A Boring Post (Update: Now With Something Interesting, At No Extra Charge!)

So, I know we need to post a blog, but there's really not much to tell about. Jesse and I are still chugging along in language and trying to develop relationships with people, and it's tough to come up with an interesting post built on that.

One thing that could be of interest is that we might have a few opportunities to go with families to some of the various areas of T-land. Oh, and it's been a little crazy with the weather here. It will be real hot (38 C) and a storm will come in a it will be chilly (20 C) for the next few days.

Thankfully, we are all healthy. Unless, you consider poor Matthew who has a total of 120 mosquito bites on his body. Poor guy looks like he has a disease or something. The rest of us also have bites but only a few. I guess Matthew is just too sweet.

Well, that is about it. Sorry, nothing too exciting, so I'll just post pictures. Enjoy.

Yep, manly men have tea parties. And below, a look at poor Matthew's bites. We thought we were avoiding the mosquitoes when we decided to work here instead of in the jungle!

Part of having boys is stifling that cringing sensation you get ("You'll hurt yourself!") sometimes. As in, when they decide to climb the balcony ladder. Actually, Steven climbs like a monkey. It's Matthew that makes us nervous when he climbs up to the top.

You know the meat is top quality when it's more fat than actual hamburger, right? Right?

Just some souvenirs. I really have nothing else to post, sorry.

*Update* Bobbie asked me to spellcheck this and post it today, but then we were spontaneously invited by my language helper to go out to "Salt Lake." If you'll recall from last year, this is a nearby tourist attraction that, much like the Dead Sea, has an extremely high salt concentration. The locals go there to bathe in its healing waters; we just went so the boys could experience a beach!

Both Matthew and Steven thoroughly enjoyed the unlimited size of the "sandbox." They didn't like getting the salty water in their faces, but once they learned to avoid that they loved it.

This is my language helper, A, and the shashlik we fixed for dinner.

We posted a similar picture last year, but we duplicated it again today. The water is so salty, you float almost on top of it, so I took a newspaper out in the waves to catch up on my reading. I don't remember if I talked about this last year, but one of the things that fascinates me about the lake is the lens effect that the salt has on the water.

What I mean is that there is so much salt in it, that it concentrates the sun's rays like a lens. It gets warmer the deeper you go, and about 5 feet down it is almost boiling! It's so bizarre to be standing in the water and to have your feet boiling hot, your waist comfortably warm, and your chest chilly.

The locals prize the mud for its curative powers. It must do something, because Bobbie tried it once a few months ago and said it did make her skin soft. I filled up a bottle with the mud for her before we left, so she could put some on here at home.

Steven and A's daughter having a grand time splashing and playing. It was so great to get the boys outside where they could just run and play wherever they wanted!

Right before we left, it started to rain and a storm looked to be brewing. As we drove across the steppe, we could look back and see the storm sweeping across the lake behind us.

Meetings

And now for something completely different.

Does anyone else remember how Monty Python would always start their skits off with that phrase? And since it represents our life of late, I thought I would start off with it.

How have things been completely different? Just this - in the past two weeks, we've had a language consultant come to check us on our project, and a couple of guys from other parts of the country to check our team and our work here and find out how things were going.

All of this has meant lots of meetings. First, it meant lots of meetings for those of us on the team so we could kind of crystallize somewhat exactly what our future plans are. What kinds of things each of us will do, timelines, that sort of thing. After we met as a team and finessed our plan, we met together with these two guys from other areas, and they gave their input. During all of this, we had our language consultant also in town, and she was checking on how we are doing in culture and language acquisition. So it was a busy time, and involved a lot of this:

That is to say, a lot of sitting around, drinking coffee, and talking. Planning, discussing, arguing ... well, of course not arguing. I mean, we're always in agreement on every detail, of course! ;-)

Fortunately, not all the meetings were about big picture things. Below is our language consultant, who last visited us in October and now came back to see how we were doing. We don't have any pictures of the things we did with her, but it basically involved her observing how we go about our culture and language study and then offering tips to improve it. Of course, there was also the dreaded level check, which actually was a source of pretty good news, all things considered.

Both Bobbie and I are at a level of Basic High in T, which means that we're close to entering the Progressing Level where you can create more freely with the language and just generally start getting out of the box of memorized phrases and variations on them. I'm really looking forward to that level; it will make getting around and just making friends much easier to do. We were both encouraged, especially Bobbie who's doing really well in T and loving it! Not to say that I'm not, it's just that the difference between this language and last has been more notable in Bobbie's case.

Of course, we did take one afternoon off the formal meetings to just take the guys around town and show them the sights. Here they are, looking suitably touristy, snapping photos of the snow-capped mountains across the river.

We also took them downtown to the big Buddhist prayer wheel. I don't think we've ever posted a picture of it on here without snow on it, so here it is wearing the latest in summer fashions - no snow.

And lastly, just for the sheer purtiness of it, a shot of the sunset. T-land is certainly a beautiful place to live!

Thanks for lifting us up during these meetings, which I think were really helpful to our overall work here. Please continue to do so as we return to regular culture and language study tomorrow.

Back to Blogging

He'll be rooting for Brazil, of course!

So, now that we've gotten off that other website that we used to use to keep in touch with y'all, it's back to the blog. And back we are, with a vengeance! Or at least, with a lot of pictures. I don't know which of those is more threatening.

The fun never stops in this part of the world, and now that spring has sprung (and pretty much gone by now; we only get about a month of spring before it's warm enough that it has to be called summer) the whole world has opened up and we can go outside again!

Recently we had the huge celebration for V-E day where all of Russia celebrates the end of World War II. In the US, this holiday has sort of fizzled as all the veterans die off, but here it's still a very important day. Remember, as many people as the US lost in the war, the Soviet Union lost almost 60 times as many. Seriously. So the holiday commemorating the victory is a very big deal. Here the students line up for the parade in the schoolyard outside our window.

And then there's the parade itself. Also a big deal, with all kinds of different troops and schools and things.

Steven managed to find a decent vantage point high above the rest of us.

Of course, you can't have a holiday celebration without grilled meat! And here's the shashlik lady, right on cue with skewers of it for us to enjoy.

A couple of weeks later, the schools had some sort of big celebration in that same yard right outside our place. Russians (and, by extension, people in the T school system too) love to give out what are called "gramoti," like certificates of achievement, for almost anything. They gathered all the schools in the area together around a bonfire and spent an hour handing them out recognizing various achievements. By the end I figure almost every student and teacher there had gotten a certificate for something or other.

Another big thing that we've been "up to," or more accurately "down to," is being sick. This month has been a bad one for our health; the boys and I were sick off and on for quite some time, and even Bobbie had a week of feeling poorly. Thankfully there were DVDs to put on for sick little boys, and a bed to lay on for the sick parents. We're all feeling better now, so thank you SO much to those of you who were thinking of us.

I never put video on here, since it takes so long to upload, but I decided to put this one on to upload while I went and did other things, and came back and here it is! Just the boys being cute, mostly for the grandparents.

Oh, and one more cute one of Matthew, who managed to get into Mommy's clothes this morning. I like his expression; sort of a "Really? You're going to take pictures of this?" look.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by, and be sure to do so more regularly. We're planning to get back to updating every week or 10 days, since we're now solely available to you on here.

A Birthday Picnic and Other Photos

The view from our window the other night - spectacular!

The Wandering Family, from time to time, manages to wander themselves silly, to the point where blog updates are left by the wayside. That's my excuse, anyway.

And really, it's not like our lives have changed dramatically in the last two weeks. Well, we did make another trip out to "Paradise," the village we've been living/working in recently, and our coworkers are back, but that's getting ahead of myself. I should just let the pictures do the explaining:

Yes, our long-lost coworkers are back! With their twins in tow! And they are predictably cute.

And our boys enjoy them being back as well. Steven and Matthew had missed some of their favorite playmates, but no longer.

And, just to prove that the seemingly-interminable winter is actually over, here's an outdoor shot.

Of course, it's not all been fun and games since they got back. D and C's apartment is exactly the same layout as ours (not as rare as you'd think, since they all had to be approved by a bureaucrat in Moscow back in the Soviet days), and they decided that they'd like to remove the wall in between their living room and kitchen. We had also been thinking about making that change, and now we really want to after seeing how it makes their apartment feel.

Anyway, this photo is not of the work going on, which I don't have pictures of, but the work "glove" we constructed out of duct tape for lack of better options when hauling broken concrete out. It worked great!

And we have managed to convert some of our village friendships into town friendships; this is our host family enjoying a meal at our apartment recently. I don't know how much they enjoyed the American-style baked beans and fried chicken, but they didn't really give us enough advance notice to cook a more T-palate-friendly dish, so I guess they're stuck with it!

We did manage to wander our way out to the village where we've been teaching English and studying T culture and language. Somehow the student on the right doesn't seem to be appreciating the dynamic nature of my teaching style. I can't understand it.

Steven thought he could do a better job of holding their interest. Unfortunately, he's only qualified to teach the lower-case "l."

We happened to be out in the village for Matthew's 2nd (!!) birthday, so we took advantage of some nice weather and went out for a picnic. Two of our students fell in with us on the way, and we hiked up into the hills as far as the boys' little legs would carry them.

We tried to get some birthday photos; I like this one of Daddy and Matthew, who seems to be intent on tasting the flavor of his bubble thingy.

Like all good boys, Matthew likes bubbles. Here, one of the students is helping him blow some.

Meanwhile Daddy and Steven were playing in the dirt with sticks. Because that's what you do when you're a man.

Matthew managed to cap off the day by setting an international record for cuteness.

We brought him home to tuck into some birthday cupcakes and milk.

After which he was so tired he fell asleep standing up. Actually, this was taken a few days later, but I still like how he can manage to fall halfway off the bed and still not wake himself up.

Paradise

Yep, paradise. I bet you wouldn't have guessed you could find it in the middle of Siberia, but it turns out that's where it is.

What am I talking about? The village we've been spending all this time is actually named for the mythical Buddhist paradise of Shambhala. You can check out what that's about here, but the short version is that it's the inspiration for the Shangri-La that was popularized by Western writers. It is rumored to be anywhere from Tibet to T-land, but of course the people here claim that we're living in the real thing.

Which judgment, of course, we're inclined to agree with. I don't know about the New Age "energies" of the place, but as far as life goes, it's pretty good there. We've started to get the hang of our English classes which take up our mornings, and the kids are starting to make some progress. More importantly, we're getting lots of chances to learn language and culture. Culture more than language, probably, since most of what's going on around us goes over our heads, but it's still really good. On to the pictures of our latest week out in Paradise:

Unfortunately, paradise does have a few minor drawbacks. Especially this time of year, otherwise known as "The Swamp Period" as all the snow and animal droppings start to melt and combine to make the town a massive smelly marsh. Not so nice.

Oh, and the food. Yeah. Also not so "paradisey." This is the famous "Congealed Pressed Fat" dish. Served raw, in slices. Mmmmmmm.

But apart from all of that, it's great. This is our most "rowdy" class of kids, the ones in 5th class.

And back on the home front, the kids love it out there. Steven even volunteered to sweep the floor!

The family we live with keeps the television on pretty much 24-7, so it's not like their kids haven't seen it, but they almost never watch kids programs. So, when we get out a movie for the boys on our laptop, they tend to get on the bed with them to watch.

This has been a very harsh and long winter here, and it's taken a toll on the animals. Our hosts have lost over 40 sheep and a few cows as well. Our coworkers recently bought 2 of their sheep, in an effort to start their own "herd" and mainly to help out our hosts. They were able to buy some hay to see them through the rest of the winter until things melt enough for the animals to go out and forage for themselves.

However, the cows have almost starved to death by this point, and they are too weak to get up if they lay down or fall. Seems like about once a day we all have to go out to pick one of them up. Here we're setting up for the lifting process, which takes at least 3 people and is quite difficult.

One of the odder things to us, culturally, is the way they deal with the sheep that starve to death. Rather than skin them for the wool or try to get what little meat is left on them, they just throw them into a pile and give them to the dogs. Here, what I initially thought was a nice sheepskin bed this dog was lying on turned out to be merely a pile of dead sheep. Looks comfortable, though.

If you'll recall, a few months ago we had a picture of me looking ridiculous dressed up in a local outfit. Now it's Bobbie's turn!

And this one is just a bonus. Congratulations to John and my sister Rachael on your wedding! Sorry we couldn't be there, but on second thought, considering the stock of pictures and stories I could share, maybe it's best for y'all that we weren't. ;-) We love you and will be lifting you up as you start your life together.