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!