The Trip

OK, so I've been meaning to get this up for a little while now, but I don't have anything else to do tonight so here goes:

One of the things we've heard a lot about since we got here is how different Moscow is from the rest of Russia and how we shouldn't learn just Moscow culture and miss the vast cultural gulf between that and the average Russian village. To put it in perspective, that would be like wanting to understand the average person in a small town in North Carolina, but going to Manhattan to study the language. You can certainly learn English in Manhattan, but to identify with someone culturally from Fuquay you've left yourself a lot to do.

With that in mind, we took a trip a couple of weeks ago to Kolomna, a medium-sized city 100 km from Moscow for a couple of days. It was a great trip, and really gave me a much more positive impression of Russian life than I think I had before. We like Moscow, but to be honest, we're not really city people, and so it was great to see some trees and fields, and hear, well, just nothing at all for a while. It's funny how you live somewhere with constant background noise for so long and then you leave and you can just hear the silence. Anyway, on to the pictures:

The trip started pretty early in the morning, and Steven wasn't feeling too well (actually, the lovely B missed out on some of the trip due to taking care of him, as he got worse the whole time we were there, but that's another story). The train ride there, just under 2 hours, was a chance to catch up on some sleep after a 5:45 am departure.

Kolomna is known for being a center of the Orthodox church, with a bunch of monasteries and old churches there. Here Andrey and I are in a beautiful rose garden in a monastery. It was a great chance to find out about cultural Orthodox practices, some of which were really fascinating.

If you're wondering about the level of closeness, which is distinctly un-American, you have to remember that the Russian sense of personal space is quite different from our own. At first I found it disconcerting when Russian men (and women!) would grab my arm while talking to me, but now I'm starting to get used to it. Pretty soon I guess I'll start doing the same myself, and then someday I'll screw up and do it to some American guy when we get back there. All part of acculturation, I guess.

This is the inside of one of the old Orthodox churches in Kolomna. Very interesting cultural finds in there. One of the interesting things to me is the obvious lack of benches or chairs. During a service all the people crowd into that little space and stand up, and it can go on for hours! A dedicated lot, it would seem. Very beautiful church, with lots of paintings of saints, etc. everywhere.

This is a look at the downtown area of Kolomna where all the monasteries and churches are. I really like the architecture of the churches, and I even like the onion domes that were a little strange to me when we got here.

Country houses all have a garden, although they don't actually call this a garden. This is a "yard-garden" (J's loose interpretation), and the actual "garden" is really what we would call a field, albeit a small one. They grow flowers here, and at their garden they grow vegetables and things to eat. Each family has a small field to grow things on for themselves, and during the Soviet days a lot of the food the people ate came from the private "gardens" rather than the collective farms.

One of the reasons we won't be doing this very often - it was expensive! This is what you get for $80 a night in Kolomna - not exactly the Ritz but it was the cheapest place in town.

This beautiful little village was within walking distance of the town center, so we hiked over there. The big set of buildings you see there is a monastery that the Orthodox church rebuilt after the Soviet system fell apart.

Kolomna is right on the river, so we took a tour down to the riverbank. Absolutely beautiful, with fields and forests as far as you could see on the far bank.

The old Kremlin wall - "kremlin" (or the Cyrillic equivalent, Кремль) just means "fortress" in Russian, so there's a big one in Moscow that everyone knows about, but just about every other town had one as well. This one was built in the 1300's, and this chunk of it is still in pretty good shape. All around the old downtown you can see the big towers from the fortress walls.

We even got to eat in a Russian restaurant while there. I had tongue (the near plate) which I hadn't had since Bolivia, and although it was more tender here it wasn't really hot and thus not as good. I also got a really salty fish dish and a kind of dill soup. They really like dill here in Russia and I admit I've really developed a tasted for it. B had some meat dish with potatoes - all of it was good. She told me she plans to blog on Russian food sometime but I can just preview it by saying it's all very good (except kefir, which is so bad it deserves its own post sometime).

Every town in Russia seemingly has their own World War II monument. Having a more Western heritage, I think sometimes it's easy to forget that the Russians also made massive sacrifices, with unbelievable death tolls during the war, to help defeat the Axis. This one is a statue of the soldier's head, with names of war heroes carved on posts (outside the picture) who died during the war. Oh, and sorry about getting my shadow in the shot - I couldn't see another way to get the whole thing in at that time of day.

So, I guess I'll leave you with this picture (except for the contest, of course). Russians love flowers and trees, and do a much better job of filling their cities with them than they do in America. This is a beautiful scene just outside the monastery in Kolomna.

And now, of course, to everyone's favorite: the What Is It For?™ for the week. As usual, the rules are that the first person to post the right answer in the comments section gets a point, and at some point I plan to tally up the points and award the winner with some sort of prize (maybe a souvenir from the motherland?). Last week's winner - codename "Greenspan," B's Mom recognized the item in the picture as a beet and gets the point. The national dish, of course, is борщ, or "borshch." Theories abound on whether it comes from Ukraine or Russia, but Wikipedia lists it as from "Eastern Europe," so I'm not going to pick sides.

No hints on this one, but your job is to figure out what the van below is used for. General answers are no good on this one - you'll have to be specific! I admit that I was a little surprised to know what this van's primary purpose is, so be creative and maybe you'll get lucky. Or maybe you're some sort of Russian genius and you know the answer. Happy guessing, and see you again next time.

Steven Walks!

OK, so I didn't get the camera out until he was halfway across the room, but we finally have proof:

Oh, and I absolutely prohibit any semblance of competitiveness between Noah and Steven as to who gets to which thing first, so let's just nip that in the bud right now. They're both equally cute and brilliant, and I won't hear otherwise!

Overdue: Sleepover Report

The Stroll Home: Not An Excited Group

OK, so I was going to do a blog about Russian foods for a while now but I don't have all the pictures for this. Instead, I've decided I'll just write about something I've been meaning to write for a while, and let J post about our out-of-town trip from last weekend next post.

Anyway, several weeks ago, before one of our coworker families headed East, I hosted a spend the night party at our apartment. Three girls attended altogether: Emma, who is 6 years old; Carina, who is 5 years old; and Sonja, who is 9 years old. All in all, we had a good time (considering the potential obstacles).

We spent the evening making carmel balls, which was a disaster but still tasted good. Then we decorated our own face masks, which didn't work because the glue wouldn't stick. We still gave it a good try, and had fun doing it. We also made our own indoors tent out of chairs and sheets. That actually turned out pretty good. Once we finished with the crafts, the girls laid down in their tent and watched a movie. I thought they would go to sleep afterwards considering it was so late, but as you probably have guessed they were wide awake. So I put another movie in and told them to turn the TV off when it was over and go to sleep and then I went to bed thinking it was over for the night.


Well, if anyone has ever had young girls over for a sleepover you know that it is never over. Three o'clock in the morning, as I was sleeping away, I was awakened by high voices saying "Mrs. B, we can't sleep". So, I thought "Another movie should do it". So I put in the last movie (each girl had brought a movie). Luckily, by the time it was over (it was about 5:30 am), all three girls were asleep but not for long. They woke up a few hours later. We made mickey mouse pancakes and then went to the park.


By this time the girls (and needless to say, me) were exhausted and sleep-deprived. What do you get when you combine 5-6 year-old girls who have been away from their parents all night and who have only slept for a few hours? Not a very cheerful group, I assure you (can you blame them?). It was about 5:00 pm when I got the last girl to her house (we had to take public transportation) and she fell asleep within an hour of getting home. So the lesson here is if you have a girls sleep over, make sure they sleep or don't plan a full day of activity.

To me, it just confirmed what I already knew. I don't think I could raise any girls. I'm emotional enough without having another girl in the house. If we do have another child, and it is a girl, she might end up being a tomboy. I raise my hat to all those mothers who have little girls. And to my mom to raised three girls. How did you do it?

We (and this is J now) don't have another cute picture of Steven this week, but he's doing well. He takes two steps now before falling, but still hasn't really "walked" anywhere. [EDIT: Steven just walked! Hip, Hip, Hoo... OK, so it's not the biggest deal in the world, but he just took 5 steps in a row, so I thought I would update.] He's been a little fussy lately with a bunch more teeth coming in, and he's added "Mama" and "Ba-Ba" (which we generously interpret as Bye-Bye) to his list of words. He won't say any of them when the camera is running, though, so it might be a while before we get a nice video of it to post on her as some have requested. As for other news regarding us, it's just language study day after day. Oh, and it's starting to get really cold here. This week we had a high of 8° one day (I think that's in the low 40's F), which means it's starting to creep into the range of "uncomfortably chilly" on occasion.

OK, on to this week's What Is It For™? contest. We were starting to run low on these in Moscow, what with the fact that a lot of stuff just doesn't stand out to us anymore and especially the fact that Moscow is a very modern city and doesn't have a lot in it that would make a Western European or American think twice. However, our trip to the country gave us lots of new pictures to throw out as we got to see a different side of Russian culture. Anyway, this one should intrigue you agricultural types.

Here you can see one of the many fields of this particular crop, and below a closeup of one plant. Hints: a different variety of this is grown in the Midwestern US, and it's the main ingredient in Russia's national dish.

So there you go. Standard rules apply - a point to the first responder with the correct answer, and this week there's a bonus: three bonus points if you know it in Russian (only one bonus point if you had to look it up). Answers, as always, in the comments section.

Coming next week (hopefully): a full report on the trip!

Dinner with Friends

Just call me Vegas ...

One of the problems with having a good internet connection is that now we're supposed to post to this thing more often. That can sound good, but since all of our days are basically the same, might lead to lots of posts about "today I learned how to put a word into the instrumental case male singular." Try not to yawn too hard!

Anyway, we have been enjoying our new apartment and getting settled back into our scheduled lives. Our teacher is back from out of town, and both our language helpers are here, so everything is full speed ahead. It can get a little wearisome to do the same thing day in and day out (especially when you start to feel that you're not making any progress), so your thoughts are appreciated for our motivation and attitude.

One of the nice things about starting to be able to chat (at least, if the people are patient and willing to make the effort to understand our "creative" sentences) is that we can have people over to our house for dinner and such. This is a big part of Russian culture - having people over and going over to other people's houses, and we are really starting to enjoy it. Last night we went over to B's language helper's apartment and ate with her and her parents, but our camera battery died and I don't have any evidence. However, a couple of days ago we had my (J's) language helper Andrey [Interruption: does anyone know the proper orthography for this name in English? Is it Andriy, Andrey, or Andrei?] and his wife and son over for supper:

This is Andrey and his wife Iulia. Really a great couple, and we're looking forward to getting to know them a lot better while we're here. A little tricky since their English is, well, worse than our Russian (which is not an attempt to say that our Russian is really good, if you understand :) Anyway, we had a good time, and I think mostly understood what each other was trying to say.


This is their son Pasha. Here he's sampling Steven's formula bottles, and he liked it so much he wanted both bottles at once! I didn't get a picture, but one of my favorite parts of the evening was when he got an ice cube out of the bowl. It was the first time he'd ever seen one, as Russians don't use them. He couldn't figure out what to do with it, but he sure like carrying it around and licking it to see how cold it was. Really cute.


Of course, Steven had to get in on the act and here he's trying to sample a brownie he snuck off the plate. Don't worry, we didn't let him eat it.


OK, so I don't have a contest this week. It was easy to come up with those things at first, but now it's getting harder. I don't know if it's because we've exhausted all the weird things or if we're just starting to get used to things the way they are here and don't think of them as different any more or what.

Oh, and I need to print a retraction of the contest we had a couple of weeks ago. We had been told that the boxes on the metro platforms were bike racks, but when we put that up last week, we were roundly denounced by our friends here! It seems that those boxes are used for storing the cleaning equipment for the metro staff. We'll have to deduct all the points awarded, it seems. Hopefully I'll come up with something for next week. Rich, Carroll, Karen, and Lydia were all very close to the right answer last week, but no one had it exactly right. The trailer is not so much an office for the construction workers, but where they live. (Of course, now I worry that I'm wrong on that, because now that I think about it it was another expat who told me that, but it makes sense.) Because housing is so expensive here, and a lot of the laborers are from out-of-town poorer areas, they are put up in these small trailers, which serve as a kind of dorm where several (rumor has it quite a few) will cram into the tiny trailer and live while construction is going on. It makes sense to me since I can't see where they would afford to live otherwise. A half-point for each of you.

We should have an interesting post next time - tomorrow we're going out of town for a 2-day trip to see what life is like outside Moscow and get some culture info on that. Saturday we might have more guests, and Andrey and I might go to a football game. Hopefully we'll get some good information and have an interesting post for you soon!

The New Apartment!

OK, so we've been just a little slack on getting this up, seeing as we've been in our new place now since Wednesday and had a good internet connection the whole time. However, the obvious theme for our first post here was the apartment, thus meaning that we needed some photos of the place. This, in turn, means that we had to unpack everything and clean it all up, so thus the delay. It is true that we were sleeping here as of Wed., but that just means that the boxes were in the apartment. It's taken us a few days to get stuff unpacked and for B to get the decor on the walls, etc. Now, however, we're ready to reveal it.

In a word, the apartment is great! We've been really fortunate to find such a nice place, and at a price that was less than some of the other places we had thought about. We're so grateful for it. It's what they call here a "3-room" apartment, meaning that not counting the hall, the kitchen or the bathroom(s), it has three rooms. It would be called a 2 bedroom apartment back in the US, but we've got it set up with a living room, our bedroom, and a combination office/Steven's room. Honestly, I don't think we've ever lived anywhere this nice before. On to the pics:

OK, so I had to put one in here of Steven. He's now taken his first step, but doesn't show any interest in getting that second leg off and actually walking. Here he curled up in a pile of clothes that was ready to be put away and B got a cute shot.

"It wasn't me!!"

Here Steven celebrates our new apartment by unrolling the toilet paper. Of course, B let him do it long enough to get a picture before fixing it.

OK, so Russians do bathrooms a little differently. The toilet is in one little closet-sized room, and the shower and faucet are in another room. Really ingenious - that way someone can be in the shower and you can still use the bathroom if you need to. Which is good, since apartments with more than one bathroom (in the American sense) are quite rare here.


Here's just a couple of pictures of our new kitchen, which is B's pride and joy. She absolutely loves the decor that we inherited from the last tenants, so she's pretty much kept it as is.

Here's the view from our kitchen window. We're quite fortunate to be able to look out and see green in our little park, and there's another quite large park just a 10-minute walk away. We're also just a 12-minute walk from the metro or bus, so it's easy to get places. If we feel the urge to walk to school, it takes just under an hour, but usually we take a bus. I'm starting to get a sense for how cold it will be here in the winter, though. The other day, as I walked to class, I could see my breath. Meanwhile, for those of you back in NC enduring 100 degree weather (that's 35+ for those of you here), it's still mid-August. Here, however, it already feels like fall.


Here's our nice new living room. The door there on the right leads to a small balcony, which we haven't used much yet but maybe if it gets warm again we might.

OK, so now on to the What Is It For?™ for the week. Last week, we had a picture of a metal box in the metro, and Lydia gets all the points for recognizing it as a box for your bikes. Of course, you don't actually have a bike at each end, but the idea is that you ride your bike from your house to the metro, park it in the box, and then ride the metro to work. A good system, if it's not 10 below. Then, the concept of bike riding takes a big hit. Big bonus points go to an unexpected (at least to me) winner of the "Who Said That?" contest, Rich. I'm disappointed in you, Martha - as a well-advertised Andy Griffith fan you should have caught the line B put up ("His whole body is a weapon!").

Anyway, this weeks puzzle is from a street near where we were living. Parked next to the road there were two of these small metal boxes (which seem to be a theme in this section) with windows, this time. They're about 15 feet long, 5 feet wide, and 6 feet tall. Any guesses as to what happens with these? As always, your guesses are welcome in the comments section.

Last post before we move!

That's right, folks! In under a week, we'll be moving to our new apartment. We're excited, but a little sad since it will mean saying goodbye to our friends Dan and Nancy who are living there now. It will be nice to have our own place for B to turn into a home, though. We did finally get our hot water back last week, so the guest apartment hasn't been nearly so tough for a while.

Anyway, we've been quite busy lately. Though our language teacer is gone, we're still doing our independent study. Not having to go to the office every day for class has opened up some time for other culture study events. B has done her regular adventures with her language helper, traipsing around the city in an attempt to begin to understand the Russian culture. I've gotten a chance to do a bit of wandering myself, doing things like sitting in the train station taking notes on what we see to ask about later. Quite interesting.

Oh, and thanks to all of you who have been thinking about my need for a language helper. I was able to finally find someone who had the time and desire to help me learn about the language and culture here. His name is Andrey, and we meet 4 days a week now for 2 hours to chat, do some language drills, etc. I'm sure I'll be posting a lot about what we get up to in the future.

Anyway, on to the pics:
Actually, we have a lot better pictures of Steven, but I just think this one is funny. Do not mess with Sensei Steven - his whole body is a weapon. 3 points for whoever knows where that comes from, and a bonus point if you know who said it.

Last weekend we had some of our Russian friends over, Denis, Iulia, and B's language helper Dina. We had a great time with them (although our conversation was a little limited :) ). B made them some American-style food, which they seemed to enjoy. Their favorite was barbeque chicken, which B managed to make with some BBQ sauce from the Swedish grocery store in town.

B took a trip downtown to one of the many beautiful Orthodox churches, so here's a shot of that. Quite a pretty place, actually.

Today we had a jaunt out to the market and after that, the big mall where we can get some more Westerny-style goods. Baby formula is cheaper there, so we always get it in bulk. Here, though, we enjoy the rinok goods, which are a lot cheaper and fresher than we get in the supermarket. I love the colors, and it reminds me of the Saturday market on America St. in Bolivia where I grew up.

This store is like the Mega-Walmart from your nightmares. First time I've been there, and I don't think I've ever seen so many people "enjoying" the fruits of capitalism at one time. I think I'll avoid this place like the plague in the future.

OK, so on to the What Is It?™ for the week. Last week's question has, well, no real correct answer, since no one really knows what those things are really for. However, I do think that they were originally for wheelchairs, so Marie Bobbie, and Anne were all right, according to my theory. The problem is that I've never seen anyone with a wheelchair use one. In fact, I've never seen a disabled person in public here. Either the healthcare system is so good that noone ever gets disabled (which I would guess is quite unlikely), or they're just unable to get out much. Anyway, the problem is that they only fit one certain exact size of wheels, so I'm guessing that when things were more regulated here, they were required to only have one size of wheelchairs. They might also accomodate some strollers, but I've never seen anyone able to fit their strollers in the rails either. We can't fit either of our strollers into them (one is too wide, the other too narrow), so I can't say that that's what it's for either. B did see one daring bike rider use one, so maybe I should give the point to Joy and Lydia.

This week's photo shows something from the platform where you catch the metro. These metal boxes are there just waiting for you to use them for something, if only you can figure out what it is!

April showers may bring May flowers, but August showers are COLD!

OK, so I admit that I'm cheating a bit today. Our language teacher has gone on vacation, so we're supposed to be doing home study. However, I'm at the office, where we have an internet connection but don't normally get a chance to use it since we're in class. Of course, since there is no class today, officially, I snuck in to post a brief blog and check our email. Sue me.

However, it won't be long until we're in our new apartment (a few weeks!) and we'll have a regular internet connection, so maybe then we'll be able to post more regularly. For now, sneaking in to the office will have to suffice.

Aaanyway, I'd better get to this blog before I waste too much more time. Besides, you're probably wondering about the penguin cartoon above, and I should explain. It seems that one of the nicer things about Moscow is that all the apartments are heated by radiators, through which runs water that the city heats in big pumping stations and then pumps through the apartment blocks free of charge (or close). That way the poorer residents don't have to worry about not having heat in the winter. This also provides all the hot water for residences, so you don't have to have a hot water heater in each house, which would be inefficient. However, in case you're wondering why American cities don't jump on this idea, there is a disadvantage: the system has to be maintained at some point, which means turning it off. During the summer months, everyone's hot water is turned off at some point for about 2 and a half weeks. This means no hot showers, no hot water for dishes, etc. We don't exactly miss the heating power in the apartment, since it's pretty warm out, but I am ready for a non-icy shower. In theory, we get turned back on today or sometime soon, so we'll see.

In other news, Steven has started to stand on his own, and looks like he'll be walking very soon. Actually, he started standing about the time we posted last, and yesterday he almost managed a step (the lack of balance can be a little amusing). Here he practices the always-fun art of letting go of the basket, to wobble for a few seconds, only to grab it again.

Of course, we have to have at least one picture of him just looking cute. You'll have to ignore David's and my legs in the backgrounds, though - they tend to distract from the aesthetic appeal of the shot.

I just put this picture in since I find it funny how Steven can take a whole crib and just curl up into a little ball in the corner. I always like it when he wakes up and has mesh-marks on his face from sleeping against the walls.

For the past few weeks, our friends David and Erin have been staying with us in the guest house (with a week in Finland thrown in between). It's been fun having them there with us, and their kids are a blast. Here Huddy shows off his best GQ look.

... and here's the other two, Emma and Josiah. Quite a brother-sister bond, you'd have to say, except that upon a closer inspection of Josiah's expression I'm not quite sure he's as excited as she is.

And now, the answer to last week's What Is It™: see the above picture. The only person to correctly guess "Giraffes" was Anne, who shouldn't count since she lived here for a while and thus had a bit of an advantage (not that we don't want her to guess). Half a point for her, I guess!

As for this week, we have a slightly trickier one, since I'm not sure I even know the answer. You'll find this on every stairway to the Metro - maybe you can tell me What This Is For™?