Gratitude #20

In celebration of Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful for the incomprehensible bounty that is mine. I have it all: health; love; security; friendship; intellectual stimulation; opportunities to see and do unique things; financial security enough that we don't fret when the restaurant bill is larger than we'd planned, we take vacations and go to the ballet. When I decided I wanted kids - they appeared (comparatively) easily. When I realized I really wanted to travel the world and not just as a tourist, the State Department had a job perfect for Terry and here we are more than 3 years in Petersburg. Is it all rainbows and unicorns? Of course not. But for today, I can recognize that it's pretty darned good.

And this is a photo I took that Terry actually liked! 

Wordless Wednesday

Gratitude #19

Today I am thankful for my October Moms. I remember very well the last day of January 2007, planning to get some immunization that day if I wasn't pregnant. The line was very light, so I did some internet searching to see if it was the Real Thing. I ended up on a chat board thing, where among other things people posted photos of how light the line can be and be Real. Also among other things, there were separate conversations for people giving birth the same month. I checked in with the October group and the rest is history.

I've met a few of these women in person, and hope/plan to meet others when our paths cross around the map, but even the ones I only know through photos and regular check-ins online feel as close - or closer - than people I see face-to-face. (Foreign Service bloggers, I know you know exactly what I'm talking about)!

Gratitude #18

Today I am thankful for sunshine. Instant mood booster, holder of vitamin D, makes the flowers grow. Good stuff. We see it too little these days, it's like receiving a wonderful present when it breaks through.

Gratitude #17

Today I am grateful for Garmin. Even when it thinks I live somewhere else, or that I can turn onto that "no turn" road, it is a freeing and empowering tool to people like me, who get lost going in a straight line.

Gratitude #16

Today I am grateful for good health. There's a great line in the book A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to the effect that "A warm man cannot understand a man who is cold." I don't think I got it quite right but it's close. Even major illnesses normally only last a couple of days with me. Of course, it's to the family's best interest because heck, someone has to stay well to get the groceries purchased and the laundry done, but I am so thankful that when any or all of them are down for days or even a week or more, I can't fully understand how that feels :-)

Gratitude #15

Today I am grateful for the woman (because it's been all women so far) who have given me not only instruction, but feedback and - most importantly - encouragement in my quest to learn Russian. It is still a thrill when I rediscover how far I have come and I am so excited to learn more.

Gratitude #14

Today I am grateful for naps. Maybe I'm getting old, maybe I eat too much white flour and sugar, but for whatever reason there are plenty of days that I am so happy to be able to lay my head down for 20 minutes, and the rest of the day is so beautiful afterwards!

Gratitude #13

Today I am grateful for the kids' детски сад (essentially, preschool). Although at times I chafe at some of the cultural differences - extra sweaters, I'm looking at you! - it is such an amazing environment. The teachers genuinely care for my kids. The largest class size I've seen is about 15 kids for 2 teachers. They eat food cooked from scratch that day. When they have dance class, there's a pianist not recorded music (see my previous post about Piter's cultural heritage). Various forms of artists visit the school each month to perform, from musicians to puppet masters to actors. They watch Peppa Pig once in a while in English class and that's the extent of television - in fact there are no TVs in the building, but the teacher sometimes brings in her laptop for class. My kids speak Russian without accent, it is such a joy to listen to them talk!

Wordless Wednesday

Gratitude #12

Today I am grateful for the amazing arts culture in Russia, specifically Petersburg. I took Alex to see one of the best ballet companies in the world last weekend, and the tickets were about $20 each. We did sit high up, but it's a small venue. We were in the front row of our section, so we didn't have to try to see over other peoples' heads.

Our view of the stage

She was delightful and delighted, as was I. She told me she felt more grown up, accompanying me to a ballet at night, walking and taking the metro - no stroller, and just generally behaving adult-like. She didn't get antsy or bored, although admittedly, it was a "children's ballet" - meaning lots of action, bright colored costumes, and it was relatively short - 2 hours with 1 intermission.

Ready to ballet (yes mom, she's wearing the gold bracelet you gave her years ago)

The coloring only came out during intermission

Zoltan has more ants in his pants, but I have still managed to bring him to the Hermitage Museum several times. Even when we live in the DC area next year, between the expense and the schlep factor we'll rarely go - for comparison, I get Zoltan to the museum with a 40 minute walk, or we can take the bus. Alex and I took the metro to the ballet. It is so accessible! And oh yeah, because State provides our housing we live in the middle of the city and walking distance to a metro (even when walking with the little ones).

Gratitude #11

Today I am overwhelmingly grateful for friendship. A good friend arrives today from the USA for a visit, and although we spend way too little time with each other under normal circumstances - busy lives and a 9 hour time difference being what they are - having days in a row to be together is the best treat and most полезно experience.

Gratitude #10

Today I am grateful for my favorite "mom blogs". With these ladies who don't feel like strangers, I laugh a lot, I learn a lot, I discover how to be a better mom and I learn to cut myself some slack when I'm not.

• www.rantsfrommommyland.com
• www.thehappiestmom.com
• http://www.modernparentsmessykids.com

Gratitude #9

Today, for Veteran's Day, I am grateful for all the men and women who willing leave behind their families, friends, and safety in order to do their jobs in uncertainty and danger.  Even when I strongly disagree with the decisions made by civilians to put these people in harm's way, I fully understand and appreciate the sacrifices they are making for me.

Thank you.

Gratitude #8

Today I am grateful for the luxury of choice (no, not that choice. I mean, yes I am but it isn't what I am talking about). This week we had one of the best dilemmas - which of two good options should Terry choose for his next post. They each had pros and cons, risks and potential rewards. As we lamented and struggled to find something that made one choice a clear winner over the other, we had to remind ourselves how fortunate we are. In either case, he would have a good job doing interesting work in the general geographic area where we wanted to live.

Gratitude #7

Today I am grateful for the friends who hand down to us their kids' outgrown clothes, and my mother who is desperate to fill the gaps and in fact increase her "market share". They save us thousands of dollars, enable us to get more wear out of perfectly good clothing - thus easing the burden on the earth a little bit, and when we pass the still-good clothes on it's incredibly gratifying to see other little ones being the 3rd or 4th "generation" of favorite items.

On the same note, I am grateful for family handing down similar volumes of perfectly good children's toys that their kids have outgrown. And for the multitude of family members who insist that the kids unwrap something from them during the holiday season. When so many people have so little, we are very cognizant of the riches in our lives.

Gratitude #6

I am grateful for the internet. It's a lifeline to people back home, a way for my kids to see their grandparents more than once a year. In places where I am skeptical of the quality of medical knowledge it lets me double check (reputable sites, like NIH or MayoClinic). When snail mail takes 3-5 weeks to arrive the internet lets me tell people I'm thinking of them when it would be colossally inappropriate to call them (we are now 9 hours ahead of the east coast). I can only imagine what this job, this life was like "back in the day" ... you know, 20 years ago.

Wordless Wednesday

Lynne and I have been kicking around the idea of starting a wordless Wednesday feature.  The idea is two fold.  One get me back on the contributing more since I tend to use the camera more then write, and second help the consistency of the blog.  We tend to go in waves a bit.  I will not promise that the photos will always be new ones taken that day.  We are going into winter in St Petersburg which means I can have as little as 4 hours of sunlight if it ever gets out from behind the clouds.  I will try to post something that represents or is associated with my mood/thoughts of the day.

So here is the first week and next week I promised less words.

Gratitude #5

I am so grateful the election went the way it did. Obama helps people who don't even want him in charge. And how much more he could do if the people who are supposed to work with him didn't have his demise as their #1 goal (rather than, say, doing the work that needs to be done to make America #1 again). I agree with my brother that we would have survived a Romney presidency, but why not thrive rather than survive?

Winter colds, Russian style

Normally I am pretty Polyanna about our posting here. So many things about Petersburg and Russia suit our temperaments and preferences. In general we're happy.

But, I was reminded recently of what I dislike about the culture here. See, when a Russian child sneezes or coughs, he or she is then kept home for 2-4 weeks, regardless of whether the child has any actual illness (Americans don't consider a cold an actual illness). Or if the child sneezes or coughs a second time.

Alex had the bare outlines of a cold last week. She coughed all week, no other symptoms. I humored her teacher and brought her to the doctor, who saw a bit of nasal drainage that she supposed must be causing the cough because she couldn't find anything else, but absolutely nothing outside the parameters of "It's a cold". She be prescribed/recommended an OTC cough suppressant, which I dutifully brought to school so they could give her the mid-day dose and hopefully keep her cough from bothering other kids during naptime.

Well, Friday I got reamed out by one of the other kids' grandmas for bringing Alex to school. For a Murther Furkin COLD. She doesn't have a runny nose, sneezing, headache, sore throat. No fever, no congestion. Not a damn thing except a pesky cough. Alex also reported that other kids were coughing, admittedly not as bad as her, earlier this week - meaning she wasn't the carrier (She started coughing Sunday, and I had kept her home Monday because I had to keep Zoltan home - he had a bacterial infection and hadn't gotten through enough antibiotics for me to feel good about sending him in, even though he looked and acted the picture of health).

We had a long weekend for a Russian holiday so today was the first day back at school. When I dropped her off the teacher asked how she was doing, I said fine, and she said that's good because the other parents were ready to strangle me. Grrrrrr.

Gratitude #4

November 6
I am grateful for my husband Terry. Not only loving and supportive, not only funny and good hearted, he has taught me so much. We are so comically different in almost every way except, as it turns out, all the ways that actually matter.

But I will say one last time in my own defense, NOT everyone knows about mile markers.

Tver Statues

As Terry never got around to doing anything with his own photos from Tver, I thought I'd post a few of mine. For a small city, there's a lot of sculpture in the various parks. Some of my favorites ...

This guy is part of an entire walkway strewn with statues. It's just a couple of blocks from the Institute where I studied.

 This threesome is just past the bridge I crossed every day, on the side of the river where my host family lived.

Kalinin is EVERYWHERE. It was fun when I went to the Academy Theatre with my host mother and she showed me the frescoes on the wall of the great hall (where people hung out during intermission) and there he was, with the farmers, the workers, the students, the construction workers building the Theatre, etc etc

Blue skies for Lenin!

 This is a monument in honor of victims of repression.

Gratitude #3

November 5

I am so grateful for my kids. I joke about Terry talking me into it, and he sort of did, but they are so amazing and I am just not the same person I was 5 years ago - for the better in every way.

Gratitude #2, once again late

For November 3 and 4

I am grateful to have consistent electricity. This is not only driven home by Hurricane Sandy, but also from having the experience of living in places where it is not consistent.

I am grateful to have traveled places and had experiences way outside my comfort zone and enable me to look back at my own country with open eyes, appreciating the good and seeing other ways to approach the bad (ah, if only someone would appoint me Benevolent Dictator).

Liquidators Monument

It seemed random enough, in Tver there is a monument to the liquidators of the Chernobyl disaster. Then I went to see it, and it turns out more than 2500 people from Tver went to Chernobyl to help with the cleanup. Hence, the monument.

On the way to the monument I saw a strikingly colored building that i first thought was a church and then realized was the mosque. It was pretty so I took some photos. 

The little park the Liquidators monument is in is right next to the mosque.

As I walked toward the monument I could see an older man sitting on a bench right in front of it but didn't think much of it. I read the notice about the monument - handily in English and Russian, and I took some photos. The man started speaking to me. He asked if it was interesting to me and if I understood what it was for. I said yes, and then he told me he had been one of the liquidators. He said lots of other stuff I didn't understand. I asked about his health after being there and he said it was ok then something about his friends so I imagine some of them didn't come out of it so well. he then showed me something, it was clearly an official document, had his name and photo and it was in a case like we would use for ID or Russians use for their passports but it was just the 2 cards/pieces of paper, one on each side. When I got to an internet place and looked up Liquidators of Chernobyl, Wikipedia helpfully explained that special certificates were given to 600,000 workers who helped with the cleanup, so I imagine this is what he showed me.

 The gentleman then offered for me to take a photo of him with the monument so I did.

A month of thanks

Over the years I've seen friends do a "gratitude posting" every day for the month of November in honor of Thanksgiving. I've always thought it was a cool idea but never quite got around to doing it. So this is the year, albeit a teensy bit late ... so today I'll do 2.

1. I'm thankful for modern medicine. I have a headache right now, which sucks, but it isn't a migraine, which would suck a lot more.

2. I am thankful for the State Department perk of receiving US Mail while overseas. It means I can order my Tylenol Sinus online and not have to worry about the efficacy or veracity of Russian alternatives. Because, quite frankly, nothing in the world horrifies me more than vomit and being sure that my medicine will prevent that is critically important to me. (if the connection isn't obvious, for me at least the way a migraine works is awful head pain so bad I can neither sit still nor walk around, followed by vomiting, then I start to feel better)

3-year-old reasoning

When I picked the kids up at school today they wanted to play outside for a bit before going home. Alex got to the one swing first. We have a rule in the house "if you want to be first you have to be fast" so he had to wait his turn. He started crying that he wanted to get on the swing first.

I tried to convince him to play on something else. No go. I asked if he wanted to stand there and cry until it was his turn. He said "Yes". I repeated the question, assuming he was joking. Nope. He again answered in the affirmative. And proceeded to stand there and cry until it was his turn.

More on learning Russian

As mentioned before, I went to Tver to learn Russian. I had 2 reasons to leave my family for 2 weeks and take this trip: 1) to push me over the 1+* hump I have been riding on for too long and 2) strengthen my political Russian vocabulary and idiom for the purpose of passing the Russian language test that lies between me and becoming an FSO.

The format of the program was this: I had two sessions each day, of two hours each, one on one with an instructor. Class was 6 days each week. They gave homework. In 12 days I went to 2 plays, 2 museum tours, and one Philharmonic performance. In each case I was accompanied by a Russian speaker, whether a teacher or my host mother.

Wow, did I learn a lot. Both literally and conceptually. Some important takeaways:
- For me, learning a word or phrase and then putting it into immediate use is key to retention.
- My two teachers were both wonderful. The one I'd say helped me a bit more did a great job of speaking Russian the entire time, and in absolutely desperation would open the dictionary to show me a word but did not herself use English.
- The above point is important because the more I spoke English - whether it was phone calls home, spending time with a fellow American or using it in class - the harder the Russian seemed to be.
- Four hours of class time does not sound like much. However, it translated to an additional minimum of 2 hours,often 3 of review, homework, and cleaning up my notes. For the purpose of comprehension I also would take my notes from each day's theme and craft a 1 page summary/presentation that I went through the next day with my teacher. I also napped every day and am not in the least ashamed to admit that. It was exhausting.
- I know as much Russian grammar as I need to know until I start reaching for a much higher level than I have or plan to attain at any time prior to a 4-6 month stint at FSI. More than any other thing, I need to speak Russian. Just speak. Right now my biggest pitfall is the "deer in headlights" reaction. I really flubbed some level 0 conversation by overthinking the reply or just panicking.
- After 2 weeks away my language skills really have improved. The time just doesn't sound significant enough to have the impact that it did, but that is the joy of immersion. I spent entire days without speaking or hearing a single word of English until evening, when I'd call home.

* 1+ is the way my prior-to-Tver language ability would be scored by the system used by various language testing/rating organizations, most relevantly FSI. The score I need is a 2. Doesn't sound far apart, but the truth is it's probably 200-300 hours of learning between the two levels ... or something like that. Don't quote me.

Mommy reality

I am so ready to go home and hold my babies! Before kids, I scoffed when I heard about women who'd never spent a night away from their 5 year olds, or similar stories. Now I get it. 2 weeks is a long time, let's hope if all goes according to plan and I make it into the FS that the Powers That Be make my assignment such that the family stays together, I don't know how well I would handle a several-months separation!

Russian Banya

Last week there was another American here with whom I went to most of the cultural programs (aka museums and theatre) that the language program arranged. She told me that she was planning to try banya for her second time and did I want to come too?

For those who don't know about banya, it is a quintessential Russian experience. The uncle of my house mother told me he never goes to "apteka" (the pharmacy) because he goes to banya, i.e. it's good for your health. For men, banya traditionally also involves vodka and singing songs but apparently for women that's "nilzya" (not permitted). Here's the other thing - banya involves both group nudity and being beaten with birch branches (venik. wikipedia.com explains a bit under Banya. I am currently unable to link) Neither of which are particularly interesting to me.

But, I am currently immersing myself in Russian language and culture, and can such immersion be completed without a trip to banya?

Saturday after class, the other American and I decided yes, we're doing this. Our plan was to stop by my place to drop off what I didn't need, pick up what I did need, and then we'd head to the banya next door to her place.

When we got to my place, my house mother was there. We told her our plan and asked what we absolutely needed. She loaned us the towels and shower shoes and we started packing up. Then her uncle came home and started giving his advice. This place is better than that place, the one you want to go to uses machine created steam but this other place uses real water-poured-on-stones. You have to go there. He even insisted on calling to make sure they were open, rather than his neice, because he's the professional and we're only amateurs.

They determine the place is open, and open for women (sometimes it's different days) and off we go. A good quote from our departure when they were all worried about us in the dark on our own "You may be a mama at home but here he's the papa."

We find our way without too much trouble, luckily our bus came very soon after we got to the bus stop. At the banya, we buy our tickets and I buy my venik (apparently, when the other American went to banya the first time, she and her friends befriended some babushkas and the older ladies beat the girls with their own).

There's one other woman there when we walk in. The setup is one large room with benches and hooks for your stuff, it's roughly normal temp; the next room is what I'll call the "wet room", it is warm enough to be naked and has rows of stone benches, a whole bunch of basins like what you'd wash your hand washables in,  a few open showers, and a bunch of drains in the floor; and the third room is the banya - think something sauna-ish, almost painfully hot, dark, wooden benches etc.

Trying not to look too stalkerish, I mean the woman was naked, we watched what that one other woman was doing out of the corner of our eyes. First we soak the venik. The advice we had gotten, literally, ranged from cold water, to warm, to hot. We went with cool - filled one of the basins with water then stuck the venig in it. When the other woman went into another room, I casually put my hand on the side of her basin. Definitely warm-to-hot. We add hot water to our basin. Time to head into the banya.

It is almost hard to breathe, so hot in there. The woman said she had just poured the water onto the hot stones so we didn't need to. She also admonished us for not having hats and said we'd be too hot without them (?!?) We had a watch so we could see how long we were there. After 7 minutes sweat poured from both of us and we decided it was time to head out for a breather.  Back in the wet room we splashed water on ourselves to cool off a bit and drank some water.  Then, back to the banya. This time we stayed 10 minutes. After our 2nd trip out, we decided it was time for the venik. By this time there were several other women there, so we walked into the banya, held up the venig, and asked "shto delaet?" (what to do with this?) One of the ladies took the thing, explained how to stand and then proceeded to beat me with the hot, wet birch branches. It's more massagey that it sounds. Then she had me beat the other American. This is probably the most surreal part of the entire experience.

Then comes the downside. We head back out to the wet room and I am seeing darkness and stars - preclude to a blackout. I sit and try to come back to life, it isn't happening, I stumble into the cooler locker room and eventually all is well again. During the episode I started to panic, what on earth will happen if I do actually pass out? We were alerted the banya was pretty open so we only brought our ID, banya-stuff, and a bit of money. No phones, credit cards, or anything useful in an emergency.

I chalk up the lightheadedness episode to my low blood pressure, as one of the alleged benefits of banya is how it makes the blood vessels expand and constrict (because they need exercise too?)

After I recover, it's time to shower and get ready to leave. One of the women showering next to us had "oil for banya" she let us try, smelled really nice. Some women make a day of it, with a full panoply of beauty products, oils and lotions and exfoliators and more. We saw fruit and bottles of water in the locker room. Assuming the doc clears me to do this again, I just might go some time in Piter. After all, I already have my venik!

Tver, and my fatal flaw

Anyone who knows me knows that I have, in fact, managed to get lost going in a straight line. Maps are my lifeline and I use landmarks to advantage.

My host family - a woman and her uncle who share a home - live in this area of a jumble of apartment buildings off anything you'd call an actual road.

When I arrived in Tver, the director of my program met me at the train station and drove my to my host family. I remembered a gate I had to lift my suitcase over and the front door wasn't far from there. I didn't remember anything else about the building, the "street" or the route. Knowing my weakness, I asked the uncle, my first night, to point out on the map where we were. He put a dot in a part of this (on the map) random open area without any streets. I didn't think to ask for the address.

The next morning, my host mother walked me to the building where I had my classes. She was running late and rushed. We also took a shortcut through the random building-filled area rather than walk along the street. I didn't think to pay attention to where we were until about 2 minutes into our walk. Doesn't sound like much does it? Well ...

On the way home everything went just fine at first. I made my way without hitch to a location that was about 2 minutes' walk from the apartment. Then everything went to hell. I kept trying to find a building that had a gate like I remembered. Then I went to the closest approximation to the spot my host uncle drew on the map and didn't see anything familiar. The short story is I was lost for about 30 minutes, then I called the director of the program and she told me the address and gave me some directions that were useless because it had a different starting point from where I thought she was talking about. I spent another 50 minutes being lost and towards the end really fighting off the strong desire to start bawling like a baby. I called the director again, this time I was on a main street so I gave her my address and she picked me up. When she dropped me off I realized I had stood in front of that very building at least a dozen times while lost.

There were several downsides to this experience.
1. My mood was 100% foul
2. I lost 1.5 hours of study and review time that I really needed
3. I got massive blisters on each pinky toe, even though the boots I was wearing are ones I have travelled all around the world with and they have often been my only footwear for several days of touristing without any trouble.

Tver

A few weeks ago Terry left me alone with sick kids and went gallvanting in Tver. Or something like that :)  Now it's my turn.

For some background, Tver is a small city about 2h my train outside Moscow (4h or so by car, there's a lot of traffic in and around Moscow). State has a relationship with a language school here and we, both employees and spouses, can come for 1-2 weeks for language immersion. If you choose a host family, as Terry and I both did (ended up being the same family!) it is a near total immersion.

The one downside is there's no internet @ "home" so I'm not online as much. Maybe that isn't actually a downside ...

Anyway, more to come!

Happy #5

Dear Alex,

You're 5 years old today! It's a big accomplishment, all your years now fill a hand. You're going to start doing chores and learning to cut with the sharp knife. You'll start "real" school this year, where there's no more play time or nap time, just learning all day. I think you'll like it more than you seem to like the idea right now. We'll move to a new country this year, which is something you've lived through before but not your brother, who I think will be looking to you to determine whether this is something to mourn or look forward to.

You are a beautiful girl. If this keeps up, your looks coupled with your reserve will make most think that you're a snob. Friends worth the name will look past your face and see your intellect, cleverness, big heart, and sharp eyes. I hope your three favorites at school continue to treat you well, but as your wisdom grows I hope you also notice that when some kids are mean to you, it's because they are seeking your attention by any means necessary. It's a bit like when mommy's holding Zoltan and you want some of that.

Five years ago everything I knew about myself was transformed. You have brought me so much joy (and while we're being honest here, a decent amount of pain too!). I'm so looking forward to the next 5 ...

Love,
Mommy

поделки

From the web sites I was invited to check out for examples, поделки (podeliki) appears to be an art form of making sculpture from everyday objects. For example, I saw a a toy car made from Heineken cans.

This coming week the detsky sad is having an "exhibition" and have asked parents to work with their child on a sculpture using fruit and/or veg.  Here's a link to a site where we got the idea for Zoltan's car: http://school1-kushva.blogspot.com/2011/09/blog-post_21.html

The thing is, 99% of the поделки experience is slicing, carving or cutting, none of which are things we let the 4 year old do and certainly not the 2 year old!  So, they added the paint touches at the end. I know, you are probably expecting more from an adult-created piece. Terry faults me for making him do it because we all know he's the artistic one :)

Zoltan's car

 Alex's kiwi bird ... made from a kiwi!

CABIN

[note: this was written soon after the actual trip to the cabin, but I  had to wait until the photos were edited so that Terry would allow them onto the blog. Hence, the timing will seem off. Yes we are now back in Russia and yes the trip to the cabin was more than a month ago]

As usual, we got a whopping few days at the cabin during this 6 week R and R trip. But we got an important milestone accomplished, and I am so in love with my father in law for making it happen.

The steps to the "front door" used to be a mangled, topply mess of forest with a wooden frame around each "step". In the last year he's leveled and cemented them, except for the topmost step. Here's Zoltan standing in what will be the filled-in last step.

 Here's the kids helping Pop-pop with the cement ...

 and then, most momentously, leaving their handprints forevermore.

I warned Terry when he wrote "9/6/2012" that with as much time as we spend everywhere else in the world we wouldn't remember if it was June 9 or September 6 but he didn't care. So here's the reminder.

It was also nice to be 4 days without internet or TV, and see how much Alex loves going on "adventures" up the hill and how 2 of the 25 1-year-whip apple trees we bought from the PA Game Commission (or something like that) are still alive and how huge the plum tree is (just needs a mate so it can start producing!)

We also found an orchard, Brace Orchard in Dallas, that sells its apples and peaches and makes fresh apple cider 3 times a week. The peaches were tasty but nothing special, apples a bit better than that, but the cider ... we decided it was worth the hour's round trip to get more although in the end we didn't make the trek. Next year we're definitely getting a gallon and finding a way to fit it in the fridge!

The Amazing Brain

I'm learning a bit about learning these days. Recently I read an article about sleep and how our brains use sleepy-time to (among other things) organize the stuff we learned during the day, which is part of why we sometimes have very odd dreams.

I had a very specific example of this just yesterday/today. In our conversation group yesterday, I was introduced to the word for "teenager" (подросток). I used it a dozen times in our conversation and every darned time I had to ask for it to be repeated because my brain just wasn't hanging on to it. It was annoying at the time, but as it obviously isn't a word I need in my normal vocabulary - having just been introduced to it for the first time yesterday - I didn't worry too much about it.

This morning as I'm waking up and my mind is wandering around, what comes to me unhesitatingly?  подросток.

Russian: a step back, then a step forward

Today, I thought I ordered a mushroom blini. The woman was confused when I first spoke, then seemed to know exactly what I was saying after I repeated myself. She then presented me with a salmon blini.

This made me sad and frustrated.

I was ordering a blini for lunch because I was attending a Russian Conversation Group meeting at that cafe. So, I swallowed my hopelessness and proceeded to converse with 3 other ladies about life, children, moving, living abroad etc for two hours almost entirely in Russian. I understood everything everyone else said, and I was able to participate about as hesitantly as simply (vocab-wise) as any of the other non-native speakers. The lady who organizes the meetings corrected my frequent errors, but they were mostly in using the wrong case, not using the wrong word or outlandish grammar. [btw - why is it when my brain knows EXACTLY how to say a word, what case it should be in and even remembers what the ending is for that case/gender/etc I still blurt out the wrong thing?]

The lady who organizes the meeting also explained what happened with my order. No, грибы (mushrooms) doesn't sound anything like лосось (salmon) but sure sounds a lot like рыбы (fish) especially when I inappropriately stressed the first syllable instead of the second. Whew!

Sir Climbs-a-Lot

My mother will be horrified to learn I was laughing so hard while taking these photos I worried they wouldn't come out. Like mama, like son.

Clever little bugger

The kids and, now, I, have colds.  Zoltan has slept awfully the last 2 nights. Thus, I have also slept awfully. We're all close to our breaking point. Oh, yeah, and Terry's away this week.

Tonight I tuck the kids in. 45 minutes later I am in Zoltan's room for the dozenth time (or so). He tells me he wants me to kiss Blabla (his sleep lovey). As I do, I caution him that he better not call for me for anything else tonight unless it's serious - he hurts, he's too hot, needs water, had a bad dream, etc. Not to tell me he had a drink of water and isn't coughing. Not to tell me his feet aren't cold. Not to ask me to hug and kiss Blabla.

So the next thing he says?  "Now I want you to hug and kiss me again!"

Grrrrr. And, awwwww.

Date Certain

I have a date for the Russian language exam: December 10. Now I really need to buckle down and study rather than freak out and how soon that is.

A conversation you never hear

Manager: I'm going to call [name] right now and make sure you don't get paid any more.
Me: Great, thanks.

Back story: I used to be employed in the Consulate as CLO. I am no longer employed. Unfortunately, the paychecks keep coming. I expect I will need to pay some of this money back (some is legitimately the last paycheck you always get after leaving a job, but some is definitely inadvertently paid).

The Longest Day

Travel day started normally enough, we got dressed and went to breakfast like we did last week when Terry left. Got home early enough to hit the playground for about 45 minutes before having to get ready to go.

Fewer than 10 minutes before we were to leave, Alex starts crying she got a mosquito bite and it hurts a lot. I had seen a bee buzzing around near where she had been playing and when I looked at her arm, yep bee sting. At least the stinger wasn't still there. We run home, get ice while I Google what to do (deciding grandma's home remedies didn't cut it when we were supposed to fly in a couple of hours). Drama. In the end she's quite swollen at the bite spot but apparently not allergic so we get ice in a Ziplock and a paper towel and get ready for the car, which came early. Turns out we needed every extra minute and then some, as the 2 car seats we'd rented were a disaster. The first one was a brand I didn't know and the car itself was much newer and nicer than any I'd ever put a car seat into so figuring it out was awful. And as I am panicking and ranting about how unsafe the kids would be, the driver kept trying to console me with how careful he is on the road. Um, sir, you can't control the crazies on the road so you're just pissing me off right now. We finally figured out that there was a LATCH thingie on 2 of the seats in the car - not the seats I'd planned to put the kids in, but whatever. Seat #1 get LATCHed and no longer flies about at every breeze.

The 2nd car seat is one we have, and I figured it would be easy. Except that I LATCHed it before checking to see that it was configured for the tiniest baby and Zoltan would never get his arms into the straps, much less be able to get the straps buckled. Un-LATCH and go to change the straps to a different level and realize an important part of the seat is missing. I cobble something together that I believe is better than him sitting on my lap and we're finally ready to go.

Nothing too eventful on the ride down or at the airport itself. For some reason the only movie either kid will watch right now is Alvin and the Chipmunks, which I am happy to say is still showing on the USAir 700/701 flights. They kept flipping between that and the 3 - yep, all of 3 - cartoon shows for kids on the monitor (for comparison, there were about a dozen children's movies). I way overpacked as they stuck with that mostly and a bit of their coloring. I even overpacked on snacks, although in my defense I had no way to know the kids' meal would include fresh grapes, soft rolls and chicken nuggets made with something that approximated real chicken.

As expected, the kids didn't sleep even though I really encouraged them. Oh, wait, they DID sleep. AFTER the plane touched down on the ground, I saw eyelids droop. Oh, no, this is not happening, I thought. Except it was. They got about 15 minutes in between the landing and getting to the gate. I packed us all up and we were the last people off the plane. One very kind flight attendant even carried an awake but groggy Zoltan halfway up the aisle.

Frankfurt was frustrating. Here's a suggestion - if you are going to make everyone with a stroller use a different security screening area, maybe you could put up a sign saying so, rather than let us walk all the way across the terminal only to be turned away and sent exactly where we came from, but about 10 feet over. I got to gripe about this with another woman going through the exact same thing, except she only had one kid and a stroller (we had the Trunki and the Uppababy so someone had to walk as it was an incredibly crowded part of the terminal).

The kids started to get really silly, crazy and antsy in the airport - as expected for kids at their bedtime who hadn't slept all day, which is what their bodies thought was going on. The good news is that airports have a lot of airplanes coming and going, and the kids are obsessed with airplanes, so once we got to our gate they were glued to the window.

Here's where I rave about USAir. When I went to get a gate check tag for the stroller, the guy offered to just take it then. During the flight, 2 or 3 of the flight attendants checked in on me several times, one of them asking if I needed coffee or a glass of wine :)

I had a sadly belated epiphany and decided to tell the kids they would get no more toys or screens (Leapster Explorer or either tablet) until they gave a legitimate attempt at sleeping, mommy is final arbiter of what's legitimate.  Too bad the whole flight was only 2.5 hours. We all slept for an hour, then the "we're landing" process began and I woke up. I pretended to sleep until a flight attendant touched my arm to tell me the kids (laying down) had to be belted and the armrest put down. Done, and done, while they continued to sleep. We landed, I packed us all up and put their shoes on them, while they continued sleep. They handled the awakening amazingly well and dutifully stayed with me as we headed to immigration.

Here's when I I rant about ... I don't even know who. Russia didn't give immigration cards to the airline so we could fill them in on the plane, so I had to do all 3 in the arrivals hall. While the 2 of them tried to go back to sleep. The most adorable moment was when Alex went flat on the bench-style seating (face down) and Zoltan, finding nowhere else to go, climbed on top of her and lay down too. I would have captured it on film but I was writing as quickly as humanly possible. Sadly, it must not have been comfortable for Alex because she started crying. This was our nadir. One or the other was crying the entire time I had to fill out those damn cards, because there wasn't space for them to both get comfortable and they were at their end. When I finally did finish they didn't want to get up, didn't want to walk (Petersburg returns strollers at baggage claim, not planeside). We got through it, had our fastest time in the immigration booth, and because of all the previous delays our bags were ready for us when we got into the baggage claim.

Alex had sat on the Trunki and Zoltan had to take the floor while we waited our turn in the immigration line, so I had to give first dibbs on the stroller to Z. Alex had a massive meltdown, I ended up having her ride on the suitcase (glad we got the hardback spinner type!) and we all practically threw ourselves into Terry's arms when we crossed those 50 yards and that doorway to where he was.

Unsurprisingly, the kids were asleep before we left the parking lot.

The worst part of flying - airlines!

I just tried to check in online for tomorrow's flight. Our reservation is through Lufthansa but the first leg - the long haul - is USAir. I first tried Lufthansa. They can't check me in because their leg is more than 23 hours away. I call USAir. They can't check me in because I changed my flights last week and they see that Lufthansa appended our original Lufthansa leg to the reservation (so there are 2 Frankfurt-Piter flights) and I need to tell Lufthansa to cancel the original leg so only the new one is in the system, then I will be able to check in.

I call Lufthansa again and report my frustration. Their reply? The original leg is cancelled and nowhere in their system. Also I can't check in for their leg anyway (more than 23 hours away) so USAir shouldn't be bothering with the Lufthansa leg and be happy to check me in for the first - USAir - leg.

Hey Airlines! If you are going to code share with each other and pretend you are so close, TALK THE @O*&^#(*!@# TO EACH OTHER.

My money is that the USAir people were just making stuff up, they saw they couldn't check me in for the Lufthansa leg and made up a reason for it. I guess I've just added something to my "morning before the flight" to do list.

I don't know what to say

but I am trying to sort it out. I didn't personally know any of the 4 people killed in Bengazi today/yesterday (time zones) and I keep hearing how amazing Ambassador Christopher Stevens was. I am sure he was. The only other name so far released strikes a much stronger chord in me though. Sean Smith was on TDY in Bengazi. TDY means he was there temporarily, it often happens when a post is short on people and folks serving at other posts are asked to come for a short while to keep things moving along. You see, Sean was an IMO. That's what Terry does. To bring it even closer to home, the other guy in the 2-man section Terry runs was supposed to go TDY to Bengazi next month. If the murderers hadn't decided to commemorate 9/11 I might not be able to say I didn't know any of the dead personally. Even writing this I start to choke up. We all say the foreign service isn't all fat cat fancypants. We all say we endure real hardships and suffer real danger. I just hate that we had to go and prove it so viscerally.

My most sincere condolences to the families of the deceased, and to all the people of Libya, who I hear lost a real champion in Ambassador Stevens.

Sniff, sniff, he's heading home...

...and we still have 8 days left. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers. because if the kids have been monsters on the diet of new places and faces for 5 weeks straight, how much worse will it be coupled with "daddy's gone"?  I think the prospect of Terry at the other side of that wall after baggage claim will be the only thing that keeps me sane through the nightmare that will be our journey home.

Mommy, why did that lady come over here?

This was asked by Alex, when our waitress came to check on us. She wasn't bringing any food or drink, we hadn't motioned to her to come over, and she wasn't bringing the check. One more way the USA is not like everywhere else in the world.

Oh, and booster seats.

Sleeping babies

I never get tired of watching the kids sleep. Note that Zoltan deliberately moved the pillow to be halfway down the bed.

Forced Family Fun: Great Wolf Lodge

My nephew is now a teenager, and my brother and SIL jokingly refer to certain occasions as "Forced Family Fun". I was lucky enough to be in the area while Terry was in training, so the kids and I went with my brother's family and my mother to Williamsburg to Great Wolf Lodge for a mid-week vacation.

We've spent plenty of time in Virginia with their family, they have come up to PA a few times too. Some of the family even came to Russia. With the cousins ranging between 15 and not-yet-3, though, the times all together have been too few. As many FS folks know, distance from family is one of the hardest parts of living overseas.

My 2 favorite memories from the 3 days together:
1. My 15 year old nephew shooing his dad out of his chair at dinner so he could sit next to Zoltan.
2. Alex asking to switch seats with me to sit next to her aunt.

Whenever someone is in their own home, there are too many distractions, too many chores. Going away together really gives people a chance to spend time together.

Our Special Harbor Splash Park

Continuing the traditional frenetic pace of R and R, one of our stops last week (OK it was 2 weeks ago but Terry just got around to editing the photos) was meeting friends at the Our Special Harbor Splash Park at Lee District Park.

Having heard about splash parks from friends in the USA but never having been to one, I had no idea what to expect. It doesn't open til 11am, which is ridiculous for folks with small children, but we deal with what we have. The facility itself was fabulous, with everything from ankle-high little fountains to whole buckets that get filled and randomly dump over the people standing under at erratic times. The kids had a blast and I am supremely impressed with the sunblock we bought for keeping my pasty white kids pasty white even through 2 hours outside - from 11am-1pm - in the Virginia August heat. A few notes:

• if your kid is small enough, you will get soaked. Wearing a bathing suit is a good idea unless you want your car seat to get wet from your wet clothes.
• the web site states no food is allowed in the splash park area. They mean they don't want to see you eating your food there. We lost the carrots because I left them in the sweltering car, only to later note folks walking into the splash park with coolers. There's a picnic area just outside the gate so you can eat there then pop back in.
• have the kids wear their bathing suits under the clothes. It was just annoying to have to change them when we got there and as this isn't Russia, I figured people would be offended if they just got changed right outside where the water was (it would have motivated them to move faster).
• the web site states water shoes are necessary for anyone walking in the splash park area. However, I saw plenty of adults in normal sandals and kids barefoot so I don't know how strictly they abide by this. I am glad we have other needs for the water shoes I bought Alex last week, if it was just for this I would have been really annoyed.
• there is a playground right outside the splash park and a big grassy area for running around or kicking a ball, it would have been perfect for me to bring the kids at our normal "get out of the house" time and let them play on the playground rather than trying to entertain them closer to home while keeping an eye on the clock. Have I mentioned 11am is a silly time to open something meant for kids?

Airplane!

This cool statue thing is in a little courtyard in front of the apartment building. The kids like to sit on it and pretend they are on an airplane. The nice thing about being in Pentagon City is that we can actually watch planes pretty much take off (from DCA) and every single time one goes into the air they both scream "AIRPLANE!"