Much Ado About Nothing - a Blog by B

Well, we have been busy with a lot of little things that add up to, well, being busy. I guess I could start by telling you about our trip to TGIFridays. My sisters gave us money for Christmas and instructed us to go out on a nice date since we haven't had one since August. This was a huge blessing since I (B) desperately needed some time away from Steven. Don't get me wrong, I love him but sometimes I wonder "What were we thinking?" Come on moms, I know you have thought this before, right?

Anyway, our friend Julie offered to babysit Steven (thanks!) so we set the date for Monday, February 25th. Since J usually only sees me in jeans and a T-shirt, I thought I would dress up nice and even let my hair down (the boots are also from my sisters).

We spent about 2 1/2 hours at TGI Fridays (remember speedy customer service is NOT priority here). I had a steak and J had fajitas. Let's just say I have never had a such a good steak! It was definitely a good change from spaghetti and omelettes (I've been lazy recently and haven't been spending a lot of time cooking). We got home around 9:00, where Steven was already in bed, made milkshakes, and watched a movie together. It was perfect.

The rest of the week wasn't filled with much except the same old language study. J did have a opportunity to attend a class with one of our Russian friends but I'll let him tell you more about that in another post. As for me and my pregnancy, I'm doing OK but the morning sickness, tiredness, and lack of energy has returned. It's not as bad a it was in the beginning but it is still not pleasant to go through. I'm also starting to have hot flashes.

It has been getting warmer here but the heat is still on (it's one of those you can't control individually). This makes it quite warm in the apartment so I usually end up freezing Jesse out by opening up the windows during the night since that is usually when the hot flashes are the worst. It's still cold outside but it's bearable. Actually, it's quite nasty to walk in since all the snow is turning into slush. It's hard to avoid all the huge water puddles. Then it freezes at night making it very slippery and even harder to walk on. So, we try not to venture out too much. It's odd to say so, but I think it's actual easier to deal with Moscow winters when it's colder out! Here's a shot of our local park, which has mostly been transformed into some kind of slushy lake.

Well, that is about it. I'll leave you with a cute video of Steven. He does have his cute moments, like here where he seems to be taking his "praise" in a chrsmtic direction! :)

In Which Your Faithful Narrarator is Unable to Furnish a Witty Blog Title

I have finally achieved the long-awaited half-century: Behold, Lesson 50!

In my defense as it pertains to the title, it's hard to give just one name to a blog when so much is going on. There's language and culture study, as the above photo from my lesson notebook shows, a trip to the banya, small group meetings at our place, Valentine's Day, and the list goes on. But, I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. Oh, and sorry the photo is from a few weeks back; I've made it to lesson 52 now, but I figured none of you would know the difference and/or care. And now, to the business at hand, by which I mean our lives.

Some of you may recall that a few months back, I wrangled an invite to our family group's "Men's Day Out" in which we went to a banya for the afternoon. It proved to be such a success that there was demand for a repeat trip, which took place last Saturday. This time I had the foresight to take my camera in before all the sweaty naked guys took over, and was able to bring back a few pictures of what it looks like inside.

This first picture (taken very quickly after opening the door, and the lens already started to fog) is of the actual room you sit in to bake. Basically, you lay your towel down on the planks, throw some water on the rocks just out of the picture to the right, and wait until you're thoroughly sweaty. They keep it quite warm, :) so it doesn't take long! This time I spotted the thermometer outside, so I can happily report to our readers that the temperature inside (which last time I described as "really hot") really is just that: HOT! As in, 110° Celsius (that'd be 230° F)!! I especially appreciated the nice touch on the thermometer where there was a red "Danger" tab at 112° C, as if to say, "Yeah, 110° is no biggie, but don't go pushing it!"

Anyway, once you've baked yourself to a proper degree of sweatiness, someone (and I was determined for it not to be me) surrenders his machoness, admits that he's had enough, and the group gets up to head for the pool. Last time, they had actually chilled the pool to just above freezing, but this time we had the relief of finding out it was just water from the cold spigot. Not much warmer, but believe me, every little bit helps. What you do is as soon as possible after leaving the steam room, you plunge into the pool in a transparent effort to induce a heart attack from temperature shock.

It actually feels a lot better than it sounds, but you feel like a limp noodle afterwards and for some reason it makes me ravenously hungry. Fortunately, we brought along enough food to feed an army and we all enjoyed the various temperature cycles broken up by good conversation and good Russian food.

Next up in the picture department: a small group meeting at our place. It seems that our small group was hunting for a place to meet, and we happened to know just the place: our living room! I'm not sure if they'll be here every week or not, as we're still organizing some of those details, but it looks like we'll be hosting it regularly at least. We always have a great time when we get together on Wed. nights, and having it at our apartment gives Bobbie a chance to make some of the really delicious desserts she's rapidly becoming known for.

Of course, since we last posted, St. Valentine has visited, so I thought I'd drop in a quick picture of our date. This is further proof, as if anyone actually needed it, that I married the absolute best wife in the universe. How many of you could say that you took your wife to McDonald's for your "special Valentine's treat" and she was thrilled? I know, none - only B is fantastic enough to be satisfied with such a cheap date.

The truth is restaurants in Moscow cost a fortune, and we're not exactly loaded, so for now, this will have to do. However, there is a TGIFriday's in town, and one of B's sisters gave us a special present to go there, which we're planning to do this or next week sometime.

This is how romantic our lunch really was - Steven even fell asleep so we had some real "alone time." And the ambience! Can you say "Marvin who?"

The Russians have a good word for Steven's overall behavior these days: хитрый. It means something like "clever," or "sly," or maybe "resourceful." At any rate, he seems to be escalating the rate at which he can do damage. We generally keep all the things that he shouldn't get into in drawers that he can't reach. As an example, all of our tea things like sugar, etc, are in our top drawer in the cabinet in the living room.

This was all well and good until last week, when he discovered that he can pull out the bottom drawer, then stand on it, and it allows him to reach the top drawer. Xитрый indeed. He ended up with a faceful of sugar to show for it, and now we're trying to figure out somewhere else to store that stuff.

OK, so I'm about to wrap it up, I promise. The following is a video that is more for the grandparents and people like that to admire Steven as he enjoys (?) a ride on the swing on a nice day outside.

Oh, and I almost forgot to post the results of last week's What Is It?™ The gesture, which can be a bit harsh but isn't considered inappropriate among friends, basically means something between "Screw you!" and "No way!" Usually, it's kind of a joke, and you might do it to a friend who asked you for something (maybe while saying something like "шиш тебе" - I would have accepted either "шиш" (pronounced "sheesh") or "фиг" (pronounced "feeg") as correct answers for the words associated with the gestures. Lydia gets the point for being the closest with her guess of "You're in a tough spot."

I leave you with the following amusing graffiti I captured on a wall near our place last week. How many times have you seen the illustrious Mr. Squarepants featured in your neighborhood graffiti? I thought not. The gangs here are, well, truly hardcore. Because what says "don't mess with me" more than Spongebob? They even almost managed to spell it right, despite the obvious handicap of trying to write it in it's original Roman script rather than Cyrillic.

Babies vs Dogs

Go ahead and call someone, Hannah!

Have you ever noticed how a baby can be a lot like a dog? They eat off the floor, they play fetch, they follow you around until you show them some attention, you have to bathe them, feed them, they like to play tug-of-war with your clothes, they chew on your socks and shoes (at least Steven does), you have to potty train them, and I have even caught Steven eating his own throw up. At least you can get rid of the dog if they are too much trouble.

That is why everyone should own a dog (not a cat, since they take care of themselves for the most part) before ever deciding to have a baby. I'm not saying I would get rid of Steven! Just that it is very similar to having a dog. So if you want to know what it is like to have a baby, get a dog. The more difficult they are to train the better.

Since B was on posting duty this week and wrote such a short post, I decided to supplement it with a What Is It?™ Actually, this one is more of a What Does He Mean?™, but you get the idea. As always, the rules are simple: the first one to post a comment with the correct answer wins a point.

You learn all kinds of interesting things in culture study, but some of my favorites are the gestures, which can mean the same thing in Russia as they would in the West, or can be radically different. Basically, your challenge this week is to figure out the meaning of the gesture I'm making in the below photo. Since this one is a bit more challenging, we'll open up the competition a bit and even our friends who live or have lived here are welcome to contribute the answer. One caveat, though: if you've lived in Russia, you only get credit for your answer if you include the Russian word most frequently associated with the gesture (and, for the rest of you, don't worry, it's not one of those words and not one of those gestures).

Oh, and just in case it's not clear, that's my thumb tucked in between my index and middle fingers. Happy guessing, and thanks for stopping by.

Fun in the Snow

OK, so we could make this a post about language lessons. I was even tempted to type out the essay I did on "What I Did over the Christmas Break" and then discuss what I did right and wrong. Who knows, maybe I'll do that later, since I think some of you might be interested in a bit more linguistic stuff. However, I know that most of you are not as keen on the whole "what's involved in learning another language" thing and might prefer some lighter fare.

And so, a post on snow. We've had snow on the ground since October, so it's not like all of this is just recent, but we have added a good bit of snow over the past few weeks and, lacking anything else interesting to write about, I decided to go with that. Above you can see the snowmen someone built in our little park, complete with smiley faces. I always preferred the Calvin and Hobbes snowmen:
but agree that it might be a bit dark and hence not for everyone. Anyway, here's a few videos and pictures of a snowier world. I hope they help to dull your eagerness to live in a world of snow (the grass is always whiter on the other side of the fence, as it were).

The real problem with the weather here, if you want to call it a problem, is not so much the snow. It's not even really the cold, although that doesn't exactly help. It's more the constant greyness of everything. The sky is perpetually a depressing shade of grey, and when you combine that with the blocky grey buildings and icy grey streets, it just adds up to a lot of greyness. However, every once in a while the sun does break through:

and then it really is lovely. Here some kids have built themselves a snow wall and are having a rather tame snowball fight using it as an obstacle. As soon as the sun comes out like this, pretty much the entire neighborhood is outside enjoying it, because it doesn't last very long.

Two videos in one post! I don't think we've done that before. This one is of another one of those side benefits of snow - sledding! This is Steven's first ever trip down the hill. We were coming home from visiting some friends and didn't have our sled with us, but I decided to go down on my rear end holding him. The slope is quite icy where other sledders have used it, so you can go down sledless and it still works pretty well. I've even seen some more talented and balanced people than I go down on their feet. I don't know whether Steven enjoyed it or not; he's really too bundled up and cold to care much, it seemed.

Anyway, that's about it. I know it's not much, but I also know that it's been a while since we posted and I wanted to get something up here. Oh, and before I forget, the last post picture was of people in line to get their tickets. I thought it interesting how a bunch of people in a room, all seemingly facing random directions, could be considered a "line," but it actually worked pretty well. Carroll gets the points for recognizing a line among the chaos, taking it from the other guesses due to the humorousness of her continuous references to communism. :) One of these days I'll sit down and actually calculate who's in the lead in this contest. Until then, have a good week, and thanks for thinking of us.

Bacon, Brahms, and a Baby Boy

OK, so we finally hit the required 6 comment mark on our last blog, so I feel free to post again. :) Actually, I had set myself a goal to have this done Definitely For Sure by Tuesday at the latest, but I guess I just got busy and didn't get it done.

Anyway, this is more like "blog-lite" this week due to the fact that we haven't had a lot going on here. Plugging away at our Russian studies (I got to dative case yesterday, so finally I can talk about giving people things and use other verbs that require an indirect object!), hanging out with friends, that about sums up the past week or so.

One important (and I stress the word "important" here) thing to happen to us is that I got a little hankering for some American food. We broke down and bought all the necessary ingredients to make bacon cheeseburgers and fries, as seen in the above picture. Yum! The bacon here is not the greatest (the greatest bacon in the world is in England), but overall you couldn't argue with the taste. Ultra yummy.

In other news, we didn't make it to family group on Sunday. Life without a car is overall a wonderful thing (although totally impossible in most of the US), but every once in a while it fools you. Sunday morning, as is our wont, we got all gussied up, rolled Steven up into a blanket burrito, and set off. However, we had gotten another 6 inches of snow Saturday night (and we've since added another four inches or so), and we didn't get very far with the stroller. By the time we had gone 100 meters, we realized we were running so late we would miss most of the meeting. We gave up and returned home. Seriously, pushing a stroller in the snow is like trying to use one on the beach. Short of physically picking it up and carrying it, there is just no way you're going anywhere.

It seems like such a simple thing to look out the window, realize that there's fresh snow on the ground, and pack Steven into a sled instead of the stroller, but we just didn't think of it. At least not until it was too late. Oh, well - I guess we'll know better next time.

Sunday night, though, I (J) got to have a nice experience. Some family friends were going to a concert at the Moscow Conservatory, where one of them had some sort of hookup to get us tickets for just $2! It was a fantastic experience, in one of the most famous classical music settings in Europe. The soloist was a famous violinist named Maksim something (maybe our violinist friend Abbie could identify him?), and they played several pieces from a composer whose name I didn't catch (we didn't have a program and the announcer lady spoke really quickly) and then a selection of Brahms. One of his more schizophrenic concertos (I think it was a concerto?) that changed moods rapidly and frequently, but I think we all agreed it was enjoyable and better than the first bit. Overall it was fun and a semi-rare bit of exposure to some "high culture" for your faithful narrator.

I took a picture of some of the friends that came along for the concert: from left, our Californian friend Julie, our Asian friend Delia, and my language helper's mother Tatiana Aleksandrovna. They're standing in front of the statue of Tchaikovsky, for whom the Conservatory is named.

We're bringing back the What Is It™ feature for this blog only, except that it's more of a What Are They Doing™? Your mission is to interpret the below picture, which I took in the concert hall. Believe it or not, these people all have a common purpose and are working together. Put your guess in the comments, and as usual the correct answer earns a point in our ongoing contest.

Wrapping up Christmas

In Russia, the holiday situation (at least for religious holidays) is a bit complicated, due to the difference between the Orthodox calendar and the Western calendar. Basically, the Orthodox calendar runs 13 days later than the Western one (that's a bit simplified, but you get the idea), at least for the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

What this means to the average Russian is that they get two holidays for the price of one. You'd like to celebrate Christmas, but Dec. 25th has come and gone? No problem! Just wait until Jan. 6th, when you can celebrate again. Same goes with New Years, with a "new" New Year's day, and an "old" New Year's day as well.

Steven looking cute for the partygoers

So, when our small group called and said that they were struggling to find a place to celebrate Christmas on Jan 9th, it wasn't a surprise that they were scheduling it then. Of course, since we have a big apartment in a reasonably central location for most of them, we volunteered that they come here. At first, we were told it would be 12 people or so. Then, the day before, someone hinted that it could be 15 or more. No problem, I thought. We have 17 chairs, if you count office chairs, folding chairs, and cases that make suitable seats, so I thought we were set. When the party actually arrived, though, we had 29 people! I don't know if our apartment was really designed for so many, but we had a great time.

It was the perfect way to host - B just whipped up a couple of desserts (an aside, if I may - Russians LOVE cheesecake!), and the guests insisted on bringing all the food and planning the program. And quite a program it was! There was a time for general chatting over tea, then we had a time where we just brought up and thought about different needs. Then, we broke up for the meal, which was, in the Russian custom, sliced breads, meats, and cheeses, with all kinds of little salads (and by "salads," I mean salads in the sense that Southerners do: mayonnaise-infused combinations of starches, not leafy green mixtures). Very tasty, and thoroughly enjoyed by all.


Then, we had some games, including one where everyone drew a paper out of a hat (see below) and then had to describe the item on it for everyone to guess what it was. The party planner ensured me that she would preselect me something easy so I wouldn't struggle with the vocabulary. As I listened to the others describe Christmassy topics like "shepherds" and "Bethlehem," I thought it wouldn't be a problem. Imagine my surprise when she handed me my "easy" topic: Advent. Yikes.


I struggled to get that concept across in Russian to a bunch of people who had never heard of it (the Orthodox liturgy doesn't have the specific concept of Advent as such). Not that it would have really mattered if they had been familiar with it. I'm a long way from knowing words like "liturgical calendar" in Russian, so I still might have struggled to explain. :)

Anyway, after the game, we were regaled with people quoting poetry. This is a really interesting aspect of Russian culture. Almost everyone, from childhood, memorizes poems, and a standard activity in gatherings is reciting them rote for the enjoyment of the other guests. One of our friends recited a poem, word-for-word, that must have taken him close to 10 minutes. Amazing!

Then, we listened to several songs sung by various performers (see below video). Finally, we closed with an extended session remembering the year to come to Him. It was really a great time for us to grow in our friendships with a bunch of people (and meet a few new ones) and our experience of their culture.

Get this many people together at this time of year and you end up with quite a pile of coats!

Other than that, what have we been up to? Well, "school" has started again, since our teacher has returned from her vacation. So, we've been back at our Russian studies. We've also had several chances to get out of the apartment and go visiting or just on some excursions: Last weekend we decided to go with our friend Julie out to the souvenir market on the other side of town. It was cold. Not Siberia cold (some of our friends out there report obscenely cold temperatures!), but really cold for us. I think that the low that day was -26° C, but it might have climbed up almost to -20° in the afternoon.

At any rate, that's pretty cold to be outside for 3 hours or so, walking around looking at things, and by the time we got back in the metro I was glad for the warmth of the crowded metro train. Poor little Steven, bundled up in 3 layers under a thick snowsuit and 2 blankets, got cold about 2 hours in and started to fuss. It was hard to blame him - the flannel-lined jeans I had on weren't cutting it at that temperature either.

The entrance to the souvenir market, which was deserted even by the Russians due to the cold

We did have a good walk around and saw a lot of interesting artifacts and Russian trinkets. Got a lot of ideas for what some of you will be getting whenever we see you next! We've also been able to get over to Andrey's and Iulia's (below pic is of Iulia in her kitchen) place a few times of late, which has been fun. I must admit, though, it's been a bit tough on B to get on board with the Russian habit of going for extended walks outside when it's so cold.


Last time we visited them, we went for an hour plus walk in the woods, again, at -20°. We enjoyed it, since we don't get to see a lot of woods in the city. However, when they announced at 8 pm that they'd like to go for a second walk in the dark, I think B started to question their sanity. Fortunately, we pleaded the "Steven's cold" defense (neglecting to mention his poor pregnant mother!) half an hour in to the second walk and went home a bit early.


I guess it's just something that we need to work on getting accultured to! Anyway, this has gotten really long already, so I hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for stopping by. We leave you with this photo of someone who's even more of a glutton for cold - an ice-fisherman we spotted on one of our walks.

C Новым Годом!

Happy New Year's! I have yet to understand why grammatically, in Russian, the way to wish someone well on a holiday is to say literally "with" the holiday, but it's what's done.

Anyway, in all seriousness, we do wish all of you a very Happy New Year. I can't take credit for the above picture, sadly, since we weren't at Red Square for the festivities, so I shamelessly nicked it off the BBC's website. The best way to prevent anyone like the BBC from suing you, I find, is to not have any assets for them to take away, a concept I stole from Randy Alcorn. Somehow I think we're safe.

New Year's, as I think I've mentioned on here too often already, is a VERY big deal in Russia. And if there's one thing that Russians really do well, it's party. When the holiday and the Russian people collide, the result is intense merry-making. Interestingly, one of the things they've incorporated into their holiday is fireworks (I assumed they had always done this, but I am assured that it is a relatively recent addition to the festivities by several Russians, or at least has grown in popularity recently). They take their fireworks very seriously. None of these sissy "Cherry Bombs" or the wimpy equivalents that they sell only in certain states in the US. Here, you don't need a license to acquire any size firework, even the massive, starburst ones that Americans reserve for professionally engineered displays with firefighters standing by. If you can afford it (and apparently everyone can), then you buy it, and shoot it off late New Year's Eve when you've gotten as drunk as possible.

You'd think that would be a recipe for a health risk nightmare, but the most dangerous display of the night came from the only sober people on the block (more on this below). The rest of our neighbors put on quite a show for us, starting about 10 at night and continuing until 5 in the morning. It was really impressive - just one after the other of spectacular fireworks for hours and hours. We had friends over, so we just turned out the lights and watched as our little park turned into Ground Zero for the night.

Of course, our friends, not being the type to sit idly by and let others have all the fun, had to go out and fire off some of their own. We accompanied them and had a good time watching the kids wave their sparklers (see below photo).

Our friend Ivor, though, had purchased a couple of the better ones so that we could at least have a small taste of the satisfaction of lighting up the sky, and so we watched as a few rockets showed their red glare and some bombs burst in air. Then, on box of rocket fireworks #3 or so, it got interesting:

I decided to film the event so we'd have something to put on here, but when one of the rockets misfired and tipped the box over, we ended up getting more than we had bargained for. It's a little hard to see in the dark, what with me shaking with laughter and, well, the darkness, but when the box of rockets tipped over, it somehow aimed itself directly for the parking lot in front of our building. One of the rockets manages to explode on the edge of a snowbank, and another snuck its way under one of the cars after bouncing off said snowbank. Fortunately, all the damage that was done was setting off the car alarm. Quite funny, so I hope you enjoy it and can tell what's going on.

Other than trying to destroy our neighbors' cars, we haven't been up to much. Had a bit of a cultural excursion today to a souvenir shop park and a bookstore, and I can report that it was fun but cold. Maybe I'll put some pictures of that up next time. Also, I'll be sure to take a photo or two tomorrow when we go back to our friends' Andrey and Iulia's place. We're going to spend the whole day there, so it should be a good time for learning more language and culture stuff.

Oh, and I almost forgot - our fantasy football season ended last weekend. It's odd that I know way more about the NFL this season than I did when I lived in the US, thanks to some friends back in America setting up a team for us. It was fun, and we came in second (and would have won had it not been for our friend Dave's donation of 30 points from one of his players to our finals opponent!). Thanks for letting us play, gang. It was a good time, and congratulations to Katie who pulled out the victory.

Edit: I also forgot to post this the last two blog posts, but fortunately Crystal's comment reminded me - we're having a girl! The MD seemed pretty confident, so we're planning that way. Of course, there's always a chance they're wrong, but for those of you who've been wondering, that's the theory.