Too Long

I was once told by a friend of ours that we started every blog with an apology over how long it had been since our last post.  Well, after noticing that she was right, I did my best to stop doing that; after all, though it was our goal to get a post up every week what did it really matter if we did only 3 a month instead?

However, this time I really should apologize.  It has been a whole month since our last post!  And it's not like nothing has been happening that we could post about, either - in fact, excessive busyness is part of the reason we haven't had time to write up a blog post!

But enough excuses; I'll post only a little of what we've had going on for the past month here, and then I promise that during the next week (which is a vacation week in Russia, so we don't have a ton going on) I'll post a couple more to catch you all up to date.

Well, as Bobbie's last post alluded to, I was gone for a few weeks in November.  It wasn't a trip out of the country this time, but just up north to visit some friends and check with them on how their language learning was going.  You may think it's cold here, but they have even colder temperatures than we do - it's the "real" Siberia!

I had a great visit with the folks there and it was a real privilege to be able to tell one couple that they had reached the level of language that they've been aiming for over the past few years.  Oh, and they had cute kids to play with, too.

They have an ocean nearby, so some of the street wares are a little different from ours.  However, just like in T-land, no freezer facilities are required to keep your produce fresh!

On the way back I had a day delay in Novosibirsk, so I bopped over to the Ikea for Christmas presents for Bobbie (a set of pots) and a dinner of cheap meatballs.

"So, what's been going on with the pine nut facility?" some of you are thinking.  Well, maybe not, but I'm going to tell you nevertheless.  When you last saw it it didn't have walls on the ends, so I'll start slow and just show you what it looked like when that much was done:

Of course, it's way beyond this now, but more on that in the next week in those posts I promised!

Thanks again for thinking of us, we love you and wish you all a Happy New Year!