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!