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!"

Port Discovery

I've never lived in the DC area with kids, so I have never had reason to go to Port Discovery in Baltimore, although I had heard a lot of good things about it.

First, I'll say the kids had a great time and would have happily stayed even longer, but we had to get to our Virginia apartment early enough to make the grocery run and get the overtired, undernapped kids to bed before someone exploded.

The huge climbing thing in the middle of the museum was an awesome playground structure, although quite frankly I am not sure what it's "educational" purpose was. The kids spent an inordinate amount of time in the water world exhibit, either spraying and squeegeeing the window or constructing locks and dams for a ship to pass through or making a Lego boat float.

Zoltan was in heaven in the pretend train (he even pushed a littler kid who wanted to get into the engine room, oops) and in the pretend gas station (mostly in the car itself, although he did also service it with gas and air in the tires).

Alex spent most of her time in the big playground structure and the water room. It's also very nice that they have a cafeteria room with tables and you can bring in your own food; I just wish we had known that as I ended up running to 7-11 for pizza for the adults and the kids ate snacks.

American TV and the FS child

Overseas we have AFN, or shows we download, or on DVD. Our in-laws have Tivo. This means my kids have never in their memory seen normal American television.

There's a rec room sort of thing off the lobby of our apartment building and it has a TV and a pool table. I let the kids watch a show down there and headed to the computer room next door (I could see them through the doorway).

A little while into the show Alex yells for me to come help her please. She's all upset because the show is gone. There's a Fruit Loops commercial on, but as she doesn't know what Fruit Loops are she has no idea what's going on. I explain they are like the little shows she sometimes watches at the end of a show (for the kids shows, AFN puts all the commercials at the end, so when a show ends there's songs, Schoolhouse Rocks, or other educational clips). She calms down, I tell her to wait a bit and the show will be back on, and she yells to let me know when the show does in fact come back on.

10 minutes later, the same panic. We are so unprepared to come back to the USA!

Bubblegum Gelato

We had shopping day with Bubby 2 days ago, which became lunch in the mall day, and the pizza place had gelato. Bubby didn't receive specific enough instructions when she went to buy the kids their special treat of some gelato, so they each got their own cup (with about 2x their normal ice cream intake) of bright blue and bright red bubble gum flavored gelato.

Nevermind the effect of Red #40 just before naptime. Let's talk about the mid-term fallout. Scary, clearly not-ever-made-in-the-real-world bright green (even when they were tiny babies and had too much iron-fortified rice cereal) ... poop. We're on day #2 of it.

Next time, we stick with chocolate or vanilla.

Fluffy

My brother has a hamster named Fluffy - well, technically, I think it's supposed to be the kids' pet. Alex will even stand patiently in front of her cage waiting for her to wake up and come down from her penthouse bedroom, just watching and waiting. My kids are completely enthralled with this rodent,  to the extent that Terry is talking about getting one when we return to Russia. I pointed out their 3-5 year lifespan, so now he's trying to argue for a guinea pig, noting that it can become a protein source when we leave post. Humph. I stand by my veto.

Chesapeake Bay

One of the fun parts of Foreign Service life is all the different places we can meet up with friends. We visited our sponsors from St Petersburg in Lithuania, where they are now posted, and this week we took advantage of being in the USA at the same time to take a day trip to their cabin on the Chesapeake Bay.

The day started inauspiciously enough. I had printed directions from Google Maps and I had my Garmin up and running. Unfortunately, when they disagreed on what to do I had to decide "who" to follow. I got a nice reminder of how I hate DC driving when I got off at the wrong point near the Capitol so had to sit in traffic to turn around then lost in Southeast AGAIN ... totally bringing back the days when I lived here. There really should be a better way for 2 stinking highways to meet up! So I decided to go with Garmin as at least I can follow that without really taking my eyes off the road. Of course, it put me on Pennsylvania Avenue and never told me it was also MD-4 so I spent some quality time panicking about when I would meet up with MD-4, which I knew I needed. The kids, amazingly enough, spent almost 2h in the car without asking for shows!

We finally made it to the Calvert Marine Museum just as our friends were pulling up, then proceed to spend some fun time watching the stingrays swim around, walking around an old lighthouse, looking at the fish and other sea life, and checking out port life way back when.

 After the obligatory stop at the giftshop (you can tell how hungry Zoltan was, the treat he wanted was a bag of crab shaped pasta, seen here clutched close to his heart) we went for lunch. The kids had hushpuppies for the first time, going down easily with a side of honey. They kept calling them chicken nuggets, until the actual chicken nuggets came. Darn, they had Old Bay in them and the kids refused to eat. They also tried lemonade for the first time, Alex isn't a fan.

The highlight was going to the beach steps outside our friends' cabin. We probably should have gotten the kids into bathing suits but, well, I did bring extra clothes for them. While our friends looked for sharks' teeth on the beach my kids dug in the sand, sat in the water and got pushed over by the waves.

dry at the beginning

soaking at the end

Finish it up with a cookout for dinner, getting some directions advice from our friends, and for the ride home I put the shows on before starting out and we were home less than 1.5 hours later. I threw the kids into their pj's still salty, sandy and sweaty, and into bed only an hour after bedtime.

To paraphrase the old Jewish saying, "Next year at our cabin."

Gramercy at Pentagon City

Unlike just about every other FS family, we have never, ever stayed at an Oakwood. In fact, every time we have stayed in VA/DC we have been in a different building. This time we went with Executive Apartments, Inc. and one of their Pentagon City locations.

There's a Dunkin Donuts in the building. Gold Star #1. Helpful front desk and plenty for the kids to do in the lobby area - things to look at, a pool table & TV, the business center ... OK not all exactly in the lobby but close enough I could hear them while checking in. Gold star #2. We asked for an air mattress for the 2 year old who still falls out of bed, they gave us a foldout bed. Strike #1. The kitchen has real pots and pans, even Pyrex casserole dishes with covers and a few Tupperware containers. The fridge dispenses filtered water. Gold star #3 and 4. The largest pot is too small to cook enough pasta to feed the entire family. Strike #2. Gas stove. Gold Star #5.The same useless window blinds as every other corporate apartment ever ... not cool when one kid requires darkness to sleep. Probably not fair to give a strike as everyone does this. 5 minute walk to a park with an entirely shaded playground, also only 5 minutes to Pentagon City mall and metro. Gold Star #6. They even provide beach towels for use at the pool (GS #7) but only 2 when there's 4 of us (S #3). As should be eident by now, we're pretty pleased overall. I just wish I had thought of this beforehand, now I can barely remember much about all the previous places.

The last time we stayed around here we were at AKA. They advised us we could place a Peapod order and they would have it in our apartment (yes fridge stuff in the fridge). As that time we flew straight from post to VA it was a gold star that outnumbered any other possible factor.

We still haven't really explored the building or much of the neighborhood so there will probably be updates.

Our global nomad

Our daughter has lived in Russia for all of her conscious memory - 3 years out of 4.5. So when we were in the airport in the USA getting our luggage so we could leave the terminal and go to Grammy's, and we heard the announcements being made in English, she whispered into Terry's ear: "Most people here won't understand what the man just said."

Our first day in the USA

We decided there's no point just sitting around waiting for jet lag to attack us, so on our first day back we went to Penn Vermont Fruit Farm, a pick your own place we used to love when we lived in the area. We picked our own string beans - Zoltan loved them straight from the plant as we thought/hoped he would - then went over to the blackberries. Funny enough, he refused to eat the black ones and insisted on sucking on red ones, even eating a few. Ick! Alex however got the hang of things early on, as you can see by her fruit stained clothes, face and hands.

We made it!

This flight gave me hope for the future. The 3 hours to Germany was nothing, between snack and some of their toys and coloring the kids flew through that one. Frankfurt airport is so much better now that the construction is over (yes, that's how long it's been) but still not recommended. The good/bad thing is they have a pretty decent play area (good) but it's out past security (bad) and in a different terminal so we had to ride the tram (good - Z loved it; bad - adds time). We were at least able to give the kids 45 minutes of running around burning energy and we got something that approximated a meal.

The long haul flight started off awfully enough. Waiting, waiting, someone checked luggage and never got on the plane so that bag had to come off, then there was a medical emergency so first the medics came, then it was decided that person and travel companion had to get off and their luggage found. However, when we knew we were delayed one more time and I got up to get Z to the potty, we met the flight attendants. Awesome group of people. I love all of them. When explaining to one pair of attendants about Alex's need for darkness and the challenge of an all day flight, one lady handed me eye shades (the kind given away in first class) and wished me good luck. Wonder of wonders, it worked! Zoltan fell asleep pretty early on sucking on the lollypop we give the kids for their ears during takeoff and landing. T was able to ease the pop out but that may have been the downfall, as Z was awake only 20 minutes later. Alex, who we never thought would get any shuteye, slept for more than 2 hours! It was heaven.

Then it was time for snacks and TV. We'd been building Zoltan's tolerance for sitting and watching TV during the course of the summer and it was well worth it. Between the variety of movies offered on the plane and the fact we had 2 tablets loaded with their favorite shows, the kids were pretty happy for most of the flight. They did a little coloring and we read a few books, we pulled out the Leapster gameboy thingie and they each got a turn with it ... but most of our 8 hours in the air was consumed with TV, and I'm cool with that.

The next bit of heaven - our agreement was I would stay here an extra week after Terry went back, but on condition we flew in and out of Philly as my sanity and the kids' ability to not completely melt down only last for 2 planes, not 3. So we were met immediately outside customs by a nice man who had a luggage cart, loaded our stuff in it and whisked it away to the vehicle and met us around the other side, with a cooler of water and rented car seats so we didn't have to lug ours on the plane. The same nice man will bring me and the kids to the airport in a few weeks.

Zoltan did manage to fall asleep in the car. The one time I actually wished for a teensy bit of traffic, to keep the nap going, but of course we sailed through. So here are the stats: we woke the kids at 4am for the flight, between then and when the kids went to sleep again (at 3am Piter time) Alex slept 2h and Zoltan slept about 1.5h. The good news is they seem to be making up for it, taking their naps and going to bed on time. Terry and I don't even mind them waking around 6am as we're up then too!

Time honored rituals - the freezer cleanout

Every year, part of our preparations for a decent chunk of time out of the house (i.e., R&R, last year it was our "PCS") we do a drawdown on leftovers. So tonight's dinner was mystery brown shmoo from a tupperware in the freezer that didn't even have a date on it. We guessed it might be tortilla soup and I cooked up some tortillas chips to go with it.

It was some kind of chili. And REALLY tasty. The tortillas went with it pretty well. And we have absolutely no idea what recipe we used, it wasn't a usual one, so we may never make it again.  I hate when that happens.

I think we need to keep a Sharpie by the freezer and label our meals.

Happy 7 year anniversary!

Of course, I didn't even realize today was our anniversary until 2:30pm, at which time I called Terry and said "Do you know what today is?" in the "you're in trouble voice" and told him to look at his calendar. Happy man, he did get it on the first try.

We kinda suck, don't we?

Family

A few tidbits just from today ...

Zoltan crying "Mommy! Mommy!" this morning during my entire trip to the bathroom, because I didn't want him to join me and Terry kept him captive in the living room. Now that's love when 2 minutes is just too long to be out of eyesight!

Terry offering to take the kids alone to the grocery store this morning so I could go back to bed, even though the reason I was so tired was that I was out too late last night. Usually my attitude is "you were out having fun, if you're tired too bad". Taking the kids to the grocery store alone is something we just don't do, as the havoc Zoltan can wreak is monumental. Now that's love! [note, I didn't take him up on the offer, but the offer itself was golden]

Not sure if this should concern me, but although we have a ridiculous quantity of play food items, lately whenever Zoltan makes something for us to "eat" (roast, soup) it is always his sleep lovey Blabla presented to me in the pan or pot. Terry says it means he'll farm well, as he doesn't mind eating his pet.

Zoltan: Allie, if you eat your lunch you can have a chocolate muffin.
Me: No, Zoltan, they are carrot cake muffins.
Zoltan: I'm talking to Allie.

Creative Home Maintenance

Anyone who knows us knows Terry is a do-it-yourselfer. In fact, if there is any way he can just do it himself, he prefers that. Our first post was LQA and if he had his tools with him I think the whole experience would have been less painful. Now we are in a "normal" post, in Government housing, and we have GSO to do the home maintenance.

We had a huge project throughout most of the winter, replacing the risers in the entire building. If you, like me, used to think risers were the slightly raised flooring many conferences and lectures put their panels and speakers are on so the audience could see them, you would, like me, be wrong. (well, not wrong as that is one definition, just not applicable here). Risers are also some kind of pipe used in plumbing. While the risers were being repaired, our kitchen and all bathrooms were in their turn torn apart, and the bathrooms got renovated at the same time.

Since the new flooring was put into the bathrooms, we have had the grout coming up. This is because the floor wasn't leveled before the tile put in, so the grout will come up every month or so until the floors are leveled.

Or not.

Because this week, when they regrouted for the 3rd time, they used some kind of flexible grouting that will move with the shifting tile and not come out.

Why do something right when there's a workaround?

St Petersburg Mining Institute Museum

It just doesn't sound that exciting, does it? My geologist friend aside, what could be interesting to see at a mining museum? And nobody who'd been before could really describe what was so special in a way that made it sound very special ... so here's my attempt as it is relatively fresh in my mind.

Our contact met us at the front entrance, brought us in, and gave us some history. The Institute was founded in 1773 by Catherine II and was originally only an educational academy. It was part of the military so the students all still wear uniforms, although they no longer give swords to the #1 student each year (we did however get to see one of such swords in a display case).

Then our tour guide came and we began with a visit to the special exhibit room, which houses the prize items in the collection. There's a shelf of Faberge figures...

... another sword on which is depicted all along the blade/scabbard a famous battle ...

... a collection of raw silver and gold nuggets ...

...then on to the main collection.  I totally dig the enormous hanging periodic table and already plan this will be some year's science project for one of my kids. 

 There are rows and rows of cases of rocks. Our guide picked out the most important or interesting ones to tell us about. There's a display showing synthetic rubies and sapphires next to natural ones. We learned that only blue topaz will keep its color against constant sunshine but yellow or other colors fade. We saw marble statues and learned about the type of marble that makes figures of people look so real. If course I forget now, but there's some quality of it that lets skin actually look like skin. Don't you want to pick up this happy baby?

We learned that minerals are individual molecular forms and rocks are composed of composites of minerals.

This table has a bronze bottom crafted here in Russia and the top is a piece of petrified wood from Arizona (and now, again, all I can think is "There is no ... Arizona ... no Painted Desert, no Sedona...") Wood gets petrified when it is buried deep into the earth, such as from an earthquake, and the minerals in the earth seep in and cause chemical transformations. Did I mention this is really pretty?

 This is a stone that when you strike it with something metal - we had a key - will ring like it's metal itself?

And what's not to love about a Russian Imperial crest made of forks and knives?

We got to see a number of pieces of mining equipment - most are models of real sets as the stuff is quite big but some is the original. That's 400,000 year old water in that glass jar, came from more than 3 kilometers down in Antarctica. They found bacteria down there that actually came back to life when they warmed it up.

In a part where we can't take photographs I saw a huge gold nugget about the size of a newborn baby that weighed more than me. We saw a part of an iron meteor (did you know meteors are rock, rock/metal, or metal?) that weight some large number of tons and learned it came from a meteor shower that happened about 60 years ago, whch means we're in luck as they only occur about every 200 years (they do a LOT of damage).

For those who want to check it out themselves, the place now opens tours to the public at 11am and 1pm every Saturday. Tours are in Russian of course.