Christmas with the Wandering Family - a B post

Well, first Christmas is over.  Now, we are getting ready for second Christmas.  

At least, that's what I call it.  They call it New Year's here.  They have the same Christmas figures and traditions as we do but they do it all on New Year's eve (now, some of you might already know this but just in case some are new to our blog I thought I would state it again).  

Anyway, to recap what we did for our Christmas: of course, what's December without a Christmas party?  So, being the party animal I am, I assumed the responsibility of hosting probably the only actual Christmas party here.  We did it the Friday before Christmas and had our English Club over.  I wanted to introduce them to some of the typical fun we have at Christmas parties like Dirty Santa and going for a treasure hunt.  I don't think they got it.  I basically had to tell them where to find the next clue.  But, we had fun.  

And, of coures, I had to bake, bake, bake.  I'm pretty proud of this snowman cake if I do say so myself:

Our tree had lots of gifts under thanks to some grandparents, aunts, and uncles who wanted to spoil their grandchildren (I can't complain either since I got a ton of stuff to make me even fatter (again, not complaining).  Jesse got the perfect gift:  a Nook (an electronic book reader).  More space for me to pack things when we come back, because he won't be trying to hog an entire suitcase just for his books. 

Anyway, because of time conflicts, we did the typical present opening/cooking thing on Christmas Eve (we wanted to do it while skyping the grandparents).  

So, we woke up, the boys helped make pancakes, and then we ripped into the presents.  

By the end, the boys got the hang of ripping into the presents.  The rest of the day they were busy playing while Mommy and Daddy crashed.  

I wanted to start our own traditions and decided to make a Stollen bread (a German fruit cake).  Since it takes 6 hours to make I probably will not make it except for Christmas.  It was pretty good.  The boys like it but ended up picking the fruit out.  Oh well.

 And, I had to take this picture of what the market looks like.  The whole market is lined with kiosks looking exactly like this one.  It was so crowded I wasn't able to take a picture of what the aisle looked like.

So, we finished up our Christmas.  Now, time to celebrate second Christmas which included Christmas programs at school.  

Here, the kids all dress up like Halloween for their parties.  I had to have a pirate costume for Steven since he was in a presentation with the other boys as a pirate (look below).  Anyway, I had forgotten about getting a costume for Matthew.  So, I just dressed him up in Steven's costume since their parties were on different days (ain't he cute?).

So, like I said before, Steven's class had a program that included songs and dances from the kids. 

Here Santa Claus is named Father Frost, and he has a granddaughter named Snegurochka (Snow Maiden).  One of girls from Steven's class is playing her here (the one dressed in blue) and she looks just like the pictures of her.  On a side note, Steven adores this girl.  She takes really good care of him and has assigned herself as his protector.  So, cute.

I knew about one of the songs Steven was doing, but what I didn't know was that he was going to sing Jingles Bells (in English) by himself.  I wanted a video of this but by the time I got the camera out, he was already half way through.  He did great (if a little quiet). 

 They had one of the dads dress up as Father Frost/Russian Santa so we had to take a picture of it.

Although we usually don't buy each other something for Christmas, I really wanted to get this for Jesse (or I should say, for both of us).  It's a sushi kit.  Pretty tasty, and we've already had sushi twice since Christmas!

We really tried to work with Steven to memorize his lines for this poem but he just couldn't say it fast enough.  Besides, he was having way too much fun with his scarf to bother with lines.

Anyway, that's about it for Christmas-related post stuff.  Tune in next year for more on New Year's, and until then, С Новым Годом!

Holidays

 I'm too lazy to write much, so I'm just going to let most of these pictures speak for themselves.  Above is obviously family game night, with a tense game of Candyland won by, if I recall correctly, Matthew.

Except maybe these pictures I'll write something about, because they won't make much sense without an explanation.  In an effort to get more time in the language, I've been trying to make some contacts in a nearby village.  Finally, I was able to arrange to live with an older gentleman there in his one-room home.  It gives me lots of language practice, and until he moved back to the city very recently, I was trying to get out there several times per week.  Here's where he lives:

 

The inside looks like this:

I sleep next to the bag of potatoes, he sleeps on the bed where I'm standing to take the picture.  It really is a very cozy affair (note the wellhead inside the house, so it doesn't freeze!).

This is the kind of thing we do there; go out and look for firewood to cut up and haul back.  The coal trucks have been slow to come around this year for some reason, so everyone's trying to find enough wood to burn to heat things.  It gets rather cool this time of year.

Back in the city, Steven's been working hard on learning to read, and he's doing really well.

Though he does take frequent breaks from his studies to wrestle with Dexter.  By the way, Matthew seems to be allergic to Dexter, so he'll probably be leaving us as soon as we can find another home for him.  It will be a sad day for poor Steven, who will lose his wrestling buddy.

Getting into the Christmas spirit by baking cookies,

and putting up the tree and the ornaments!

Merry Christmas from the Wandering Family!

Catching Up (a post by B)

Well, it's been quite busy the past few weeks.  So, we'll start with Halloween.  It's becoming more of a known holiday here.  I think it's just another excuse to party.  

So, party we did - we invited over our friends in the English club, as they really wanted to see an American-style Halloween.  I even decorated the apartment in a "spooky" theme with "spooky" food and all.  There was quite a turnout and fun was had by all.  An advantage of being here is that they haven't seen the type of food that is typically done for Halloween parties like spider cupcakes, eyeball eggs, and ghost toast.  People even came dressed up which is always fun.

We then had a few weeks when it was a bit slower.  In those weeks, Steven's class had a "mother's" presentation in which some of the students recited poems.  There was one in the local language, one in Russian, and they asked Steven to do one in English.  

We taught him a version of the "Roses are red" poem for mothers but I guessed he had Russian on the brain because when it was his turn, he started reciting something in Russian (still not sure what it was).  So, I had to give him a prompt before he did it, but he did OK in the end.  He even got a certificate for participating.

Sorry about the video, it got cut off a bit short (plus you might hear Matthew getting excited about Steven getting to talk):

We also found that the local meat market was open last week, so we went to stock up for the winter.  This is when all the farmers slaughter their cows and sell the meat at a discount with no middlemen.  They wait until it's freezing, and that way people can buy all the meat they want and just put the extra on their balcony (remember, our balcony is way colder than our freezer).  

Because there's no difference in the price for which cut of meat you get, Jesse was able to get a beef backstrap for the same price as any other meat!  So now we have some nice filet mignon waiting in our "freezer."  The downside of this whole process is that they just cut off the part of the cow you want with an axe, and you have to do the butchering yourself at home.

Then came Steven's birthday.  WOW!  I can't believe he is 5 already.  My beautiful baby boy is growing up. So, we continued with our balloon tradition and hid his presents under balloons so he could find them.  We had several neighbors over to help celebrate the occasion which I think Steven's loved since there were several kids there for him to play with.

Matthew didn't want to be out of the loop for all the excitement, so he snuck in and tried to blow out Steven's candles for him!

Presents from the grandparents far, far away:

He seems to really like both of them!

We'll have to post next time on Thanksgiving, as this post is long enough already!  The short version is that we had friends over and made all the fixings (from scratch, of course) including a goose.  So, today, after I dropped the boys off at school, I spent Black Friday in bed doing nothing.  It was all I hoped it would be!

In other news, our puppy is getting bigger and bigger.  I've never house trained a dog before but he seems to be obeying more and more commands so I think it's working (he still likes to pee on the floor so I'll take suggestions as to how to manage this).  The boys love him but we will wait for a time when we don't have anything to write about to blog on that. 

And with that, I leave you with this thought - HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

Warning: This Post May Be Hazardous to Your Stomach!

 Due to an extreme lack of interesting things going on, or at least interesting things that we have pictures of, I decided to go back and post something that happened way back in August.  I would have posted it then but we were in Moscow and there were other things to post, so I saved it for a rainy day.  And it's snowing, which is close enough.

Anyway, I've started this post out with a picture of our cute new puppy Dexter, so you have plenty of warning if you have a weak stomach before you scroll down.  Because this week, we're going to walk you through a traditional T event, the "sheep cutting," which is a bit difficult on Western sensibilities.

Are you ready?  This is a picture of the neighborhood outside my language helper's house where I went for the meal.  I know it's not that interesting; I post it as one final warning that if you have a weak stomach, now is the time to stop scrolling.


Still with me?  Cool.  Here we go:

This is A, my language helper.  He knew that I had been wanting to help out in a T traditional sheep slaughter, as it's a big part of the culture.  He invited me over when his family ran out of meat and were getting ready to remedy the situation.  Above you can see him readying his knife, which is very important.  You really need a sharp knife to properly slaughter in the T fashion.


Now, I don't have a picture of the actual killing, because I was holding down the goat (I know I promised a sheep slaughter, but it's basically the same thing).  However, the thing to remember is that the T still practice the traditional central Asian slaughter method passed down since the time of Genghis Khan.  The people believed at that time, and still do in fact, that the earth was sacred, and you couldn't pour blood onto it without offending the spirits.  Therefore, you have to slaughter your animals without spilling their blood, which means you can't do the Western thing where we slice the animal's throat and let it bleed out.


Instead, you cut a small slit into the skin just below the rib cage, and actually put your hand into the chest cavity.  When you feel the heart, you pinch the main artery just above the heart, which kills the animal quite quickly and relatively painlessly, if you know what you're doing.  I had to help out by basically choking the goat at the same time A did all that, since he couldn't seem to get a firm grip on the artery, but it still went pretty quickly.

Anyway, when you're done you have a dead goat with all of its blood still inside.  Then comes the hard work of skinning without tipping the animal over, so that its blood stays inside the abdominal cavity.

The skinning has to be done mostly with your fingers, as you don't want to cut the animal and risk puncturing and letting the blood out.  It's a good workout for your knuckles; really hard to do in some spots.

Eventually you have a skinned goat, resting upside down on his own skin to keep the meat off the ground.  Now you have to get the blood out, and since it's a major part of the feast, there are non-spiritual reasons for not letting it spill.  Here you can see A carefully ladling it into a pot (more on what happens to it later).

The ladies always get stuck with the job of cleaning out the intestines.  I'll leave it to your imagination what it is exactly that they have to clean out of there, or you can watch this video to have your worst suspicions confirmed.  This is only really disgusting if you are watching it knowing that pretty soon they're going to fill them with blood and you're going to have to eat it!

It takes a lot of work, but I'm sure that they get at least 90% of the contents removed before putting it in the pot to cook.  Leaving a mere 10% or so of the previous occupants of the intestines still there.

Leaving the ladies to their work, us men go over and start the fire to get a massive pot boiling:

While it heats up, it's time to prepare the blood.  A bit of salt, a few spices and herbs, and then it's time to mix.  This is my hand, mixing the blood up, which you have to do so it doesn't congeal before you can get it into the intestines.  Texture?  Indescribable, I'm afraid.  Lucky you.

Now the ladling of the blood mixture. You have to do this carefully, and once a piece of intestine is full, you have to tie it off so the blood doesn't leak out.  

Then all the bits of guts go into this big pot, there to boil until they are a sort of grayish-brown on the outside.  Very appetizing.

See?  If that isn't appetizing, I don't know what is:

 

This is a piece of the one from the video you watched above.  To my great fortune, we were having this shindig right next to A's garden, and they had dill and green onion growing there, which were served with the "hot blood," as the delicacies are known in T.  I've had this dish quite a few times, but the addition of the green onion really helped to cover the flavor.  Somewhat.

You can't refuse - it's simply their favorite thing to eat, and they love to serve it to guests.  Imagine if someone came to your house and gagged when you gave them pizza from your favorite place or something. 

Below is the cross-section of that bigger piece from above.  As you can see, the blood sort of bubbles up inside, leading to an interesting texture.  Actually, the blood pudding-stuff inside the intestine isn't that hard to get down - it goes straight down.  It's the outer intestine that is hard to swallow, as it simply doesn't come apart as you chew.

Later that night, this is all that's left.  It really is interesting to see the way that different cultures and cuisines can shape differing palates.  What to me is something hard to choke down is literally most T people's favorite food.  

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this photo walkthrough on a typical T feast.  To those of you brave enough to read to the end, I salute you!


As for us, only one really big bit of news: our documents were accepted to apply for permanent residency!  Now that the application is in, we have to wait 6 months to find out the decision, but at least it's out of our hands.  Hopefully sometime next spring/summer we'll become permanent residents of T-land, and then we can enjoy feasts like this all the time!