С Днём Рождения, Стёпа!

Do we have a post for you! Snow, birthdays, three videos - it's like a blog extravaganza! Or maybe a blog marvel, or perhaps a blog spectacle. For sure, it's at least a blog performance. I've run out of synonyms for extravaganza moving down the scale of impressiveness, so we'll have to move on to something else.

The latest news with us is that we have received our visas for another year here! It was a struggle, and we jumped through a lot of hoops, but it looks like we're set. We'll be helping out with a language school teaching English when everything's finally up and running, so you could be thinking about that and the relationships we form from that. And that's about it, apart from our continuing language studies. Let's go right to the pictures:

Well, it took quite a while, but the snow finally has arrived in Moscow. Usually it's quite a bit before now, but it looks like it's here to stay for now. That means bundling up the boys a bit more, so that we travel everywhere like this, which Sasha obviously loves:

Since it's Steven's birthday and the rest of the post will probably be about him, we had to at least put Sasha in here somewhere. He's started to crawl everywhere, and now he likes to sit up as well. Here he somehow managed to work his foot out from his high chair, and his mom snapped a pic of the funny pose.

So, today was Steven's second birthday, and I thought we'd put up a few pictures of the party. A couple of guests, including Steven's friend Pasha, weren't able to make it since they had last-minute guests show up, so he had to be content as the only child at his party (well, I guess his brother counts too).

B made some delicious pizza, which was heartily enjoyed by the guests who did come. We had our language teacher Viola, coworker Julie, and a couple of friends from family group (and their Mom, who had flown in from Uzbekistan for a visit).

Of course, I'm not sure if Steven really understood the concept that it was his birthday, but he definitely enjoyed himself regardless. After all, he got to eat a chocolate cupcake, and we even gave him a few sips of Coke. Here he's blowing out the candles on his cake, and just generally enjoying being the center of attention.

B had a novel idea when it came to giving him his gifts on how to create a distinct family tradition that the kids would enjoy. She decided to blow up a bag of balloons (well, decided to assign her loving husband to fill up a bag of balloons would be more precise, but who's keeping track here?) and put them in the living room. Then, Steven's presents would be stashed around the room under a carpet of balloons for him to find. The result, as you can see below, was total bedlam - he didn't even care about the presents, but the chance to run around in a room full of balloons was another matter entirely!

So, when he finally did get to all the presents, the adults who were a bit bored watching him have all the fun decided to get into the act. Somehow a full-fledged balloon war broke out! I'm happy to report no casualties, except perhaps our neighbors' peace and quiet for a few minutes.

One of the presents Steven got tonight prompts this week's Interesting Russian Cultural Note. He received a stuffed Krokodil Gena, which is one of the characters of an old Russian cartoon.

I've always liked Krokodil Gena, because he sings a lot of the children's songs on the radio (I listen to the Kids' Radio Station a lot for Russian practice), and in particular is known for singing the most popular Russian birthday song. To me it's fascinating to see the difference in the birthday songs of the US (which, admittedly, has been adopted here as in so many other places and "Happy Birthday to You" is just translated and sung) and Russia.

In this birthday song, the crocodile named Gena is singing about his birthday. It's not really a happy song as such, though (and I apologize if my translation isn't entirely accurate):

Пусть бегут неуклюже                              Let them run awkwardly
Пешеходы по лужам,                               The pedestrians through the puddles
А вода - по асфальту рекой.                  And the water over the asphalt like a river
И неясно прохожим                                  It's not clear to the passers-by
В этот день непогожий,                           On this bad-weather day
Почему я веселый такой.                       Why I'm so happy

ПРИПЕВ:                                                    CHORUS:
Я играю на гармошке                              I play my accordion
У прохожих на виду...                             In view of the passers-by
К сожаленью, день рожденья -           Unfortunately, your birthday
Только раз в году.                                  Only comes once a year.

Прилетит вдруг волшебник                  Suddenly a wizard flies in
В голубом вертолете                              In a blue helicopter
И бесплатно покажет кино.                   And shows a movie for free
С днём рождения поздравит                Wishes me a happy birthday
И, наверно, оставит                                 And maybe, leaves as a gift
Мне в подарок пятьсот "эскимо".       500 "Eskimos" (a kind of ice cream)

In other words, his birthday has happened to fall on a day where the weather is terrible, which is too bad. His response is to try to be as happy as possible, and daydream about what would have really made it great, since it will be a whole year before he gets another one. To me, it's brilliant - not at all what you would expect to hear from a birthday song, but still very good. Plus I really like the tune.

I'll leave you with the video to the crocodile singing the song. Maybe sometime I'll do a bit on the actual cartoon that this clip is from, since it's very popular and pretty much every Russian knows it (maybe like Pooh in American culture). You can click on some of the other links on the right if you go to the youtube page directly and see some of the other songs and stuff from the show.



OK, that's about it for this week. Hope you're doing well, and thanks for keeping us and our continuing study of Russian in your thoughts!

Back At It

So, we've now long since passed the point at which we can still post pictures of our Germany adventures and call them "new," so we're back to finding something interesting out of our language study days to tell you about.

In short, everything is going along much as it was before we left. We're back into our routine of classes every day, it's getting colder, and there's really not a terrible lot to tell you about. I (J) have been finding it harder to study as much in the afternoons now that there are two kids to look after, but we feel that it's more important for B to catch up some, so we're going to continue to have her go to class 5 days a week. You could be thinking about both of us, me especially, as I feel like I've hit some kind of ceiling and am plugging along lately without feeling like I'm making much progress.

But, aside from dry, boring language stuff, what do we have to tell you about? A few things come to mind, actually. Matthew has started to crawl, which is neat. B tried to get a video of that, but you know how hard it is to get kids to cooperate with cameras. Steven's big news is that he's making progress with the potty training, and has managed to go in the potty at least once or twice a day for the past few days (a little M&M bribery doesn't hurt, of course)!

Also, last weekend, the local school for foreigners' kids had a "Fall Festival" at which there was a yard sale of sorts, and some games for kids. We went with the kids, and despite it mostly being geared to pre-teens, we did find some things for them to do. Steven decorated (with help) and ate (without help) his own cookie, as illustrated below.

Actually, Steven's gotten into helping Mommy cook lately, and we've been putting the apron that his grandmother made him to good use:

Then, later Saturday afternoon, I went downtown for a meeting with the newly founded "Expat Book Swap Club." Those of you that know me well know that I love to read, and it was nice to get some variety in my library. I traded two books and about 5 DVDs that I hated for a huge bag of interesting-looking books! OK, I know you don't care, but for me the opportunity to have new and interesting English-language books is huge.

And that's about it, I guess. Since this post is so short, I thought I'd introduce a possible new segment of the blog for your perusal: Interesting Russian Cultural Note of the Week. If it gets good reviews, maybe we'll try to come up with something on a regular basis, so be sure to let us know what you think in the comments. We've pretty much given up on finding more of those What Is It? items for you, as we've gotten so used to most everything that it's hard to remember what seemed strange when we arrived.

This week, our IRCNW is based on a movie I had to watch for a recent assignment: Ирония Судьбы, или С Лёгким Паром (Ironia Sudbi, ilyi S Lyogkim Parom), which could be translated "The Irony of Fate, or Have a Good Steam." We had heard a lot about this film since we got here, as it's probably by far the most famous Soviet film ever made, and is sort of the Russian version of It's a Wonderful Life, the beloved classic film that gets shown every holiday season.

I wasn't sure how much I'd get out of it, since we didn't have it in English and the dialogue moves quickly but I loved it! If you can track down a subtitled or dubbed copy, go watch it - it's brilliant, and has lots of good Russian cultural things interspersed! And with none of the stuff that makes it impossible to recommend any film made these days (unless some lighthearted drinking would bother you).

The basic story of the film is this: in the Soviet Union, party planners have designed everything to be mass-manufactured, including housing. As a result, all the houses look identical (remember your comment when we first got here, Rich, about how the buildings in our pictures looked "just like where Jason Bourne was filmed!" That's because all buildings pretty much everywhere in Russia look like that.) The first few minutes of the film are a cartoon reminding people about just that fact, and I tracked it down on youtube for you:



Anyway, the main character Zhenya is getting ready for New Year's night, which he's going to spend with his almost-fiance Galya. Before they meet, however, he goes to the banya to steam with his buddies in their annual New Year's Eve tradition. While there, they toast the new stage in his relationship and they all get quite drunk. They go to the airport to see off one of their number to Leningrad, but by mistake Zhenya gets put on the plane in his place.

When he wakes up, he's in Leningrad, but everything looks so similar and he's so hungover that he doesn't realize it. He takes a taxi to "his" address, which looks exactly like his real address in Moscow. His key even fits in the lock, and he collapses on the bed. Of course, when the owner of the apartment (Nadya) gets home, she freaks out and orders him to leave. He won't leave what he thinks is his own apartment, and they argue. Then her boyfriend shows up and wonders why there's a strange man in her bed. In their attempt to explain it to him (and on the phone to poor Galya, who's sitting in the apartment back in Moscow convinced that Zhenya is off womanizing, especially when he calls from some woman's apartment), they end up wondering if maybe fate brought them together for a reason.

I won't give away the ending, but it's very good. The New Year's night definitely is a memorable one for everyone involved, and their lives change. If you get a chance, and want to watch something a bit different from your typical Hollywood fare, give it a try.

OK, so that's about it for this week. And for you grandparents and really close friends who read the blog, here's a cute little video of the boys to make your day:

It's Me Again! (a B photo blog)

For those of you who have viewed my (B's) Facebook page, you may have discovered how much I like to take pictures. I don't claim to be good at it, I just like doing it. This is not going to be a long post because this is mainly to show you pictures from our trip. These are the ones I like the best, so I hope you enjoy them:

Home!

OK, so we're home, but you've seen enough pictures of our place in Moscow, so I thought I'd put up one more blog post about our time in Germany. We had a great time there, though we're glad to be back home on the way to resolving all our paperwork issues (until next year, of course, when we have to do it all over again!). Anyway, this last week we left my family's place in Mundelsheim and went over to visit a friend of ours, so we'll catalog our last week in Germany in these pictures.

One of the things we enjoyed most about being in Germany for this time was actually getting a "fall" season. In Russia, it seems like it goes almost directly from summer to winter, with a brief transition period thrown in there, and we miss the gradual cooling and leaves changing that you get everywhere else. Of course, this threw B into a photo-taking frenzy of leaves, and I'll leave her to put up a post with all her "fall color" pictures. However, I liked these ones of the boys, so I thought I'd throw them in:

No socks and shoes! Our Russian friends will probably freak out, but it wasn't that cold. Then, she took advantage of Matthew starting to sit up to get this one:

Steven went through a brief phase after our journey where his favorite things were trains, but now he's all about tractors. He even tried to drive this one.

So, after staying for almost 4 weeks with my family in Mundelsheim, we received our visas and went for a long weekend with our friend Anne, who lives near the Czech border in Bavaria. She is hoping to come work with us after she completes her training, so it was really good to get to spend some time together.

Fortunately, she was on break from her classes, so we got to make a few day trips out to see the countryside. The first day, we drove down to visit this castle in the town of Kulmbach.

This is the view from the top up there, with B and Anne:


When I was little, my family traveled through Germany on our way back from Indonesia, where we'd been living. We have a picture of my little brother inside a cannon from a visit to a castle, with just his head sticking out. We couldn't find a big enough cannon to replicate the shot, so we put Steven on top of this cannon instead. He got so excited!

Inside the castle walls the ivy in this courtyard was changing color to a brilliant red.

We enjoyed the Bavarian food while we were there, as well. I took a picture of our feast from our trip to a local restaurant. On the left, there are pork chops and bread balls (impossible to explain, but excellent!) in a horseradish sauce, then the omnipresent wurst and sauerkraut, then on the right is a roasted pork leg and potato balls. All of it was delicious!


One of the other things we did there was just to tour the town of Hof. They have a landmark collection of street signs from all over the world. Here I'm pointing to a sign for a town called "Brasilien" (I was born in Brasil) and B's standing near "Amerika," which is also apparently a town somewhere in Germany. If I had more space, I could post a bunch more pictures of all the signs, including one from Rocky Mount, a town near where B's parents live.

We also enjoyed a trip to the zoo. Steven might have enjoyed the slide even better than the animals:

He did enjoy the animals, though. He's been learning all the animal noises lately, so he got to practice a bunch of them and learn some new ones. Here he's feeding the goats.


Matthew didn't get into it too much, but the monkeys that ran free inside the conservatory-thingy looked him over carefully. Finally, we realized that they were captivated by his rattle, so B offered it to one. He almost took her up on it, too.

Steven hadn't experienced a trampoline before, and even though he can't jump yet, he loved being held while we did. When do kids get big enough to jump (from a level surface), anyway? It seems odd to me that he can run around without problems but can't get it together to get both legs off the ground at the same time.

OK, so that's about it. I'll leave you with this picture of B and the boys and the answer to last week's question. No points for anyone; we only had one guess!

The sign in question was the "no speed limit" sign. They actually still have them on the German autobahn. We got to experience a little of this, as our friend's dad actually came to pick us up in his Audi Quattro. I had never been above 105 miles/hour (about 170 km/hr) in my life, but he quickly put that to shame. We averaged around 130 m/hr (200 km/hr), I'd say, though he briefly went up to 160 + mph (260 km/hr). It was unbelievable to me that you can drive that fast legally, but people seem to be very good drivers and we didn't see any major accidents ourselves. I just remember a friend in the US paying lots of money to have a "NASCAR experience" and not going over 150, so I had to laugh that we got to do it for free there.

Harvesting Grapes

I can confirm that rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated. Well, mildly, at least. Greatly exaggerated is probably pushing it.

But we are alive, anyway. It's weird. The internet doesn't work for like three or four days and all of a sudden we have multiple emails implying that we've been lost in a fiery explosion, or possibly kidnaped by terrorists. The readers apparently have active imaginations. ´

First, for those of you who have been thinking of us: we got word yesterday that our visas are in, and they're supposed to be in the mail today! Yeah! It even worked out for us to get all four visas without a trip back to Moscow for me, which is a huge plus. Not to mention that our friend of a friend of a friend negotiated a lower price from the embassy so we didn't have to pay as much. Could it get any better? Thanks again for all your thoughts, they had a real impact on our lives this time. There's really no limit to his goodness, is there? We plan to return next week after a quick visit to a future coworker and pick up on our Russian study again.

OK, so on to what we've been doing while we waited: helping with the harvest!

B is turning into quite the photographess! I'm no expert on photo composition, but I really like this one with all the perspective-y stuff and whatnot. Plus, it's cute.

But enough of that. As you'll recall from our last post, we were in Germany waiting for our visas to arrive so we can go back home. What was originally scheduled to be a brief 10-day stop has turned into a 25-day stop. As I've mentioned, we finally have heard that everything is finalized, but our poor family here have had to put up with us for quite a while now.

I want you to imagine that some distant relatives who you've only seen twice in your life call you up and ask if they can stay with you for 10 days while they get some paperwork processed. OK, you think to yourself, we can put up with their two small children for that long. We can move one of our boys out of his room to give them a place to stay, and we'll even pick them up from the train station.

Now imagine that your visitors' paperwork hits some snags, requiring them to stay with you for almost a month. A month of screaming children at the dinner table, a son living in another room, etc. This will give you some idea of what my poor family has been through. And they've been great about it, even though it's their busiest time of the year!

Naturally, we've tried to help out as much as possible while we're here to lessen the burden of our unexpected stay. Since they are farmers, this has meant putting in time in the apple orchards and vineyards, where we've been most days for the last 3 weeks. And so, in case this situation ever happens to you, I have prepared an introductory course on grape-picking for the readers:

The first, and most time-consuming portion of the grape-harvesting process, is the picking of the grapes. As with seemingly all fruit farmng, the critical thing in grapes is sugar content. When the grapes are totally ripe, the sugar content is at it's highest, meaning you can make better wine and therefore more money.

Grapes, apparently, are Democrats. I had always thought that grapes were "purple," at least the non-white ones, but it turns out there are many shades of purple. Basically, the bluer the better, so as you snip off the clusters to put in your bucket, you want nice blue ones like those pictured above.

These grapes are too red. In this case, you need to throw them out. Just snip them out of the bunch and throw them onto the ground. Of course, you're standing on a near-cliff, so I would suggest throwing it somewhere you've already worked so it doesn't make you slip as you work.

There are several kinds of things that afflict ripe grapes, and the most common is shown here. It's a sort of mold, I guess, and the internet calls it "bunch rot." It usually forms on the inside of a large bunch. Most of the time, you'll find that part of the bunch is OK and part is rotten, so just snip off the rotten grapes and pitch them, the rest is perfectly fine.

A lot of grapes are grown on really steep hillsides. These hillsides offer two advantages. One: you can grow some kinds of grapes only on steep slopes, and these kinds are apparently in higher demand and make better wine. Second: the German organization that controls the production of wine has a limit on how many liters you can make per hectare, and the amount is higher on a sloped hectare (it makes sense if you think about it - on a slope you actually have more surface area for vines per hectare, which are measured straight across).

Serious grape farmers (as opposed to hobbyists, of which there are many here) run tracks up the slope, which they can then use to move this machine up and down the slope. We poured our buckets of grapes into white boxes, which were then loaded onto a device like this one for transport to the tractor.

In relatively flat vineyards, or places where there is no track, someone will strap on this contraption and walk down to where the pickers are. Then, 4 or 5 buckets are poured into the pack, and he hauls it to the tractor manually. I found this picture on the internet, so it's not someone we know, but I think you get the idea of the "grape backpack."

B missed most of the grape-harvesting, since it was too steep to bring the kids, but she did manage to get them out here one day when we worked on a flatter vineyard. You know what they say: The family that picks grapes together, stays together. Or something like that.

OK, so we have lots of other pictures of the fall colors here and the boys being cute, but since those are B's specialty, I'll let her post them on another post. Maybe we can get our videos to cooperate and we'll put a few of them up next post as well. For now, choos (I'm sure my German readers will be disappointed with that spelling, but it's how it sounds) and hopefully we'll get back to this blog in a shorter period this time.

Oh, and, back by popular demand, we'll end with a What Is It™. This sign is commonly seen around these parts. Can you guess what it means?