The Rest of the Visit

Well, all of our visitors have officially come and gone, now, and we're back to our regular life. It's been quite a whirlwind lately, with first B's sisters and then her parents. Add to that two new coworkers and some visitors of other workers here, and it seems like we've been doing a lot of runs to and from the airports and touristy spots here in Moscow in the past month or two.

However, now everyone's gone home and life has settled down some. Well, not completely, I guess, since we have a big language evaluation coming up to see how far we've progressed in the last almost two years. Then, we have to finish selling the furniture we're not taking east, and buying the few things we need to come with us. Finally, some time early next month, we have to pack everything into a train container for shipment and actually move! So I guess we're not quite finished with excitement for the summer.

As of our last post, B's parents were still here, though, so I thought we'd show you the rest of the things we did with them while they were here:

We certainly enjoyed the weather while B's parents were here. While it's been really hot for our coworkers out in T-land, here in Moscow May is almost the perfect month. The snow has melted off, and when the sun comes out it's usually wonderful. Here Grandma pushes Matthew on the swing.

Steven enjoyed the time with his grandparents in the park as well.

Since B's Mom's birthday fell during their time here, we decided to celebrate by having shashlik, a shish-kebab dish that we've mentioned several times on the blog. We invited a few friends and just had a good time in the park.

Steven managed to get his tent upside down.

Of course, the grandparents had to spoil the grandsons. Here, B's Mom offers Matthew a piece of fudge that I'm sure was very nutritious.

One of my favorite things we did: instead of going to a restaurant to celebrate their wedding anniversary, B's parents decided to have one of our Ossetian friends make them supper. We paid for the ingredients and she fixed a massive feast of several salads, lavashes stuffed with meat and potatoes, and myaso po frantsuski, which is a cheesy meat dish that's very tasty. It's hard to tell scale from this photo, but we all ate until we were stuffed and had only eaten about 30% of the total food. Needless to say, we enjoyed the leftovers for the next few days!

B and her Mom went to the Pushkin Art Museum also one morning while I was in class. They took lots of pictures of paintings and sculptures, but this lady was their favorites (sorry I have no idea who it's by or of).

Of course, we had to make some trips to the markets for the ladies to shop, as well. They seemed to enjoy themselves the most during those times.

Here's what we guys were doing while they enjoyed themselves haggling over souvenirs.

And that's about it. As I said at the opening, for now we're back to our regular language study, with an official evaluation of our status coming up soon. We're both nervous about that, as it's pretty intensive and will hopefully tell us accurately what we know and what we don't know about the Russian language and culture. Please be thinking of that (to come sometime in the next couple of weeks) - that we'll both do well, but more importantly that the evaluator will get an accurate picture of our current level of knowledge so that we can use that to improve in the future. I'm honestly not sure where I fall (some days I feel that I'm at teaching level, other days it seems like I'm still a beginner), so this will be helpful to have a professional opinion. Also be thinking about all the work we have to do to pack up and move our family out to our future home!

Thanks for reading, and especially thanks for remembering us in these days of transition for us. Hope to see you here again next week!