Last pre-Germany Post

An ancient Scythian gravesite, now fixed up some, on the way to the village

So, the Wandering Family has wandered its way to Germany for a conference, and we have lots of pictures to post.  But, before I do that, since the new camera is ALL the way upstairs and I don't feel like going and getting it, I thought I'd post the last few pictures that we took in T-land.

A couple of weeks ago I went out to a village with a friend to carry out a small relief project.  There are a number of families in this town who don't have a lot of food to eat, so we wanted to help them out.  We had a contact who we trusted to distribute the food, so we loaded up a friend's Uazik and took them a bunch of food (flour, sugar, tea, noodles, etc).

This is one of the grandma's on the list to get some help with food; she showed us her house and was very hospitable.

The only other thing I could find that was even halfway interesting was photos from a recent football tournament I was a part of.  Thanks to some health/sports initiative from the federal government a few years ago, T-land has an excellent artificial grass stadium, and a group rented it out for a tournament.

This was my team; we were eliminated with a record of 0 wins and 2 losses (one of them to a very dubious penalty call).  Well, technically we had another game to play as the tournament was suspended (long story, but suffice it to say that the managers of the stadium did not honor the original rental agreement), but I didn't come back after the delay to see what happened.

Anyway, soon enough I'll be back on here and post something about our time here so far.  It really has been enjoyable and profitable; lots of valuable contacts established and advice received from people with more experience, etc.  Plus, a fun time in the evenings when the sessions were over just hanging out with an awesome group of people, but you'll have to wait to see pictures of it (hopefully in a few days).

How To Shear a T Sheep

So we still have some pictures left from our time out at the ranch and I figured I'd share them with you rather than more pictures of what we're up to since we got back (which is mostly pretty boring).  The one group of pictures I didn't post last time were from the sheep shearing, which is a major operation when you don't have electric shears and you have 200 sheep to shear.

You start by telling your 5 year old to go and catch you a sheep "to get a haircut."  He of course starts by herding all the sheep into the corner of the pen:

Then you have to convince him to grab one of them, which is tricky since the one-year old sheep are almost as big as he is.  Eventually he snags one (one of the ones that still needs his haircut, of course), and drags it over:

Then you pick up your shears, which are basically a primitive scissors, all rusted from their time sitting around since last year.  They're called "khachy."

Then you have tie the sheep's legs up and have your kids hold down the head, and proceed to start slicing off the wool, bit by bit.  The process, for the two or three people in the world who care, is called "kyrgar." 

(Out of curiosity, is this what you had, David?  Or is it "kyrgaar"?  One person swore that you "kyrgyp turar," while someone else told us you "kyrgap turar."  Do you remember which one you had in your notebook?)

It's a pretty laborious process, but a T person who knows what they're doing can do a pretty good job in about 20 minutes.  It took me about 40, once I got the hang of it, because at first I was trying to keep up with them and gave one of the sheep a nice slice on the leg.  Better to go slow, I decided.

Here you can see a sheared sheep standing next to some non-sheared sheep for contrast.  Apparently the main motivator behind the shearing is not selling the wool, which is next to worthless here (our hosts sell theirs for 30 cents a kilo).  

It's to make sure that the sheep doesn't sweat off a lot of the fat he's supposed to be building during the summer grazing.  A wooly sheep is a sweaty sheep, I guess, and a sweaty sheep is a skinny sheep, and that's obviously no good.

Another daily task was the cleaning of the sheep and cow pens after their overnight stay.  This involved hardy brooms (for the sheep pens) and shovels (for the cow pens), and usually we ended up with about 6 or 7 wheelbarrow loads of poop to dump.

In the winter the animals obviously don't go out to forage (too much snow and too cold), so they stay in the pens all day.  No sweeping/shoveling.  

That means that you can later go and dig out all the compacted dung, which is a very important thing, as it serves as "firewood" to keep you warm the next winter.  Here Steven stands next to the pile of cut dung, which we used to heat the yurt on cold nights.

So, then, what did we do all day while the folks were out with the animals and we were home alone?  A lot of this:

 And this (Matthew is of course modeling the very latest in "yurt fashion": rubber boots, underwear, and a baseball cap):

Sometimes the kyrgan achai would come home for lunch, and once he gave the boys a little ride around the yard, which they thought was the greatest thing ever.  At some point we might try to buy a horse for them/for us to get into the culture even more.

Then there was lots of time sitting around reading or playing with the baby goats who were too young to go out with the herd.

That's about it, I guess.  Tune in next week for the last pictures before our trip out to the team conference.  Thanks for thinking of us!

When the Cows Come Home

                       

So, we've been back from our stay on the ranch a few days now - clean and rested!  This was my (Bobbie) first time out at a ranch so the whole experience was very informative and, overall, a great experience.  It was like being on a farm you would of seen in the 1800s.  No running water, no electricity, no mass production of products. The ranch is owned and run by an elderly couple that, despite their ailments, does just about everything.  It was amazing watching them work!

The old lady wobbled around on her cane, very bow legged, obvious arthritis in both hands and hips, yet never complaining, working hard: milking cows, taking care of young sheep that needed medicine, making meals, helping her husband with the animals.  One day she did mention a headache and was going to call a neighbor to help me milk the cows (I'll discuss that process in a minute).  So, me being a nurse I, of course, had loads of medicine, and I gave her something for her headache.  A few hours later her husband came to our yurt asking for the brand so they could buy some (it was Excedrin, which isn't sold here).  

She thought it was the best thing ever.  It really struck me how much we take for granted.  Simple medicine we have access to that and not even think twice about, she appreciated.  That is just one example of some culture differences I noticed out there.  I've always known the people here were NOT time oriented but now I know why.  I was so time disoriented out there I kept asking Jesse "What time is it?" every few hours.  Since most people here live without clocks and watches here, they naturally will not take time into consideration like an American would.  And, because of this non time oriented lifestyle, things are a lot more relaxed and slow (something that I had to get use to out there).  So, you ask, what did we do all day?  

             

Well, I would get up in the mornings and make breakfast.  Then, we would go and help clean out the sheep pens.  Then, kind of walk around doing nothing most of the day.  In the evenings, after supper, they would bring the cows home.  Their farm has about 10 calves and 20 cows, and they would separate the cows they wanted to milk and let two calves at a time out of their pen to suckle a few minutes.  One of us would stand there to make sure the calf would suckle from each nipple, which brings the milk down making the cow easier to milk.  We would then drag the calf over to the fence and tie them up.  

 

Once the mama cow stopped walking we would pull up our chairs, hold the buckets between our legs and start milking.  Since this was my first time ever to do this I only got half a bucket the first time.  By the last day I was getting 1 1/2 buckets, which I was pleased with.  Of course, the grandma was getting 2 buckets in half the time I was getting my 1 bucket.  It was really amazing to watch her work.  You could tell she's done this all her life.  

         

 Once we got the four cows milked, we would haul the buckets to her cabin and prepare the milk to get turned into butter.  Now, let me stop here and say that I LOVE milk.  I mean, I could drink a gallon a day easily.  And butter?  Don't get me started on how much I love butter.  I used to eat the stuff straight as a kid (and could probably do it now).  That said, I couldn't stomach the milk products we were getting.  What ever the cows feed on here (which is like thorny grass stuff) makes not only the milk products but also the meat pretty untasty.  

                   

                   

Anyway, back to our work.  We would heat the  milk in a big metal bowl on her gas stove.  As this was heating she would assemble a contraption (a hand-cranked butter churn) to pour the milk in and make butter.  One of us would then start to crank the machine as the other would pour the heated milk into the machine.  After a few minutes, it would start pouring out the butter through one of the arms and the leftovers would come out of the other arm.  And, voila, you have butter (the stuff coming out the left arm of the churn below).  

                      

It was great to spend time with her because she loved to just talk and let me listen.  Great language and culture study.  

Thanks for checking in with the Wandering Family!  More on what's happening coming up in a week or so.

Home, Home on the Khovu (range/steppe)

So, we promised you some pictures of our time out at the ranch where we've been staying for the past week or so, and here they are.  I'm actually only in town for a few hours; we ran out of water so I came in to get some and to attend to some business things.  I'm leaving in, like, 20 minutes, so I'm going to make this really fast.

Again, I apologize for the quality of the photos - our camera broke a few weeks ago.  We dug out the old one that we were given as a wedding present (thank you, Gabriel!) which miraculously still works.  The height of 2002 technology, I guess, but it's only 2 MP so a lot of these are kind of blurry.  Anyway, enjoy:

We wanted to be relatively close to town as I'm doing some legal work with the registration of our organization, and we found some acquaintances (well, relatives of acquaintances) with a ranch only 9 km from our city!  It's been really good culture study, especially for Bobbie as she hasn't been out of the city as much, and she's loving the time "in the bush," except there aren't any bushes.  And you can actually see the city from where we are, as you can see in the distance in the photo below.  Maybe.  If you squint (you can maybe see the big dome of the sportscenter, at least).

Below is what the inside of the yurt looks like.  Our original plan was to set up our tent, but the family's younger son had just moved back to town and left this yurt empty, and they said we could stay in it.  

You can't see it too well, but right behind Bobbie and the boys there's the stove which dominates the floorspace.  Then around it there is a gas stove (which doesn't work) and some cabinets, and two twin beds.  Bobbie's sleeping in the one on the women's side of the yurt, I'm in the one on the men's side, and the boys are on the floor in sleeping bags, which they think is the greatest thing ever.

 It's also the time of year to plant potatoes, so we went out and helped them with their little (maybe 2-3 acre) plot.  They actually had a tractor come and disc it, which made the planting way easier.  We just had to dig it up some to aerate some more and dig out all the grass that had grown over it, and then dig the holes.  I found it interesting to compare the process with what I remembered from growing up in Bolivia.

 These gloves are definitely much too big! 

Bobbie has loved her time out there, more than me as she has more time with the ladies.  The men are out with the animals during the day, and don't have a horse big enough for me to come with them, so the only time I've been with them is during the morning and evening working around the ranch getting things cleaned up, etc.

Bobbie, on the other hand, has been with the babushka learning how to make sour cream, churning butter, and even learning to milk a cow!  She's surprisingly good at it for only having done it 3 days now.  I'll let her tell you about it next blog (but the main thing is that it makes her fingers hurt, I'll go ahead and tell you).

The boys have turned into quite the little farm helpers, especially Steven.  At first I thought they were just in the way and playing more than working, but then I came back from taking a load of dung down to the pile and they had actually put the next pile in the wheelbarrow already all by themselves!

Not to be outdone, Matthew cranks up the knife-sharpener whetstone.  Too bad we didn't have any knives to sharpen (or any water to actually make it work).

So that's about it.  I'm expecting a call to get going and head back in a few minutes, so I'll leave it at that.  Hope you enjoyed it, and again, thanks for thinking of us.  Culture and language study continues to be a long slog, but hopefully this time in a really good native environment will be good for us.

See you next week with more pictures and descriptions of our time out there!

Another Hair-Cutting Ceremony

Do you see Lightning McQueen there?  Or, as he's known in Russia "Molnya Makween?"  Bobbie baked this cake for some close friends of ours whose son was turning three.

As we've mentioned on the blog before, the people here don't cut boys' hair until they turn three.  If a boy has his hair cut, then it will be known to the spirits that he is a boy and they can cause him some problems, so everyone waits.  This leads to a lot of confusion for Bobbie and I guessing the gender of toddlers, but then on the boy's third birthday, there is a special ceremony for him.

I don't know if you'll recall, but Matthew had one when he turned three (though we obviously changed some of the details), and this was similar.  I'll apologize in advance for the quality of the pictures; our camera recently broke so I was using Bobbie's phone.

First, of course, as with any party here, you have to have a "rich table."  This time was not so elaborate as some, but still had quite a few goodies on offer.

Then all the relatives and close friends get up to pronounce a blessing on the young boy (who generally is disinterested or upset - fortunately this guy was the former).  You "wish" for good things for him, peace, long life, and the like, and then cut a small piece of his hair.  

I've been to several of these, and even offered a toast a couple of times, but this was the first time I've been in the "hair-cutting" party.  

Bobbie was also on the list of honored guests, so she waved the scissors around and cut hair too.

Of course, at the end it was all about the cake.  Little "Glory" (that's what his name translates to in English) had been waiting for that all along!

Sorry for the short post; not many pictures due to lack of camera these past few weeks.  We're making progress on getting our organization registered, and also keeping on with our culture and language study.  In fact, in a few hours we're going out to a yurt/ranch nearby to stay with a T family.  We love the summer for the chances it brings to get out into the culture a bit more!

Be thinking of us, we'll be herding sheep and cows and all the rest of it, and staying in the family's yurt (it was standing empty as they've all moved into a little cabin).  We're not sure how long we'll be there, but the goal is to stay there two weeks if things work out.  Thanks again for stopping by, and we'll be sure to post how that goes when we get back to the city!

                          

 Oh, we do have one more awesome piece of news that I almost forgot, it's been so long since we updated this: we got our permanent residency!  That means that we can be here for the next 5 years, so thanks to those of you who were thinking about that.

Catching Up

So, we have a lot to catch up on since our last post.  When we made that post, we were still in Moscow getting new passports to replace the ones that were lost.  Since then we've come back home, had a visitor and gone out to see some of the countryside we hadn't yet visited, and had visa news and a birthday party.

Let's start by finishing off our time in Moscow:

 Every time we go back there, we try to get together with our old friends, who are sisters from Uzbekistan.  They are really fantastic people, and we always have a great time.  They gave Matthew an early birthday present:

and more importantly, they made us real Uzbek plov, which is one of the most delicious foods in the world (although bad versions of it are much more common than good ones, in my experience).

 

Anyway, we eventually did get our new passports and returned home.  On the way, we picked up a visitor, a friend of ours who also lives in Siberia.  He came to T-land with us for a visit, and we had a great time seeing some parts of our republic together, including a town I'd never been to before.  Unfortunately, I didn't take the camera, so you'll just have to take my word for it that all that happened.

Then, after another eventful week, Saturday was Matthew's fourth birthday.  Last year he turned 3, which is the really important birthday in T culture (I don't know if you remember the video of his hair-cutting ceremony?), but we still wanted to have a party, even if it was smaller.  He got some nerf-type guns, ...

... and a few other presents, but the big one was the present we ordered on ebay a few months ago and Bobbie's parents sent over for him (thanks, Poppa and Grandma!).  Here you can see him opening the box:

Our family had a set of these things when I was a kid, and though the good quality ones are now out of production, you can still buy them used on ebay (you have to look for a good deal; some of them are really expensive!).  It's a set of tracks that you can build for a marble to roll down, and some of them have a starter and finisher piece so you can make it a race.

It was a big hit with the boys, and still several days later they're wanting to play with it 24 hours a day!

 Here's a little video of how it works with it all set up:

 Anyway, Bobbie also made lasagna (which turned out to be really popular with our T friends!) and some multi-colored cupcakes for a birthday dessert.

 Then the cupcakes went from beautiful works of art to being stuffed into faces as fast as possible.

Matthew even got another T vest from our next-door neighbors.  I guess he should give one to Steven so they can both have one.

 

Anyway, the end result was two happy boys, and two tired parents.  It was a fun day, overall.

 

Last night we had some more company over, and they were so curious about the toy that we set it up together again.  Truly a toy for boys of all ages!

And that's about it, or at least of the things we have pictures of.  Please be thinking of our residency application; the final decision is due this Friday.  We'd really like to be able to get permanent residency so we don't have to start the application process all over again next year!