It's a Little Late ...

OK. This is just a little late but look on the bright side, at least I'm posting it now versus never. You may or may not recall the promise, but back before our trip to Siberia I cooked at a Valentine's banquet, and I promised at some point to put the story up on our blog.

How I got into the banquet business on top of language learning and raising kids is a complicated story, but it starts by my being asked to do it by someone in our family group. OK, so maybe I wasn't really asked, exactly. I may have sort of volunteered (much to everyone's dismay), or maybe the truth is somewhere in between.

I was having a conversation with the director of the banquet (a lady from our family group) and she was telling me how everything was going wrong in planning this thing. One of the things she told me was that she no longer had a cook. Before I knew it, I was signed up! I couldn't back out now (oh darn). Side note: in case you can't tell, I have always wanted to cook for a large group/party such as this.

After much discussion, we decided on chicken curry on rice, salad, and broccoli for dinner and punch bowl cake for dessert. Did I mention I was to cook for 130 people? So, one week before the banquet I started preparing.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I have a tendency to go a little overboard when I do something like this. [Husband's Note: "a little overboard," when spoken by B, refers to something that goes out of control from the moment it starts, and then ends up with a doll tea party being decorated by Neiman Marcus and catered by the Angus Barn.] So, I decided to make little chocolate leaves for the dessert garnish (half milk chocolate leaves and half dark chocolate with amaretto leaves) - 225 leaves altogether. Also, I wanted to prepare the dessert in individual glasses. The week before the banquet I started preparing the chocolate leaves.

On Thursday, I prepared 6 large pots of pudding, 7 chocolate cakes, and 6 large bowls of whipped cream (all from scratch). Not overboard, right? Then, on Friday I had several ladies come and help me prepare the glasses. It only took 4 hours to prepare 120 glasses. Not bad considering I thought it was going to take a lot longer.

The next day was the banquet and I realized how much we had to do before the actual meal. My two very close and best of friends who didn't mind helping me at all and would do it again if I asked them :) came with me to help do all the chopping and cutting. Since I have a severe reaction to cutting onions (oh darn) my two best of friends did it for me and would do it again if I asked (right?).

We spent from 10am-3pm cutting and chopping but managed to get it done and in the pot on time. And, oh, what a pot. I thought I could handle it at first by myself but soon realized I could not.

So, my best of friends who would do it again if I asked (I hope you are reading this Julie and Erin) helped me in stirring.

We stirred ...

and stirred ...

and stirred ...

and stirred.

It only took us 3 hours for the finished product.

Finally, the moment of truth. Dinner was served.

People seemed to like it but being the perfectionist that I am, I was not pleased with it (too thin). But, now I know what I'm getting myself into for the next time (which according to J there won't be a next time). Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Of course, the next day we headed off to T-land. Busy week but worth it.

Little Women

Well, we've been here for a couple of years now, and last week we finally got our first visitors! B's sisters Andrea and Kellie flew in for a visit, and they've been with us for the past week. Since we have so many pictures from their time here (including a fun tourist-type trek downtown), I thought I'd make this a photo-blog and not talk so much.

Here the sisters head towards Marx' statue near the Bolshoi Theater, no doubt discussing his economic theories. Well, actually, they were probably just talking about how cold it was, but anyway ...

If you look closely, you can read the inscription "Proletarians of every country - unite!" which didn't quite go down as he had planned.

The public bathrooms in Moscow are all pay-per-use, as Andrea and Kellie found out.

Near the entrance to Red Square, where all the touristy-type kiosks are, are a few opportunistic folks looking to profit on their resemblance to famous Russians of history. The ladies took their picture with the rather odd pairing of Nicholas II and Lenin. The price went up after the picture was taken, much to our surprise. (I know - who would have thought that these guys would turn out to be untrustworthy managers of finance!?)

Then, we entered Red Square and tried to get into Lenin's mausoleum to look at the real guy (well, his waxy corpse, anyway). No dice - it's closed until April, perhaps for a fresh coat of paraffin.


Of course, no trip to Red Square would be complete without a picture in front of St. Basil's. Here B does the honors.

Despite the cold, we walked on a little further and got a picture of the ladies overlooking the river, with Christ the Savior Cathedral in the background (just above Kellie's head) and the Kremlin wall on the right.

Of course, we've also been at home a lot during their stay. They brought lots of goodies from the US for the boys (thanks to the Dials and others who gave the girls stuff to bring for us), so here's a shot of Steven enjoying a gifted lollipop while wearing his new cowboy hat.

As I finished this up, the girls just got back from their latest outing to the souvenir market, so more pictures to come from that next time we post. Also, we can't complete the blog without welcoming our new coworker Elisabeth! She just flew in today, and will be living here in Moscow for the next year or two learning Russian, just as we did. If you'd like to check out her blog (and add her to your "thought-list"), the link to her blog is here.

While I'm linking blogs, you may as well check out B's twin sister's blog here; she's visiting us on her way to Australia to do some training for overseas work herself.

And that's about it. Thanks again for checking in, and for thinking of us. See you again next week!

Back from T-land!

We're back! And if my visitor-counter thingy is anything to go by, not posting anything for two weeks is killing the traffic to this site. Also, our comments have gone way down, so we obviously are doing something wrong. And, while some of you might argue that leaving the same content up on the blog for weeks on end is doing something wrong, I would counter that, ... um, ... well, ... OK, you're right, that's probably what the problem is.

But, as a reward for sticking around, I give you the trip to T-land, complete with pictures and video:

Most of our time was spent preparing documents for our residency application, but since I didn't take any pictures in their office and you don't want to hear about the frustrations with translation and spelling and notaries, I'll just skip all that stuff and stick to the fun.

We probably already whined enough about the length of the trip out there, but it was long. 3 days in a train coupe with two little boys - well, let's just say it's a good thing Mommy was there with some books and other distractions or it could really have gone downhill.

Then, when we had finally gone as far as the railroad could take us, we packed up the family into one of these:

for the 5-hour drive into T-land. Fortunately, the drive was broken up by a stop at the shashlik stand halfway there, where we enjoyed a nice skewer of shashlik and plov.

The scenery on the drive was breathtaking. Mountains, forests, snow - my absolute favorites, all in one place. Reminded me a bit of Colorado back in the US.

Once we got there and got settled in, we needed to explore the town a bit. One of our first days there we headed out to take in some of the Shagaa (T-land's New Year) celebrations. Our first discovery: it's cold in Siberia in mid-February. Who knew?

-38 was as cold as it got. Apparently, it regularly gets below -40, but not while we were there, thank goodness. Here's a shot of the square in front of the national theater, complete with prayer wheel and mountains in the background.

The prayer wheel is an interesting thing, and one that we'll obviously need to get some more cultural data on, but it seems to be something that Buddhists will spin in order to send prayers upward and thus improve their standing in the spiritual realms somehow. I think I mentioned it in the blog we posted there, but here's the missing picture.

I liked this sign at the market downtown: "Specialized Market: Things." I guess I just like the creativity of the signmaker, who, when asked to put up a sign designating the specialty of the market, went with "stuff" as his answer.

I have lots of pictures of just regular street scenes that we shot, but I really like this one of the little girl bundled up. She's even wearing gloves, something that somewhat counter-logically is actually rare there.

Anyway, we also managed to get in for a performance of the Shagaa dances and cultural presentation at the national theater. We were the only white faces in a full house, so apparently this is just a T thing and not a Russian one. Here a shaman performs a dance.

One of the things we needed to do while out in T-land (besides handing in our documents for residency) was to meet with our teammates and make some team decisions. Here, we're hard at work making decisions. I believe that I decided to go with the grape juice, while David finally decided to eat the last chocolate cookie. You know, important team decisions.

We did manage to get out and try the local cuisine as well. Actually, it had been a while since we'd eaten in a restaurant (Moscow is prohibitively expensive in this regard), so we did quite a bit of this. I found this lower-end place and got quite a few stares, as, once again, I was the only white face there. The lady at the checkout didn't understand my Russian, either (she only spoke T), but eventually I managed to get a bowl of soup, a roll, and a piece of meat for about $1.50.

Our coworkers introduced us to this place: the T-land Krispy Kreme. And, can I just say, delicious. Who knew that putting sweetened condensed milk on doughnuts would be so good? Actually, thinking about it, who wouldn't know that would be good?

We had some time to relax between stressfully filling out paperwork and waiting for the office to open again so we could resubmit said paperwork and have it denied for a misspelling again. Here we're playing cards, again under the auspices of "team bonding" time and calling it work.

One of our coworkers bought a Nintendo Wii, so we also managed to spend some time getting fit indoors, which is nice when it's so cold out. B took the boxing game, well, let's just say seriously.

Finally, all of our paperwork was accepted (thanks for thinking of us!) and now we just have to wait for the application to be processed. Hopefully, if all goes well, we'll be able to move out there in the summer.

Once everything was done, it was time to get back in the car and head home. We went past this hill, which I remarked looked like a stegosaurus' back. The driver then informed me that it's known as "Dragon Hill" by the locals.

Actually, our trip out got a bit interesting. We opted to fly, as it was about the same price as the long train ride, but the night before our flights left, they closed the main road to the town where the airport is. Our taxi driver told us of an alternative, but it takes 11 hours to drive that way. Fortunately, at the last moment, we got a call saying the original road might be opened.

We decided to chance it, it seemingly being far from a sure thing that the long road would even get us to the airport in time. We eventually maneuvered to this tunnel, which was apparently the main obstacle, since funds don't permit sealing it off completely, and in its current state it's vulnerable to snow buildup.

We had quite a slog through some of the worst bits, much to the enjoyment of our boys, who managed to get hungry, dizzy, and bored all at the same time.

Anyway, since you're watching videos and seeing pictures, you know we have decent internet again, meaning we made it to Moscow, so it's obvious we did make it to the airport. And quite the airport it was. This is the main terminal area, around 3 in the afternoon: a full house. I found it a bit odd that in the middle of the day, there would be a total of 3 other people in the entire airport, counting staff.

Anyway, I think that's it. Again, thanks for thinking of us during our time out there. I have so much more I want to say about how excited we are to be this close to our final destination, but I'll save that for an email maybe. Thanks and see you again next week.

Home!

[Note: I've tried 4 times now to upload the pictures I reference below, with no success. Since I don't want to rewrite this whole thing just because the pictures don't work, you'll have to imagine that you're seeing them. Sorry!]

I know I've made previous comments about how we don't have an earthly home, but I suppose that T-land is about as close as we'll come for the foreseeable future. I don't think I've lived anywhere in the past 15 years or so for more than a few years, so it's kind of strange to finally be someplace where we might stay for a while (even if we're leaving in a week or two, we'll be back, so I consider it home now)!

And we're loving it! I won't make this a long post, since it takes forever to do anything with dialup internet, but I did want to at least reward those of you who check this regularly with a few pictures and words about our time. I'll post a bunch more when we get back to Moscow (still no idea on when that might be; we head in this Tuesday to turn in our paperwork for our residency), but for now this will have to make do. We'll skip the journey in for now (short version: it was long!) and do that later.

One of the things we've been enjoying most on our trip so far has been the time with our teammates. Hopefully you've clicked on the links to their blogs by now (Family Footprints and Privyet to the right in case you haven't) and are already thinking of them as well as us regularly. Here we're playing cards with them after a gathering on Sunday to enjoy a good discussion and study.

OK, so here you'll have to pretend there's a picture of us, looking dashing and stunningly attractive, playing cards with our friends.

Last week was Shagaa, or the Buddhistic New Year's celebration, here in T-land. All the businesses were closed and we went down to the town center (side note: it's so great to be able to walk downtown instead of having to catch the metro and a bus for an hour!) to see the festivities. The people of T-land generally believe in a mixture of Buddhism and shamanism, which were represented well in the celebrations. Here's a giant prayer wheel that people would walk up to and spin to earn favor and send prayers for the New Year.

Someone else's picture of a similar prayer wheel linked here.

In the afternoon, there was a concert of cultural T stuff in the main theater. We weren't sure what to expect, but went along with our coworkers to see what was going on. It turned out to be mostly singing, with some chanting/religious performance things. Interestingly, despite the republic being about 30% Russian, we were the only white people there out of 300 or so. Very few outsiders speak the T language, something we hope to be able to do in a few years. Anyway, here a traditional Shaman came on to dance and beat his drum, presumably to ask for a good New Year (? - probably need to ask our language helpers someday about that).

Someone else's picture of a T shaman linked here.

As I said, a short post, but we did want to give you at least something. In short, we've really loved it here - time with friends, actually eating in a restaurant (something that's far too expensive for us in Moscow), taking taxis everywhere for $1.50, etc. The extreme cold has been not so fun (-38 is the lowest it's gotten so far), but if you bundle up quite well it's tolerable.

Thanks for thinking of us, and please continue to do so as we submit our documents this week!

We're Leaving, On A ...

... train. Wait, that can't be right. How did that John Denver song go, anyway?

Anyway, it's been far too long since we've updated this, and for that I'm truly sorry. We missed our "once a week" goal by almost a full week, but it's been a full one and there really hasn't been much time. Lots of things have happened, and I promise we'll do our best to catch you up in the weeks to come.

However, for now, you'll have to make do with a brief summary, because it's almost 1:00 am and I don't want to be on here much longer. Basically, our friends and future coworkers David and Erin and their kids came into town last Monday, and we've been spending a lot of time with them. They're much more faithful bloggers than we are, and if you want to see their pictures pf our time together just go to their blog linked to the right or click here.

Also, we've been gathering the necessary documents for our trip, so that we hopefully have everything lined up to take to the immigration office once we're there in T-land (that's what we're calling the part of Siberia we'll be making our home, in case you hadn't noticed that by now). That's meant some trips to the lawyer's and translator's office, and a lot of stress by me. Of course, we had our regular language lessons while all this was happening as well.

Finally, the lovely B somehow managed to get herself volunteered to be the main cook at a Valentine's Day Banquet that our family group had for about 55 couples. That means that she's been up to her neck in chicken curry and punch bowl cake since Saturday. I'm sure you'll be getting a post on that at some point, replete with pictures of the events in question, but I don't know when that will be.

That's because we leave tomorrow (!!) on the train for Siberia. It will be our first time visiting the place that will hopefully be our home for the next, well, bunch of years (10? 50? only he knows). We'll be applying for residency there as well as just getting a feel for the town and work there. After two weeks or the acceptance of our residency paperwork, whichever comes last, we'll return, but I'm really, really looking forward to it.

Well, maybe not the actual trip, but just being there. It's exciting to start to feel closer to the final goal, as well as meeting the people we've come here to serve for the first time. The three days in a train with two small children, followed by 6 hours in a taxi with the same children I could honestly do without. We'd really appreciate your thoughts for the trip, that the kids would handle being cooped up in a train that long well, and that we wouldn't have any unexpected headaches with our paperwork once there.

Siberia. Of course, it doesn't really look like this in February, but let's not get hung up in the details.

This has already gotten longer than I thought it would, so I'm sorry but I'm going to hang it up for the night. We love you all and thanks for thinking of us. If we get a chance, we'll try to post from out there but internet access is sketchy so you might not hear from us for a few weeks until we get back. You can check the links to David and Erin's (the "Privyet" blog) or David and Christy's (the "Family Footprints" one) blogs on the right; we'll be spending our time out there with those two families and they have internet access, so maybe you can catch the news about us from them in the meantime. Thanks for your thoughts!

Note: We've arrived, safe and sound, in T-land! Only 81 hours travel time! Our internet connection is very slow, so I'm not going to put up a new post for a bit, but thanks for thinking of us.

25 Random Things by J

Me, circa 1992

OK, so I know a lot of you are on my Facebook friends list and thus saw this the other day, but too bad. It's 7:00, I just finished my homework and the boys are being fussy and I just can't seem to get motivated to come up with actual new content for the blog. For those of you not on Facebook, there's some sort of thing going around where people post 25 random facts about themselves and then everyone gets to learn a bit more about their friends. I was tagged by one of my friends to do it, and so I'm just reproducing the list here for your entertainment (with a few "bonus notes" not included on the Facebook list for those of you who already read it to at least have something new to read, even if small):

1. I have no idea how to answer the question "Where are you from?" Seriously, I usually say "Bolivia," but that's only about 1/3 of the story.

Bonus note: the rest of the story: complex. Born in Brasil, grew up in Bolivia, went to university in the US, married an American, now live in Russia.

I also can't answer the question "Why are women like that?"

2. I have two passports, neither of them actually from Bolivia.

3. If I'm totally honest, I actually speak better Russian than Spanish now. Which is not to say that my Russian has gotten so good, but more that my Spanish has dropped to a totally depressing level. A month or so ago, I was on skype with my parents and an old Bolivian friend of the family was over, so I tried to chat with him. It was scary - it took me 30 seconds of concentration every time I wanted to form a sentence to avoid including some Russian words.

Bonus Note: The word "fluent" is very hard to define, but suffice it to say that I used to be comfortable using Spanish conversationally, even about worldview-type topics. Now, I struggle to get past a sentence without throwing in some Russian. I'm told that once I finish the concentrated study time in Russian, my Spanish will return. I'm hopeful but not expectant, as I almost never get to practice it here.

4. I am fanatical about Liverpool (the football team in England) to an almost embarrassing level. I have downloaded 3-4 programs off the internet so that I can watch their games in dodgy internet streams with Chinese or Danish commentary. I could probably list most of the players even on the reserve roster, if I thought about it. I have firm opinions on which 16-year-olds will turn into good pros (Lauri Dalla Valle!).

Bonus Note: they crushed one of their biggest opponents, Chelsea, in the Premier League at the weekend. You can enjoy some highlights by clicking here, including two goals by Fernando Torres.

5. My biggest spiritual struggle is with pride. I may act like I've got it all together when it comes to my walk with Him, but the truth is that I'm pretty full of myself a lot of the time.

6. When I was 11, two other students and I designed and built a model volcano that inadvertently exploded during our presentation, destroying a good portion of the chapel roof and sending metal and glass shards hurtling into a large crowd. Not one of my finer moments.

Really? You don't think explosives are a safe toy for 11-year-olds? How crazy are you???

7. I married the absolute perfect wife for me. It is my firm belief that had I married anyone else, absolutely anyone else at all, that she would be miserable. Find someone you enjoy serving and marry them.

8. I come across as a lot more confident than I really am. I worry a lot - about the kids, our finances, will I ever learn this freaking language, etc.

9. I'm about 20 kilos overweight, but I really don't care. I just don't. I'm not sure if I should or not, but I don't. Maybe if I were short it would concern me more?

10. I have eaten a lot of strange foods. You probably would have guessed that, having spent my childhood in the Amazon, but there it is. Anaconda, piranha, capybara, jaguar - I've eaten and enjoyed them all. I even ate a tarantula once.

Bonus Note: Tarantula tastes like shrimp. There's not a lot of meat, but it's there. Oh, and the best meat I've ever had is from a jochi, which is basically a giant jungle rat.

A sweet, succulent jungle rat.

11. I don't even pretend to have highbrow music taste. Despite all the people out there complaining that popular music is terrible and droning on about the "independent jazz radio station" they like so much, I'm usually tuned to top 40 or a Chr. station (K-Love and their ilk) and think it's OK, if a bit repetitive. I wish I weren't that way, but I am. I'm just not that into music, honestly. Well, I don't know if that's entirely accurate, as I really like a well-written melody with good harmony, but you don't hear that much any more, so I've almost given up on it. Oh, and if something has really good lyrics, like Phillips, Craig, and Dean or Keith Green I'll listen to it even if the music is so-so.

Bonus Note: My latest band to listen to is Skillet, whom I just discovered. I'll probably tire of them in a month or so, but for now I'm listening to something a bit heavier than usual.

12. I probably spend 2 hours a day, if not more, on the internet. Wow, that looks worse than I thought it would, now that I've typed it out.

13. If I had to return to the US for some reason, I have an idea for a startup business that I think would be successful.

14. I have no fear whatsoever of bats, snakes, etc, but I have a thing against scorpions. Goes back to the time when I was about 7 and my friend Jeff was stung by a scorpion. His reaction seared into my brain the idea that I did not want to experience that sensation.

15. I have killed a piranha with a canoe paddle. It jumped into the boat and was snapping at my toes, and I kind of overreacted.

Bonus Note: Same trip out, we shot an alligator, which managed to flop its way to the river and fall in to die. The natives looked at me and we debated going in after it, finally deciding not to based on the idea, as they expressed it, that where there was one alligator there were likely to be more, and trying to wrest the bloody body of their kinsman away from them was apt to be "dangerous."

Do you want to wrestle him for his nephew's corpse?

16. I'm really, really excited about moving to Siberia. I like Moscow, it's OK, but I've never lived in a big city before and I'm looking forward to the peace and quiet of a smaller place, even if we have to live without some of the conveniences.

17. I really like Russian food. Blini, all the potato and beet salads, piroshki, pelmeni, it's all yummy. That might relate to #9. I hope that T-food lives up to the challenge!

18. I have visited all 50 states in the US. My favorites are Alaska and Montana.

Bonus Note: I have only lived in 4 of them that I can think of (Colorado, Oregon, Missouri, and North Carolina). The rest has been travelling.

19. I never kissed anyone on the lips until my wedding day. My first kiss was at the altar.

20. I have slept in a lot of airports, and I have the rather bizarre ability to tell you where to look for a good spot to sleep if you're ever stuck overnight in a particular airport (ie in Amsterdam go upstairs across from the McDonald's and pull two of the benches together to form a bed, etc).

21. I'm actually pretty lazy (though this is something that He and I are trying to work on!), but I get away with it a lot since I'm a quick learner. In college, I probably could have done a little better if I had put in more effort, but I would often do just enough to get an A- and then relax.

22. I hate mornings. I am a definite night owl. I have tried three times in my life to move my quiet times to a morning practice (just wanted to be like David, you know?) but have failed every time. I'm counting on the shift in my Circadian rhythm that usually happens to people in their 30's to get this done for me.

23. I care absolutely 0 about fashion. It's probably a consequence of my Bolivian upbringing, but I wear jeans and a T-shirt about 99% of the time because that's what's comfortable. I'm hoping I won't have to make any drastic changes to fit in culturally when we move.

24. I have almost killed my wife on more than one occasion. Once, in Oregon, I sent her down a river in a inner tube like we used to do at home, except she had no experience and the river was much, much rougher than I thought it would be. I think she still halfway suspects that I was trying to murder her. Truth be told, we were very blessed to survive that experience; it was incredibly dangerous.

Like this, but without all the sissy "safety" equipment like a life jacket and handles on the tube.

25. I almost died of malaria when I was 13. I caught it when we were in the jungle, but didn't really get sick until we got out to the city. My fever went as high as 106 (41) and I didn't eat for a week, but I did eventually recover.

So, I think that will do it. We're still plugging away at the language and culture study, with not much new to report. Last week, I came down with some sort of sinus-related bug, and then poor B followed suit. Now, both of the boys are a bit out of sorts but at least we're feeling better and can take care of them.

Oh, and we're really looking forward to seeing our friends and future coworkers David and Erin, who are planning to arrive here in another week or so with their kids. We're going to travel with them out to Siberia to take care of the aforementioned (in a previous post) paperwork, so be thinking about their trip (they have some paperwork they're waiting on as well).

OK, I need to go catch up on some emails, on which I'm waaaay behind. Drop us a comment with a random fact about yourself, or just let me know that you want an email, and I'll send you one! Thanks for visiting and we'll see you again next week!