Do I Really Need to Think of a Title?

Welcome back to the blog! Matthew (or Sasha, as we call him here; his middle name is Alexander, which works a lot better in Russian) thought he'd brighten up your day with a smile. Hope you enjoy it!

Life is proceeding for the most part according to plan. Russian studies are continuing for both B and myself, the boys are getting bigger and better at destroying things, and it's getting cold. I'd rather not talk about the last two, actually, so let's pretend it's still warm and post some pictures from a month ago when we the weather was stellar.

So, back then everything was sunshine and warmth, and we took a trip to one of the Catherine the Great's old palaces at a park now known as Tsaritsino ("female tsar's," or maybe "queen's"). Beautiful mansion there, and the surrounding parks and gardens really make it a great place to be in the summer. We went with two of our friends, Vicka and Diana.

We were able to get a decent shot of the two of us, the first in a good while, but a complete family picture still eludes.

Steven spent the entire time scheming how he could weasel his way out of Mommy's view and wreak havok upon the grassy fields. Here he demonstrates his "Drat! Foiled again!" look.

Even the Russian kids were wise to his ways, and this little boy turned a deaf ear to Steven's frantic pleas to let him escape.

A favorite for wedding parties, the park at Tsaritsino is also a good place for culture study. You might have to zoom in to see it well, but here a groom is held up by four of his friends in a prone position, and the bride is leaning (or being dipped by someone, I can't remember) down for a kiss. I have no idea why any of this happened, but it was quite interesting.

My lovely bride posing among the buildings.

So, in a bit more contemporary shot, here is my attempt to bring a bit of a Brasilian vibe despite the wet and cold weather outside. This might belong in B's last blog about cooking, but I'm eating some feijoada (sadly, no farofa to be had, but I digress), and though you can't tell from the picture, drinking grapefruit juice.

Many's the time I've eaten this meal in a Bolivian jungle, and it's nice to have those comfort foods every now and again. Unfortunately, grapefruit are usually prohibitively expensive here, but they seem to have a two-week "season" or so when they're not that pricey. Oh, and the flowers were a gift from our friends Andrei and Iulya who came over for dinner the other night.

We also need to introduce a new character to the cast of the Wandering Family: this is Lena. She's B's new language helper. I'm still hunting for a new one, but my email to our family group about my search prompted several ladies to ask if we might not also need a lady helper for B (which we did, though I hadn't mentioned it in the email). Lena's not actually a member of our group, but somehow, someone forwarded it to her, and we're glad they did! Lena has been meeting with B now for a couple of weeks, and seems to be fantastically suited to the job.

In other news, our washing machine broke a couple of weeks ago. I tried to contact a "master," as they're called here several times, with laundry piling up. Finally, B seemed to imply that if I wanted to ever have clean underwear again, I should get that taken care of ASAP.

It's quite a long story, but at the end, it ended up being only marginally cheaper to fix the old machine than to simply buy a new one. Of course, it made more sense to buy a newer one, since we'd rather have one that will last us a while when we move east next year. Here I'm teaching Steven how to remove the transport bolts from a new washing machine. Unfortunately, the installation guy didn't ever show up, and I had to figure out how to put it in myself (I can happily report that it's actually pretty easy). What wasn't easy was getting the old one out to the dump without the benefit of help. Suffice to say I got my exercise in that day!

And that's about it. Everything looks lined up for our work visas, so we'll be making a trip out of the country in a couple weeks to get that taken care of. We had originally hoped to go see our friends in Finland, but that didn't seem to work out, so we're now hoping to go see my family in Germany (it actually is cheaper to fly to Germany than Finland! Go figure.). More on that next week, so keep it tuned right here, etc.