

Trying to figure out the pen/computer thing that Bobbie's parents gave him:

All of that happened on Saturday. On Monday, which was his actual birthday, Mommy took Steven and cousin Aubrey out for ice cream and a playtime on the McDonald's playroom thing.

The other big event to happen since we last posted was Thanksgiving. I asked Bobbie for a picture to post representing Thanksgiving and this is what she gave me. Food, of course.

In other news, I've been trying to supplement the family larder with my best efforts at hunting, which had proven a failure on the first two or three attempts. Finally, last week, I killed what I thought was a doe but turned out to be a small buck. Don't worry, we don't believe in killing things we're not going to eat. We've already enjoyed one meal of venison, and there are a lot more in the freezer.

I thought that we had missed our chance to see my Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Carolyn and their daughter Alicia when we had to shorten our trip, but they were able to come down for a visit here! We had a great time hanging out with the whole family over and Mom and Dad's house (remind me to tell you about how they got hooked up with a great house for their stay sometime).

It's been SO fun having the boys together with their grandparents these past few months. Here my mom is pulling them in the wagon as we all cleaned up the leaves from my in-laws' yard the other day.

And that will about do it. Tune in next week (or so; I promise I won't let it go this long again) for the latest adventures of the Wandering Family.