Some Local and Far-Away Observations

You know you've been in Russia too long:


When you find yourself, on autopilot preparing the next batch of baby food, having put both oatmeal and cabbage soup on the kid's menu
(As the Russians say: "shchi i kasha - pishcha nasha," or "cabbage soup and porridge are our bread and butter.")


When you cross a rustic urban courtyard and notice only on your exit, not on your arrival into the space, that that fishy smell was actually the raw sewage in the open holes in the ground enclosed (in a generous reading of the situation) behind ratty wooden doors dangling from their hinges -- what suffices for public toilets for at least some of the people who work and live in the surrounding buildings

(Yeccch - it never ceases to amaze me the extent to which Russians are willing to put up with the most primitive toilet situations.)


When you steer clear of huge potholes that still lie beyond the rise in the road and haven't yet entered your line of vision, because you sense that you need to avoid the part of the road that's given you a nasty jostle before



What we're saying these days:

Daddy ("Dadji")

potty (with alternate pronunciations of "pah-tee" and "pah-dee," which inevitably spiral into "ab-dee" - "ab-bee" - "abbi" - "appi")

"Bay-do," "Bay-joe," "Bed-jah" (most likely Anya-ese for Edgar, the more appealing of our two cats)

Mommy (both the more American "Mah-mee" and "Mamie" (as in Eisenhower), and even sometimes "Mammy" (?))

"buh-buh-buh" (repeated in a staccato in response to the question "What does a doggie say?")

"Gah-ghee" (cf. buh-buh-buh; probably "doggie," but also possibly an experimental take on "Dadji")

"bit-bit-bit" (said sometimes in response to the question "What does a froggie say?"; missing the "rib" part of "ribbit")

"tiku-da-tiku-da-tiku-da" (mumbled quietly and rhythmically while padding about any given room in the house; we think this is like the equivalent of her walking around muttering "whe-ya-go-whe-ya-go-whe-ya-go": Marina probably says to her "ty kuda, Anya, ty kuda?", Russian for "Where ya goin', Anya?" when the kid is wandering around in circles, all business-like and focused)

"ka-pah-ka" (cf. tiku-da; sounds most like "Bye-bye" in Russian, and was indeed accompanied by Anya's version of a wave (closing and opening a folded hand at face level))




Impressions and memories of our Bangkok trip:


Anya surviving in large part on these sweet, miniature-sized Thai bananas that we bought in huge hands and kept (on hand) to feed a picky girl


The sliver-to-chunk of skyline visible above the woven plastic upward-extending shades on the side of the water taxi; locals pulled down on the attached bungee cords to lever the shades up and avoid a spritz of the canal water (probably a wise idea), but we were kind of marked as tourists on a primarily commuter line, preferring to just look out at the view


The amazingly vibrant street life, full of commercial activity, especially full of food and drink for sale; people walking all over the place drinking fruit juices and Thai iced coffee from plastic bags with handles -- apparently the local version of a to-go cup


Whizzing along downtown boulevards, and past a zillion images of the King, in a puttering little "tuk-tuk" motorbike taxi; Anya losing her pacifier off the side of one of them


Everybody and his cousin setting their banana-leaf floats on their way, bobbing in the canal below us, while we ate dinner at a combination streetside cafe and sports bar (note, toward the end of the video, the outdoor bigscreen TV showing UK football matches to a sometime cheering Thai crowd)


The fluttering and chanting at the very top of the Golden Mount

Shoe!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have us a new word:


Shoe! (She's actually been saying this already for a few weeks, I admit, but she says it with a funny kind of intonation that had us laughingly repeating what sounded like half of "thank you" in Chinese: "xie-xie!") Earlier this week, though, despite the intonation, I noticed that it really was being used in situations that involved footwear -- presto, verbal communication!


What's additionally funny about this is that it actually seems like Marina, our nanny, taught her this word (which explains the funny accent). When I told her about it, she said, "oh, yeah, I talk about her felt boots [valenki] when we're getting dress to go outside, but I figure 'shuzy' [something like 'shoeses' across two languages] is closer to what you say." So the kid may end up with some interesting variations on English after our two years are up.


In other news, as you can see from the Flickr photos, we successfully traveled to Bangkok and back over Thanksgiving weekend, and we even managed to enjoy some of it. But it was definitely not easy with a 15-month-old: aside from the longish flights to get there, and the necessity of taking a red-eye back, which of course wasn't great for the adults, either, we had to confront the realization that there is some distance separating the ideal adult pace for touristing and the ideal toddler pace. And the fact that, when you are on vacation with a little kid, you're never really able to relax like you once could. I still need to take a little more time to digest all the other impressions from the trip before I print something here.


As for our updates:


What we're eating:

homemade deep-fried beer-battered scallops and squid

lemony fish and potato soup a la Bittman

ripped up pieces of grainy bread with butter (sometimes your morning oatmeal with baked apple just doesn't appeal)

homemade sourdough bread from our neighbor


What we're listening to:

a lot of Superchunk and Portastatic, for some reason (especially the newest, Be Still Please, and my favorites: "You Blanks" and "Song for a Clock" -- so much so that the unthinkable has happened, I am actually tired of this album; and Summer of the Shark/Autumn Was a Lark; and Indoor Living)

Strange Weirdos: Music From and Inspired By the Film 'Knocked Up' (you wouldn't necessarily expect something with that description to be good, but this is actually quite enjoyable music from Loudon Wainwright III -- better by far than the movie itself), liking especially "Grey in LA" and "Daughter"


What we're watching:

Prison Break, season 1 (purchased on Sukhumvit Rd., Bangkok, for about $20 [and don't tell us what happens!])

can't get away from that Beauty and the Geek


What we're saying:

baby ("bay-bee")

lyalya (Russian for baby; often said with a violent verbal tendency that has not yet been explained)

Anya ("Aaaaing")

hi ("ai!")

shoe ("shiew!")

not to mention of course, Appi, mama, papa, baba, gaga (?), and lots of babble

The Sand Project: Exegesis

OK, I should probably give more context to this video that I posted not long ago...


We often need to, uh, sift through the sand in that area of our playground in order to rid it of cat poop (although when we successfully keep the cover on the sandbox as we have lately, we don't need to do that in the box, just in one corner of the actual fenced in playground).


Anyway, my best interpretation of what Anya is doing in this video is that she thinks what you're supposed to do at the sandbox is to take bits of sand with a shovel and throw them out over the fence and onto the hillside. Of course it is cute that the little shovelfuls that she collects fall to the ground way before she makes it to the fence, but she still goes through the motion, because of course that is what the big people do.


I'm sure every family has stories of this sort. In my toddlerhood, I was known to stand in front of the wall below a picture window (I was too short to see out) for a few seconds at a time each morning, and then walk away -- later interpreted as my version of looking at the outside thermometer, like my parents would do. Also I went through a period of whacking a yardstick at the walls and corners of rooms, which was after a bout of flies that had my parents vacuuming them up with the long arm of a vacuum up in the ceiling-corners.


I guess now it is Anya's turn...

Mid-November Update

What we're watching:

(and listening to...) Springsteen's 2001 MSG concert DVD

(and squirming, and hiding, and finally unable to finish...) Borat

30 Rock

(and feeling some guilt...) Beauty and the Geek (hey, it follows 30 Rock on our satellite TV)



What we're listening to:

Dylan's greatest hits, vol. 2, disc 2

REM's Murmur and Out of Time

Modest Mouse's We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank



What we're reading:

Intoasia.com's guide to Bangkok

Lonely Planet Seoul (thanks to my mom for leaving it here)

The Beer Lover's Rating Guide (the smallest people have the most unexpected reading tastes...)



What we're eating:

Cheese grits squares

Squashed pinto beans and pasta shells

More leftover improvised Mexican pork stew



Where we have the potential to view cats this weekend:

At home

At the Vladivostok cat show

At the visiting circus show "Lynxes and Wild Boars"

Turning the November Leaves

We're back to regular old fall, after the snowmelt.



Last weekend we had a really great visit with our old friend Laura, from Berkeley grad school days, which included a little bit of exploring on the nearby peninsula "de Fries." This spit of land is a relatively prominent feature of the local map, but for whatever reason we hadn't driven there before. We were inspired in part by a meeting with a Washington State University historian who studies the cosmopolitan late nineteenth century Victorian world of Vladivostok, especially through the lens of letters written by a New Englander, Mrs. Eleonor Pray, who lived here with her family from 1894 until 1930. The Prays and the Smiths and apparently many other foreign traders and merchants in the city took their holidays on de Fries at a large complex that burned down in the early twentieth century. Our visit to the peninsula didn't really have a lot to do with the history, except that hearing about these old foreign families and seeing some old photographs led us to drive out there.



Now we're heading into a few weeks of work before heading to Thailand for Thansksgiving weekend! Hooray -- the vacation we have been waiting months for! We're meeting a friend from early DC days who is now stationed in Calcutta. Staying in Bangkok at the hotel this friend is fond of, and making at least one day trip to the beach. And hoping that all will go well with baby travel!



I'm going to try again to write more briefly and more often here -- we'll see how well I do. Maybe a little list of current likes and distractions will help in that...



what we're listening to

the latest Bruce, Magic

Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite (featuring fun cannon shots in our Deutsche Grammaphone version)

a homemade mix Dilon Djindji's mellow Afropop, c/o Sir Landau (some may recall that this featured as the recessional music at our wedding...)



what we're munching on (you guess which describes the big people's menu and which describes the small person's...)

a yummy Mexican chipotle pork and potatoes stew

dried cherry scones (although beware of Bittman's recipe in How to Cook Everything; we are still in search of a better one)

well-cooked pasta shells with mushed kidney beans and melted cheese

stiff mashed potatoes with bits of ham

bite-sized broccoli

Wite-Out (and Walking Small)

One excuse for not posting anything here in such a long time is that we are so busy now these days, with me having gone back to work, etc. Another that held some validity through early October was that we had so many guests -- especially when so many of those guests were the very people reading this blog! But if the third excuse tends to be that "there just isn't any news," well, I guess that one really doesn't hold much water by now.

Certainly not after we've gotten the first snowfall of the season on October 19.

We have been anticipating the first anniversary of our arrival here (October 21), and sometimes, to be honest, the reflection associated with that upcoming milepost hasn't always been positive. But we certainly weren't thinking about the start of our second Vladivostokian winter even on Friday, as typhoon "Shanshan" rained down on us all day in buckets. Sure, the weather prediction was that Shanshan might turn to snow in the evening, but we just didn't take it very seriously.

I headed out to the airport in the pouring wet at about 2 o'clock, to meet one of the last of our new arrivals here at post for this fall. And as the car pulled away from the consulate, I did remember that when we arrived last year, it had been sunny and autumnal when we landed on the Saturday, but when we woke up on Sunday there was a surprise dusting of snow. 'Heh-heh,' I chuckled to myself, 'what symmetry (or irony, or metonymy... or whatever), that there might be snowfall this anniversary weekend.'

As we made our way down the driveway to the houses at about 5 o'clock, with the sun setting and the rain turning quickly to sleet and ice and not letting up any, the humor did sort of start to, uh, melt away. And by the time Dan and Anya and I got all bundled into the car to try to show our new arrival (also, confusingly, named Dan) a warm welcome at the home of one of the Americans who doesn't live here at the townhouses, and Dan (K.) had spent several minutes trying to dig us out of the snow, and the guard had come over to tell us how crazy we were to try to drive anywhere, well, that was where we started to realize the seriousness of the situation.

Basically, Vlad wasn't ready for an early snow, and we are lucky that we are pampered American diplotots, with a generator and our own water supply. Thanks to the elements (and the poor infrastructure and services and maintenance, of course), much of Vladivostok and Primorskii Krai was left without power and water on Saturday and Sunday, and apparently even today. See some of the outdoor evidence of the storm here.

We spent Friday night indoors with a couple of neighbors, rationing out the short supply of beer we had on hand, eating popcorn, and wondering how much of a target for resentment and other feelings or actions we represented up here on the hill with our lights ablaze.

In other news... many of you have probably been waiting for The Anya Report:

The small one is officially a toddler! I need to post a video or two, and of course this has been a process that has occupied the past month or so, but I think it is fair to say that Sunday was her first day of extended walking over relatively far distances (e.g., the length of the dining room at Vlad Motor Inn). Another very important element that has materialized in the past couple of weeks is her delight at walking and even initiative in letting go of the parental finger.

Also in the Anya news: spoon use. This weekend she also insisted on trying to feed herself from the fruit-and-cereal bowl. Imagine our surprise when she wasn't wearing absolutely every drop she had extracted from the dish, but had actually gotten a bit in her mouth. (Video clips will surely follow on this story, too.)

And perhaps the last bit of news with the tyke is her vocabulary, which really hasn't seen a great deal of expansion in the past several weeks, but which curiously now revolves to a large extent around one word, which neither the English-speaking nor the Russian-speaking friends and caretakers can interpret: "appi" (sometimes rendered as "appa," "app-da," or "abbi"). I originally thought this was "apple," or maybe a variant of "papa," but it pops up too often and in way too many situations to fit.... Maybe this is just a special Anya creation, appropriate to many situations (e.g., when I want that thing on the table, when I'm hungry, when I want to greet mom or dad, when I'm hungry, when I see something interesting out the window, when I want to indicate that the cat is nearby, when I'm hungry -- you get the idea). Also featuring prominently, often when she sees a picture of a baby, is "baaay-beee," pretty much the only truly English word we recognize in her lexicon.

Otherwise, things are just going well with the kid, who remains a happy and good-natured girl most of the time, even if some frustration creeps in now and then (hey, it's tough when you realize all the things you can theoretically do in the world, but for which you yourself might still lack the dexterity or height to actually accomplish today).

Impressions From August (and a Little Bit of September)

• Saw one of the first big departures from among our small American diplomatic community, as the veteran family with small kids left for California and then Yerevan. A bit of unexpected melancholy (at least for me) upon their departure, and the hole left in their absence.
• The much-anticipated visit of the Grandparents Kronenfeld. Great fun had by small people (walking with grandpa, placing little plastic blue men on grandma's finger, eating Cheerios under grandparental supervision, testing the northern Sea of Japan waters with her parents) and by larger people (catching up with the parents/in-laws, playing 'Oh Hell' for the first time in a long while, showing the finer points of Russian beer and four-wheel-driving, and just generally sharing more commentary on life here in Russia than usually gets fit into an email, a phone conversation, or a blog entry...)
• Some adventures in traveling with Anya -- far: Kavalerovo; and close: Reineke island. We've got photos of these trips on Flickr, and those who've seen them already have a pictorial narrative of the trips. The first was based in a small, Spartan room several hours north of here, near the coast of the Sea of Japan; the second, on a marathon boat trip to an island, about 12 hours long, from door to door. The kid took almost all the naps that were requested of her on both treks, played happily with toys and books, flirted with friends and family (and even new acquaintances who were armed with cookies), and generally behaved excellently for her diminutive size and age. We were very pleased.
• Kavalerovo packed a pretty wide range of weather and restful activities into two and a half days, from moist fog, to light summer rain, to just overcast, to sun-shiny and HOT. We frequented a cafe set back from the beach at Zerkalnoye Bay, and we explored a bit the vacation community that had sprung up there, in the form of a vast sea of tents and ramshackle camping compounds, as well as a handful of ecclectic summer cottages. We poked around the lake on whose shores our recreation base was located, and rented rowboats and skimmed out over the water to admire the flying fish. Several of us went out to sea with an old salt who promised fishing but delivered a sputtering motor and views of some bobbing seals and pristine beaches. We happened upon Russian karaoke night at our tourist base, with the full gamut of performances, from bored to over-enthusiastic. We cooled off from the hot sun in the lake and tried the huge inflated water slide, trampoline and other various water games set up for swimmers. We got stuck in the mud and experienced the curious brand of familiarity and sociability bred among Russians in these camping spots. (Just as at home in the city, where everyone is anonymous and there is little feeling of community, people had no trouble staring blankly at us when they passed on foot on the beach or when we allowed them to pass in the car -- situations that in the U.S. would often garner a wave, a smile or a brief greeting. Yet at the same time, we did experience a little sense of community in the camping villages, for instance, when we got stuck and some men were eager to lend advice if not a hand. Or when we encountered (of course, drunk) college kids at the beachside cafe who were curious to practice their English and quiz us on the NBA and American rap.) We relaxed in a relatively secluded spot on the rocky beach, then returned to the cafe and the rapidly emptying beachscape -- with all of the campers packing up their tarps and tents and the rugs and blankets that formed the walls of their impromptu beachside outhouses to head back home on Sunday evening. Generally a pretty successful trip and fun to see another part of Primorye region.
  (You can read more from a different perspective about Kavalerovo and this grandparental visit to Russia here.)
• The boat trip -- known to some fashion-minded people as the 'banana-hammock trip,' for reasons that I will leave you to puzzle out -- was long, slightly overcast (probably for the best, when you are spending 8+ hours in the open air with few to no trees in sight), and filled with as much Zolotaya Bochka beer as you could possibly want to injest and lots of snacks and barbecued meat. We explored Reineke Island with the tot, enjoyed a chilly swim in the water, and met new people and had a chance to see more of people we had met previously in the local expat community. Unfortunately the evening ushered in the latest round of apparent food-poisoning for us big people; luckily Anya's food supply was untainted.
• Small people had big birthdays: Anya turned one year old on August 21. But on August 20, I started work at the Consulate, taking the half-time job of "Community Liaison Office coordinator," generally reserved for spouses at US diplomatic posts. Not only do I get to "liaise" with the local community, but I'm generally supposed to "support the morale" of the consulate employees, local and American. I'm still feeling my way into how that support can be done, but mainly it seems to take the form of planning social events and gathering and distributing information about what to do, where to do it, what to buy, where to buy it, etc., in the local community. It all sounds very easy, and it will be once I get fully settled. But I find I am actually still in the process of really getting the rhythm down in juggling an external work schedule with the demands of home and kid. And don't know when I'll be able to fit in the writing and research that had been giving me that completely self-organized schedule previously. Well, it will all work out, I know, but for now I am a bit frazzled (and, you see, not finding much blogtime).
• But back to the munchkin birthday. Because of the new work schedule, this was a little bit less planned than some first birthdays, but we did have the big American people we know over, we all drank beer, Anya looked wistfully at us with our bottles, we encouraged her to rip open a few presents, and then we helped her blow out a votive candle placed close to her cake. The kid generally seemed mystified, but that is probably par for the course. We are very much enjoying the fruits of the holiday, though, with lots of new books and toys and clothes to brighten up our play and ensure wardrobe variety and hipness throughout the fall and winter.

Lazy, Hazy (Foggy) Days of Summer

"Hey," you say, "where did those Vladibloggers go?" What have we been up to the whole month of July?

Well, of course, that first week included the "highlight of the Vladivostok social season" -- the American Fourth of July party that evidently every year in recent times has been held on board a visiting naval ship. In general this July, until this past Saturday, has been especially foggy and rainy -- even the locals have been complaining. But we did have 2 bright, sunny spots bookending our July calendar. The first was the Tuesday afternoon of July 3rd, when our July Fourth party was held, and the second was this past Saturday, when the other big, foreign-flavored local summer event, Canada Day, was held. (Where, you ask? Why, at the Vlad Motor Inn, of course -- it is known to some as "the Canadian restaurant," and the road sign that reminds you to turn in from the main highway is in the shape of a big maple leaf...)

Canada Day was an entire day's worth of barbecuing, games, races, contests, some more food, a handful of local bands, some more games and MCing, some more food, and then a huge several-meter by several-meter cake. And apparently fireworks to cap it all off, but we didn't stay that long.

What else? We have seen the departure of the Consul General who was serving here when we arrived and the arrival of a new CG to replace him. It has been fun showing the new consul and his wife around a bit, now that we are very fast becoming the Old Guard around here among the Americans. Our sponsors and models in raising small children in Vlad, the family who arrived here originally when their second son was just 7 weeks old, are leaving in the first week of August. Our consular officer friend is leaving in late August or early September. That will leave 3 American employees and their familes, all of whom arrived in September or October last year, and we really will be among the longest serving at this post, which is kind of crazy to realize.

I have turned in my application to do halftime work as the "CLO" -- Community Liaison Office -- coordinator, one of the jobs at diplomatic posts that are reserved for "eligible family members." No other eligible family members here or planning to get here soon were vying for it, so it sounds like it is mine for the taking. Since I enjoy exploring and getting to know places, and that still describes the ongoing process of living here in Vlad, I figure it will basically mean getting paid to do that (plus a few other administrative tasks that hopefully won't be too annoying). Already in meeting or anticipating the new people here in our very small diplomatic circle and what our next year could be like, I think I'll enjoy having the capacity to organize some things and hopefully raise morale a bit.

OK, here is what many of you have been waiting for... The Anya Report.

The Munchkin is even more intent on walking than ever before, demanding two hands from the nearest parent to help her get around. One hand just will not do (apparently even if you can manage with one, the trouble is, you can't walk as fast or as easily that way, so there is some amount of whining in order to get that second hand...). She's much better able to put the stacking-type toys together -- the ring toss that she took apart on one of the videos, and the stacking cups that came care of (Great) Aunt Nancy and (G) Uncle Jerry. She's also getting pretty good at the shape-sorter (not shape-shifter) toy that she has, putting many of the shapes in the right holes (or at least guessing pretty well as to where they go. Maybe like other small monkeys she will soon complete a line of Shakespeare). She is very interested in steps and stairs right now (much to our chagrin, but I guess we're trying to be safe while going with the flow of the growing child); a lot of the time spent on her feet is also spent going up steps. And just in the last few days that has come to include not just stepping up one, pausing, then stepping up with that same foot and pausing again; but stepping up just like big people usually do -- one foot following immediately after the other, just striding right up those steps in a (relatively) fluid motion.

Foodwise, Anya's eating more chunky pieces of well-cooked food, including tiny broccoli "trees" and little chunks of potato and grated baked beets. Our longed-for Cheerios arrived in the mail, and we have been exploring those, picking them up, looking at them, watching Mom demonstrate how they can be tucked into the mouth and chewed enthusiastically -- but for the first few days not putting them into our own mouths... I could put them in there for her, but for whatever reason she was not figuring out that she could do that too. As of yesterday, however, we are very eager to try to get them in our own mouths ourselves -- not always coordinated enough to get them in, but very enthusiastic all the same.

It's pretty unbelievable that it's just one more month until she hits the one-year mark!

Now that summer is in full swing, we have all been enjoying plums and peaches -- the smaller person in cooked form -- and the big people have enjoyed a variety of fresh berries. Despite the weather, we've been down to the beach at Shamora (east coast of the southern Primorye peninsula) a couple of times, and enjoyed grilled meat and salads there. I have been out a few more times with my internet-mama friends, including a foray this past Friday into the local nightclub scene, for a little dancing and relaxation, at a place near the waterfront called "Yellow Submarine." And we just met a diplomatic family from the Japanese consulate with two small daughters, with whom I think we'll have a chance to spend time again. It is a lot of fun to have a handful of people to socialize with, and a nice change from the first several months here. I think we feel like we are socking away social contacts in anticipation for the long winter... Luckily I think our store will have good depth and we'll probably have a very different second year in Vlad.

Breaking the Ice (Yes, In June)

I'm really happy to report that, finally, this month, I've been having some very promising social contact with people.

I'm not sure how much this has come across in our posts here or in individual correspondence, but this is truly one area where our life here has been slow to develop -- and where we've felt the strain. As we often remark jokingly, wistfully, frustratedly to one another, "we ain't got peeps."

As I mentioned in my last post, the first half of June was, for me, abustle with professional activity and creative inspiration. It also brought contact with the visitors (and the local participants) who had gathered for a history conference, which was also rewarding. But I find that there are several directions I want to be spending my -- now, of course, with Anya, seemingly limited -- time and energy, and it's tough to figure out how to organize them all and not feel like I'm doing many things only at half tilt. I want and need to spend time with Anya, of course, and spending time with Dan is also important. Professional activity is a priority, too. You can't ignore your own private, personal time, either, whether trying to get in a little exercise or reading -- that kind of thing. But then there's one more area, which I now realize probably would have demanded a little less energy in this first year of parenthood if we had not set out here in a completely new place, knowing no one, and of course not being native speakers of the language, and that is the social.

So far, I think our feeling about the very small diplomatic post (and in a place with very few expats in other, non-diplomatic spheres) is that it's pretty limiting socially. Partly it's an issue of one of us having already spent the entire workday with these people, and then you come home, only to have the same small set of people naturally at your doorstep to socialize with. Partly it's also that old issue of choice, which worried us coming in: given a somewhat random grouping of fewer than ten people, what are the odds that you're going to be socially compatible with them, for anything more than the occasional meeting-up? Not much, I will answer with some experience.

And, of course, we had hoped before we moved that my work would represent the outlet beyond the American diplomatic circle, but for various reasons that hasn't really panned out. I'm more happy spending time with Anya than I'd expected, and I haven't sought out (yet?) some of the more active kinds of things I'd expected to engage in (and the things I have done, for instance the high school teaching, brought less interaction with other people than expected).

But in the last few weeks, while Marina, our nanny, has been on vacation, I've been restricted in how much work I can do, which has meant, on the other hand, that I've had more opportunity to meet people. And you will never guess how it's happened...

See, there's this amazing thing called the In-Ter-Net (or is it Internets? Oh, you know what I mean, those tubes...).

No, but seriously, and more precisely, it really has been an online discussion forum that's helped. It's actually quite interesting what technology makes possible. I never would have predicted that this would be an effective way to make friends in, of all places, Russia, but it has. (And, above and beyond the social contact it has facilitated for us, it's amazing to me what a valuable language tool this form of communication can be. I can't imagine another manner in which you could so effectively listen in on native speakers speaking/writing in slang, unnoticed if you want, and therefore take all the time in the world to read and figure out what they are talking about... It provides such an amazing window into contemporary Russian language and culture, which I find fascinating.)

At some point in the spring, I found a website called "VladMama.ru," with some information on local events and on parenting in general, but by far the most interesting part of the site to me is its discussion forums. Just like its English-language counterparts, this local forum has the full gamut of subjects and subsections -- from discussions of pregnancy and parenting to cooking, crafts, cultural events and local things to do, jokes and games, etc., etc. I started out posting a little bit to this one "English language corner" subsection, where people were taking the opportunity to practice their English (and which since then unfortunately has actually fallen a bit into disuse -- which I hope I didn't prompt by poking my virtual head in as a native speaker! It honestly isn't clear why it's died down -- maybe just that it's summer, and nobody's stuck inside any longer).

Then, in April, I got so busy with teaching that I didn't have time to look at it much. But since school has ended, and especially with Marina gone, I've had quite a chance to read (and take part in) some of the discussions more closely, as well as to meet several of the women in person.

Since I've never been much of a forum participant in the U.S., all I can do is assume that typically these things don't translate into much of a social network in the "real world." But for whatever reason, surely in part because this is largely a local forum, a good portion of these people meet up in "real," as they say ("в реале"). In the past month or so I've gone from taking part in discussions on the public part of the forum and getting to know people that way to exchanging private messages with a few people on the part of the site that allows this, to instant messaging with one young woman who lives in our neighborhood, to meeting up with a large group of "VladMamas" at a local playground and bliny (Russian pancake) cafe one recent sunny day, and to meeting up on-on-one with a couple of women and their kids. And finally, today, I took part in a group charity outing at a local temporary rehabilitation home for kids. And it all feels really great!

Of course, as with any contact at the very beginning, you never can tell where it will lead -- whether it will really be possible to forge lasting friendships with these people. (I should say, of course, that it won't be possible to make such connections with most of them -- that's just a fact of life.) But it feels so good to have some contact with people, by definition pretty much all of whom are having many of the same experiences as us right now (well, so far it has just been the moms and the kids getting together, but I'm hoping to get the rest of the families together in a few cases). It also felt surprisingly good today to go out and do a little something to help some kids who aren't as lucky as ours, and to play with them and show them some tenderness, for which they clearly are very hungry. I guess the latter is a feeling not of making some tentative individual connections with people, but rather one of being a part of a larger whole, getting involved in an organized set of interactions that really strive to do something good (and what a pleasant surprise to find this in Russia -- the Land of the Lacking Civil Society!).

All of which is to say that this budding social life is of course taking some of my attention away from work, but I tend to look on this as just as important -- if not moreso -- in making our life here in Vlad more normal, and in getting us the human contact that one always needs.

History in the Headlines

This past week has been a whirlwind of professional activity and inspiration for me.

In the couple of days before last weekend, an international history conference held in Vlad brought me into a lot more contact with fellow historians than I've had the chance to enjoy in recent months. Thanks to that contact, I also got a leap start in work at the Far Eastern state historical archive. And, perhaps most surprising, the current topic of my research came back to bite contemporary Russians, quite literally.

The federal health agency in Russia recently declared an epidemic of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), with over 30,000 people across the country infected with the disease, and 15 dead. Apparently the region suffering the most is Novosibirsk, with 12 thousand cases of infection, about a third of which are children. The Far East, where TBE was first observed and studied by modern medical virologists exactly 70 years ago this summer, is not among the very worst hit, although the region surrounding the other major city out here, Khabarovsk, apparently has reported about 4,000 cases.

It's not very clear what explains this year's rise in the incidence of infection. Gennadii Onishchenko, former Minister of Health (he now heads the federal Consumer Rights Surveillance Agency, which performs some of the functions that the FDA and the CDC are responsible for in the US), says the unusually warm winter and unseasonably warm spring that hit in Siberia and the Eastern parts of Russia are partly to blame. He also calls attention to lax planning on the part of regional officials. Apparently every year health officials in the regions are supposed to order up doses of preventive vaccine and the immunoglobulin treatment that is really the only recourse once a person is infected with TBE. This year, perhaps because 2005 and 2006 saw a downturn in infections, Onishchenko says the regions ignored his calls for orders and now find themselves scrambling for treatment doses that were not manufactured.

Some reports note that localities often spray parks and recreational areas to keep the tick population down. A Kommersant newspaper article points to local officials skimping on such spraying or doing it too late this year. Personally I was surprised to hear that they try to spray at all to help prevent this disease, since in my understanding the danger of being bitten by an infected tick is much higher out "in nature," as Russians like to say -- in other words, outside of town, at a remove from urban areas, and in places that cover enough territory that I would assume spraying is really not a feasible option. But apparently now that this year's epidemic has been declared, officials are trying to be particularly vigilant about spraying around children's camps, as most of the young population heads out for the summer.

Evidently the joke among virologists right now is that the ticks' heightened activity is their way of marking the anniversary of modern medical scientists having taken note of their viral baggage. I wonder what Lev Aleksandrovich Zilber -- head of the 1937 medical expedition whose participants sleuthed out the fundamentals of the disease -- would think if he were here today?

Junebug

OK, since it looks like I'm averaging a sad two and three-quarters posts per month, I should update you on the second half of May before delving into the first few days of June.

If you have looked at our photos or our videos recently, you know that we enjoyed a wet ride somewhere southwest of Vlad a short while ago. The irony was, Dan went back to a location about 150 meters north of where we forded that river/road three days later, to visit a nature preserve where some of the severely endangered Amur leopards live. (There is an interesting Voice of America piece whose second half is devoted to the leopards here and a World Wildlife Fund report on the recent incident that inspired Dan's trip here.)

There wasn't a whole lot more to report from late last month, other than another trip to the waterfront here in town for shashlyk and beer. Fortunately we were able to enjoy it some, despite the fact that this followed a very stressful departure from home, leaving Anya with a babysitter. We've moved her bedtime later, but we still don't have a regular babysitter who she's used to and who can come and play with her and put her to bed with a minimum of fuss. Last Thursday was the first of our attempts to do this (i.e. have someone come before she was already asleep), and hopefully it will only get better. (Well, seeing how upset Anya -- and subsequently I -- was that evening, I don't really see how it could realistically get worse.)

So, how is our June shaping up?

Well...., on Saturday we went to the mall. I guess we are about at that point in our stay here in Russia where we actually don't feel bad about doing that for an afternoon. Meaning, heck, we have no shame, why not spend an afternoon doing something wholly American in Vladivostok, as much as that can be recreated here? We found a store, "Oggi," that wasn't too expensive, selling women's clothing that was a good combination of fun and feminine and stylish, without being either garish, too expensive, or too cheaply made. I bought a couple of things.

We used our fold-up "umbrella" stroller that my mom got us in early February for what I am slightly sheepish to admit is the first real time on an outing beyond the area surrounding our house. Vlad is just not made for strollers (you'll see this when you visit, Mom), but I knew that the shopping center we were headed to had escalators, which makes it one of the few places in Vlad where a stroller is practical. Also, Anya is still growing into the stroller, and she's still a little small for it now. She's still a little slumpy no matter how you position her in the seat. But using it yesterday reminded me how nice and light it is, and how easily it folds up, so now I think we'll use it more when we go down to the waterfront and other specific destinations where you know there'll be level ground or not a great amount of stairs to climb.

We had a disappointing dinner out at Syndicate, the local steakhouse modeled on a (Russian interpretation of an) Al Capone, gangster theme that I described in an earlier post. We went there Saturday night with colleague out from Moscow on a short-term visit.

The prices had all gone up not insignificantly, including the sorry $10 per draught beer -- just too much. Entrees and everything had risen, too. I had an overpriced entree and a bottled Stella Artois; Dan and Cathy had burgers, and Dan splurged for a salad and a draught dark Leffe. Burger was very disappointing -- hard, dry, surrounded and overwhelmed by the fixings, too greasy to effectively eat without it spurting out from the bun and its sauces and trappings. Stellas weren't bad. My meal took forever to come; Dan and Cathy had finished their meals before mine arrived. The live music wasn't bad -- a jazz guitar trio. Too loud when we first got there, but we got used to it.

After the meal we headed for the waterfront, to drink another cheaper beer in a downmarket setting. Unfortunately we didn't know the place kind of closes down at 10:30. The shashlyk and beer places on the part of the waterfront that juts out into the harbor were nearly empty, and it was just as well, since the fog was coming in and it was getting chilly. (One of the only ways in which Vlad really is like San Francisco is the microclimate thing, and the way you need to always remember a jacket or sweater when you go out in on a warm evening, since it is guaranteed to cool down quite a bit.)

On Sunday, another great midday eating and walking around outside out at the Canadian brunch place and a walk in the sun, followed by the very sour disappointment of having bought the wrong Zodiac. After careful research by Dan on some films that got relatively high marks on the Tomatometer, including the recently-released "Zodiac," we bought a DVD of the less recent, shockingly low-rated "The Zodiac." (The lack of definite articles in Russian of course aided our mistake....) Also, the version of "Black Orchid" that we bought was of such poor production value (ahem, I realize I ask a lot, given the provenance of the disks) that we couldn't hear the undubbed English. (The movie looked terrible anyway, but, trust me, the muffled sound didn't help matters.)

Well, generally a couple of up and down days recently, but capped by an interesting evening last night among local and visiting historians. I'll presumably have more from the upcoming days of the conference they were gathered for, so stay tuned.

Impressions From a Spring Drive

What a great day for a drive yesterday!

Went out to work at my usual research haunt right now: the Central Library of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Sounds quite impressive, but in fact it occupies just a small part of the Geology Institute building, and the reading room is a cute little space where rarely more than one or two other people are working when I am there. I've settled into a nice rhythm, going there 1-2 times a week, and the ladies who work there (and one man, in the reference section) know me now and are very friendly.

Drove the one route out of town (for some reason Vlad is laid out in an awkward way in a lot of places, with only one route between points A and B, or a route that makes drivers do some strange maneuver, which easily causes bottlenecks on the road*), "Vladivostok's Hundred-Year Anniversary Boulevard." Used the informal, semi-legal "diplo-" and "VIP-lane" when the traffic got messy -- this is how the left shoulder gets used when there are back-ups. (Yes, I probably shouldn't participate in this assertion of grey-area privilege, but I only do it every once in a while.)

Out beyond "Spark" shopping center, I passed those grass dividers that have gotten covered in fuzzy yellow dandelion heads in the last week or so. Was disappointed to see the hard-working road and landscaping crews cutting the grass and clearing away the carpet of yellow. At least the recently planted tulips are still there, still adding a surprising and somewhat incongruous decorative touch to a few of the main thoroughfares in town.

Found myself very easily anticipating specific potholes that I've come to know with some precision. Some of them by now are repaired (poorly, for the most part), which tends to puncture that feeling of satisfaction you get when you maneuver just right to avoid the phantom rough patch.

Lowered the windows and turned up the Shins and sang along.

Raised the windows and switched the air to "recycle" as I passed a truck spewing terrible exhaust my way.

Made the scary lefthand turn into the Academy of Sciences campus off of "Anniversary" Boulevard once it turns into more of a highway (but without the comfy exit structure), where you have to just hope that the people approaching you from the rear are looking ahead of themselves and can merge in toward the right in order to pass you as you hang out waiting for a break in oncoming traffic. Almost thought I'd made a wrong turn when I didn't recognize the road right away, with the explosion of new growth on the trees, a combination of leaves and blossoms. The fuller boughs hung over the little descending road toward the library and made that short drive feel very different.

Did my hour and a half of reading, especially enjoying a new document I had ordered on the 1930s investigations into tick-borne encephalitis, which at that time was a mystifying new disease (I know, fascinating!).

Left and made my my return trip along "Anniversary" -- even though you make a right turn this time to enter, you still kind of have to find your inner tough-guy to peel out into the quick-moving traffic and then avoid the slow-moving bus on your right, etc. Cruised into the outer limits of the older part of town, after crossing the gully where the First River flows, and sped toward the mini cloverleaf where Gogol Street begins, Red Banner Prospect rises above on stilts, and a crazy patchwork of pedestrian stairs and overpasses crisscrosses all the streets. Felt the exhilaration of making a smooth left turn and corkscrew entry upward onto Red Banner, and successfully navigating of one of those merges into ongoing traffic where the drivers doesn't appear to notice you or slow down at all to help.

Made a brief stop at the grocery store on the way home, and pulled up to the "shlagbaum" (lifting gate) that controls access to the diplo-townhouses with a few minutes to spare for putting away the food and grabbing myself some lunch before Marina's nanny shift ended. Whew! What a good morning -- I guess not all of that description means much if you haven't seen the city, but hopefully soon some of you will be able to imagine what I am talking about here...

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* Not to mention the lack of traffic signals in this town! That really is a topic deserving of a whole 'nother post, as they say.

Back to the Blog

"Last post on April 7" -- ack! That smarts!
I have left this blog thing for way too long without any additions. I guess my only explanation is that, with the spring weather, we've just had much more opportunity to get out, and there hasn't seemed to be any time to write an update. But I'll try to get back to basics and add short posts more frequently after this one.

For now, here is a digest of the news collected over the past month:

China
As our photos on Flickr help to show, we made a successful trip to China with colleagues from Vlad's diplomatic community in the first half of April. It was really a fascinating visit, moreso than either Dan or I (and probably Anya) ever expected. I guess neither of the two of us adults ever really took a special interest in China, and so perhaps we didn't know what to expect. And perhaps it was particularly interesting to take the trip from Russia, with all the comparisons and juxtapositions in the forefront of our minds. Whatever it was, we both really felt extremely curious to know more about the place, the culture, etc., and it felt like a refreshingly new environment, after our time in Russia, which of course is just the latest in a long history of traveling to the former Soviet Union and Eastern bloc for both of us.

Two impressions of China:
(a) Chinese people really do have a remarkable love of babies. The first time we got out of the bus on a city street in the town of Hunchun, we could barely walk around, because at every step someone -- interestingly, both women and men -- remarked at Anya, approached us, talked to us, spoke to Anya in an animated way, squealed with delight, touched Anya's cheeks, etc. I guess I can see how that would get old (we know one diplomatic family with kids who were in Beijing, and the kids started just slapping away the loving hands after a while!), but it was quite interesting, and marked for us on our short visit. It was definitely not the same response a baby inspires in Europe or America.

(Well, I'm sure the people in the rooms closest to ours in the hotel in Yanji were not professing a love of babies, especially on the second night. Somehow this part has faded in my memory, despite the fact that Anya's crying kept us up almost all night that second night. And I think both Dan and I would agree that the trip was worth it overall, although we were cursing the idea all through that terrible night. I'm not sure what the answer is for future trips -- always shelling out for a suite, with separate room for Anya to sleep in? I'm not sure whether it was tough for her to sleep with us right there in the room, or whether the problem was the unfamiliar place and noises...)

And (b) even in smaller (by Chinese standards) provincial cities, that sense of wide open boulevards and impressive -- perhaps even oppressive -- public space that I must have gotten from pictures of Beijing, was also confirmed. Public spaces were also remarkably quite clean and tidy. This probably interests us more because we were visiting from Russia: most Russians who heard we were going warned us to be careful, especially taking a baby, that "China is dirty." (This from people whose own city can kind of look like a garbage dump in places, of course. Some people from here are able to see that and feel badly about, but I guess enough do not recognize it.)

OK, probably not the most interesting observations to you, but that was what impressed us.

Also the trip was a fun chance to meet local folks, actually more local officials and honorary consuls of foreign countries who were Russian rather than other foreigners.

Getting Out

We've really been enjoying the chance to get out more here in Vlad, with the weather so much better. We've enjoyed the great outdoors at some spots outside of town, and we've tried several new restaurants and eateries in town. As you'll see from our recent photos, Anya is getting really tan from all of her time spent outdoors with us and with her nanny, Marina.

The weekend before May Day was gorgeous, and that Sunday it got into the mid-80s F -- actually quite hot! We started out with brunch at the crazy little Canadian hotel and restaurant outside of town that is our guilty pleasure, and we followed our meal with a stroll in the park near the water that I described in an earlier post (when we went for a winter walk there, with the ice skaters and the ice fishers and strollers out on the ice). It was such a lovely day -- the brunch place had tables out on the patio for the first time this season, and the park was great, everyone out with their picnics, obligatory 100 grams of vodka, etc., and even some brave sunbathers. By mid-afternoon we ended up at a colleague's dacha for barbecued pork and other goodies, which was also lots of fun. Anya had a great time just playing with the grass in the yard, the first time she experienced this green stuff.

In town, our spring outings pretty much began with the Indian Weekend -- 5 Indian navy ships visited Vlad for joint exercises with the Russian Pacific Navy Fleet, and there were several events in honor of this first visit of its kind. We took Anya to a presentation of Indian dance at the city theater, which she actually seemed to like. Probably the interesting shiny costumes and movement caught and held her attention. Dan and I got to attend a reception at a new Indian restaurant in town, which was fun and held great potential for future dining. (We also cooked our first Indian meal at home, but that belongs in a different section. See below.)

Since then we've also tried out a surprisingly successful local brew-pub type of place and a pretty good seafood restaurant whose interior was very pleasant. The funny thing about the latter is that it is almost the only real thing to go to that is within walking distance of our house (except the grocery store and little shopping center that we often go to, and have gone to from the time we first arrived, when we went everywhere on foot). For some reason we just hadn't made an effort to try the restaurant -- probably for fear that it would be overpriced and bad. But after Dan and a colleague stopped by and ran into a local official whom we met on our China trip and heard his high reviews of the place, we decided to try it. We were very happy with our meal -- an octopus appetizer, a mussel salad, a salmon steak entree, and a curry seafood dinner plate.

All of this exploring is aided by the fact that we put out a call for more babysitters, and we've tried two new ones in the past week. It helps to have a handful of names of interested and reliable people, since up to now we have really just had one woman to call upon for evenings.

Staying In

Since the kid does require us (or a proxy) to be here while she snoozes all night, we've also been trying to liven up evenings when we're stuck at home:

• We officially rang in the start of the 'cuing season with some mixed grill for dinner guests one Saturday and two delicious burger nights for me and Dan.
• On a warm evening while Melissa was visiting in mid-April we invented a new cocktail: the "Rumdowner." Dark rum, Grenadine, a dash of bitters, and peach juice, shaken over ice. Mmmmm... it has become a drink of choice to take out on the balcony on a light spring evening.
• As I mentioned above, after finding some key ingredients we finally made our signature Indian dishes -- dry spice-encrusted lamb, and bhagan bharta (eggplant puree). That took a trip to the meat market and getting over the weird fear that I still have about the open food markets. It is some combination of not wanting to get ripped off, not wanting to get sick from meat that is butchered or kept in the open market, and just generally not liking the attention that always gets thrown your way as a potential customer (and probably an obviously foreign one) in the markets. Dan forced me to go and participate in a purchase of lamb, which did help me, and now I try to go regularly to get our produce at this one market. Also the lamb dish requires curry leaves, which we found for sale in a freeze-dried form at the local Hari Krishna vegetarian restaurant. (!) The dishes themselves turned out great, even if the "lamb" was a little more toward mutton and next time could use a bit more stewing time. Now we need to branch out more within Madhur Jaffrey's repertoire and make some new dishes.

Sproing

These days it really seems like spring has genuinely sprung in Vlad. I was superstitiously knocking on wood every time I made reference to this for the last few weeks. But now -- despite the weird snow flurries that blustered in briefly without sticking, on an otherwise sunny Wednesday this past week, and distracting my students to no end -- I think it is safe to really call it a new season.

Perhaps the funniest (funny-peculiar; not exactly “ha-ha funny”) part about the thaw and spring in Vlad is the way the roads have possibly gotten worse rather than better. As Dan remarked the other day, we thought that the time was nearly passed when we would be thankful for our 4-wheel-drive vehicle every time we drove. Not so. Yes, the snow that was heaped up very high along the roads, and in random large piles in most parking areas (to our chagrin, but that's another story), for the most part has melted. (That doesn’t mean that the drifts that accumulated in the passageway behind our townhouses have disappeared. It must be the lack of direct sunlight, but unfortunately a dusty, dirty wedge of icy snow remains in about a third of the space back there, covering what I recall to have been grass when it was last visible.) But with the snow on the roads gone, and with a few weeks of temps that hovered around freezing, and with the apparently lower quality paving materials that must be used here, and with those honking-big buses that lurch and bounce up and down the thoroughfares, Vlad’s streets are actually an unholy disaster now, minefields full of potholes big and small. Traffic may not be restricted to a thin flow on snowbound roads, but instead everyone slows to a crawl to avoid ruining their cars’ suspension on the craters that have appeared all over the place. A Russian colleague of Dan’s agreed that lower quality materials are used: in fact, she claims they are used on purpose, in order to ensure fuller employment come spring!

We are enjoying our first visitor this weekend: our friend Melissa, with whom Dan worked in Washington, was touring the region and was able to make a stop in Vladivostok before heading home. We welcomed her with a homemade deep-dish pizza yesterday for dinner, and today we hope that the predicted rain won’t appear and the morning fog will clear so that we can take a drive and show her around the city and the surrounding countryside along the peninsula. Tonight we may buy some seafood to cook at home, and tomorrow night we are aiming for dinner with some local friends at a Georgian restaurant that we like. (Hint, hint: all this and more can be yours if you think you can handle a Vlad vacation…!)

Last but not least of the current happenings, I suppose, is our plan to take ourselves and Anya on a short bus trip to northern China late next week. The trip is organized by the Russian government, and Dan was invited as a consulate employee, and family members are also allowed to go. They may regret their decision to allow a Person of Diminutive Stature and as-yet Fewer Than Eight Months of Life on the bus, but we’ll do everything in our power not to inspire such disappointment. Hopefully it will be fun -- the primary destination is Yanji, which is the capital of China’s autonomous Korean province (which I had no idea existed until we got to Vlad -- shows how much I know about anything!). One of the frustrating things about the travel we expected to try to do on our own here in the Far East is the fact that our Russian visas do not allow us to leave the country at exit points other than the airport, even though geographically we are tantalizingly close to the Chinese border. (Russians actually cross it all the time for cheap shopping in border towns -- think Tijuana or Nogales with less tequila and more egg rolls.) All of which means that this bus trip, taken under the protective arm of Russian officialdom itself, ironically appears to be one of the only ways for us to make that relatively short overland journey to China and rest assured we aren't violating our visa rules. Hey, we’ll look at it as a test-drive: if it’s fun and the munchkin cooperates, maybe we’ll fly to Shanghai or something for a little more tourism sometime soon!

Tentative Spring

It’s been a while -- first the major snowstorm ground things here to a halt, and then a strange bug laid me low (along with a bunch of the other Americans who live in our complex). We never figured out the source of the illness, but for me it was not fun. Seems like maybe it hit the mothers of young kids (and the one breastfeeding mother -- me) among us harder than others.

Now, with temperatures above freezing for the past several days, the snow and ice that snarled our local traffic is finally melting, and I am finally better. Hooray!

What is the news?

Let’s start with a little Anya Report:

The thing that busies the Little Person more than any one other activity is now standing (with the help of someone’s patient fingers for support, naturally). She is very good at communicating when she wants to stand up, and can be quite insistent about it. (There is video evidence of all of this posted on YouTube.)

We recently got a fun new high chair, which is a good addition, since eating various fruits and vegetables has become a much more regular event in L.P.’s daily life. (We’d been making more and more of a mess reclining in our baby rocker, which really wasn’t made for eating.) It’s also a fun to have Anya sitting higher up and safe in the kitchen while we’re cooking or cleaning in there, and when I’m here with her alone it allows me to scramble upstairs or down for a minute to get something without taking A. with me.

What is on the menu these days? Well, carrots and zucchini are well liked, especially when mixed with rice cereal. Apples, peaches, plums, prunes (those come in handy for reasons related to baby-plumbing every now and then), and -- oh my -- bananas are also well received. Peas were not a big hit but I may try again. Green beans are touch and go. And unfortunately those sweet potatoes we had in the US just don’t seem to be readily available on the Russian market, although the chef will keep trying.

Also a big hit with the Person of Diminutive Stature is dancing. Again, this is accomplished with certain Baby-Related Adjustments, so that the one who is really dancing is of course me, and Anya is content to bounce and squeal and laugh from her perch on my hip, held in my arms. In the search for fun sounds to listen to, our aural palette has taken a decidedly World Music turn: the Cajun group Beausoleil is perhaps Anya’s favorite, but Cuban son and the Malian duo Amadou and Mariam follow close behind. Select American jazz and blues artists, and of course good old indie rock, can also inspire a good squeak or two.

Two things that now more than ever before occupy Anya’s awareness, and cause her much amusement, are (a) the cats, and (b) mirrors. She seems to be at an age where she recognizes something more about these things than she used to -- that the cats are interesting furry blobs that move on their own (maybe even some understanding that they are alive, like her?), and that what she sees in the mirror bears some relation to herself (possibly approaching an understanding that this is her reflection?). Whatever goes on inside that baby head of hers, both of these things not only capture her attention, but more often than not they inspire giggles, smiles, and something in the overlapping category of snort-gasp-laugh.

.....

In other areas of life there are also interesting developments. I’ve begun teaching two English composition classes a week at the local international school (with just one student in each class, so no big groups of unruly teenagers or anything like that to wear me out, thankfully). Actually, this is the international division within a local boarding school for gifted students, which takes students in from all over Primorye region. The international division is quite new, having only opened this past fall, in an attempt to replace the Quality Schools International franchise that had served the education needs of the kids of international diplomats and business people in Vlad. QSI apparently closed up shop when there were just not enough kids to pay for the school. (QSI is a non-profit organization that runs international schools in Asia and Eastern/Southern Europe and often serves diplomatic communities.)

I teach the two international baccalaureate students at the school, one a Korean boy whose father is a local corporate representative, and one a Russian boy from Vladivostok. They each speak and read English surprisingly well, at least to me; although the school suggested I use an American 9th grade composition textbook, I was skeptical about whether I could really pursue the class in the same way you would for native speakers of English. But after two weekly meetings it looks like our approach will not be terribly slowed down from the suggested pace for American kids. And despite the fact that things are inevitably framed in a more elementary way in a school textbook, I think this is going to help me think more consciously about my own writing than I have for a long time, which is a welcome side benefit.

That is probably enough to read at this juncture, but I will try to report on the trip to Nakhodka that we took last weekend before it fades too far into the depths of memory. In the meantime, please check out the photos on Flickr!

The Snowy Day

We're baaaack! We have been home in Vlad for about a week now, after a really enjoyable trip to the US, with stops in California and Arizona. It was great to see family and friends, although it was tough to fit so much activity and travel into a short two-plus-weeks. Anya did absolutely great on the trip, on the many domestic and international flights, through all of the disruption of her routine and with all of the new faces and places. Now that we are back and settled, things are pretty much back to what had been our normal routine.


In the States, we were able to get our fill of autentico Mexican food, and Anya was able to stock up on a few new toys and books, since the bunch she had at home in Vlad were starting to get a little old. (Well, really probably they were only starting to get old for me...) One of the books I picked up was Ezra Jack Keats's "The Snowy Day" -- one of my favorites as a kid -- which I thought might be good to have here in Vlad. Little did I know how soon and with what ferocity the elements would oblige!


Today, Monday, March 5, is officially a snow day. We're currently in the midst of a major blizzard that began on Sunday night, has lasted all day today, and is predicted to last well into tomorrow. One news source claims that overnight Vlad got two times the average monthly amount of precipitation. The US Consulate is officially closed, and, although today was supposed to be my first day teaching composition at the local international school, classes there were cancelled, too. And it's a good thing, because it's positively bleak outside, with major gusts of wind and extremely low visibility. We will be fine, but I can't guarantee the same for many of the local population. A big snowstorm that we just barely missed a couple of weeks ago (which was apparently not as bad as this) cut power and heat for several thousand of the region's inhabitants.

The video short linked to the picture above probably doesn't really do the storm justice, and of course, when it comes right down to it, I guess it is just a big blizzard, the likes of which many have experienced at some point or another. Still, I wanted to try to capture some of what it looked like out our window today mid-morning.

Today being stuck inside hasn't been too bad, with Dan home most of the day (he, like most of the other Americans, who can get to the Consulate on foot, did go in for a few hours). But it has taken the better part of the week not only for Anya and us to adjust back to Vlad time, but also for me to get back in the groove of life here in all of its differences from that in the US. It kind of surprised me to feel so badly precisely when I did, although it did occur to me ahead of time that it would probably be tougher coming back this direction, and not just because we'd be heading back into a tougher, more isolated, not to mention colder, life here after seeing family and enjoying the weather in the American West. I sensed that it would be hard to quit cold turkey after having two weeks with several people at a time around to lean on in caring for Anya and to give me a break now and then. And also simply to see an end to the vacation time that allowed me and Anya and Dan to spend so much great time together, as well as to share all the good Anya moments with family and friends. But I guess it is just hard to fully appreciate and foresee what something like that will feel like until you are in it. The first few days back in Russia, even with the help of our Russian babysitter, were a little hard. But now I think I am back on track and ready to start the handful of hours of teaching each week that I've signed up for, as well as the research I was just delving into before we left, and also to spend the hours at home with Anya and taking care of the crazy four-story townhouse.

A Polar Bear Explores the World

Closeup On the Bear
Originally uploaded by lkwalker71.

I guess the most recent photos I uploaded to Flickr probably deserve at least a little explanation, since everyone who has commented on them to me has said "it looks so cold!" (You can see these photos as a group if you look here. And if you want to see where this afternoon walk took place, click on "map.")

So, for orientation's sake: if you have looked at any general map of Vladivostok with much detail, you will have noticed not only that the city is situated at the southwest tip of the Murav'ev-Amurskii Peninsula, but that it also has a tantalizing finger of land dangling from its own southwest edge, which in effect sort of shelters the mouth of the Golden Horn Bay from the open water of the Amur Bay. That finger of land is "Scott Peninsula" in geographical terms (poluostrov Shkota); as a neighborhood of Vladivostok, its administrative name is “Egershel’d.” And that peninsula in turn has an even tinier spit of land (or probably just a spit made up of beach glass and other random detritus), a thin curving sliver extending off of its end, much like an accumulation of, well, spittle that might dangle from a five-and-a-half-month-old's lip. (Here are a couple of other good ways to view all of this geography, and the little spit of land in particular, whose name is actually Cape Tokarevskii: a picture of it in what appears to be summer is here; and "Wikimapia" has pretty good detail on that particular part of Vlad, too.)

I have to confess that these places really didn't hold as much fascination for me personally as it apparently did for Dan when we first got here, and especially when we first received our car. But his interest can be surmised from the fact that the finger, and the sliver, were our very first destinations after we had our wheels. And that fascination can be even better understood (I think) if you realize that that first trip was taken at about 7:30 in the evening, in the dark. He really wanted to see that spit of land -- even if, in going there, he couldn't even see it!

Since then, it actually has become kind of fascinating to me. We've gone a couple of different times (all in the light, I am glad to say). And I find it a really interesting end-of-the-earth kind of place, yet an easy drive for us from our house. There is a lighthouse there: always makes a place slightly more picturesque. And the light out there at the end of the day, especially with all of the ice and snow right now, is really beautiful.

The pictures I posted do look cold, but in fact the reason we went out to Egersheld last Sunday was that it was a beautiful, sunny day and relatively warm. Everything just seemed like it was melting -- in fact, it is kind of gross here when it gets as warm as it has been this past week, with temperatures as high as 3 or 4C, with all the ice and snow on the streets and sidewalks melting and spattering the car, and puddles of mud and goo everywhere. Last Sunday out on Egersheld, Dan and I were wearing our fall jackets, and the sun really did warm everything up considerably.

But I guess the interesting thing about Egersheld is that it still looks pristine and white even in that weather, and the ice is only partially melted in the water out in the direction of the Amur Bay. There were several other people who had also decided to drive out there and take a walk around the lighthouse and enjoy the nice weather. We suited up the munchkin in the car when we got there, in her little polar bear-like snowsuit, and she didn’t seem to mind much at all. I think she got hungry at the end, when she started to fuss a little bit, so we wrapped it up and headed for a nearby café where we had a late afternoon snack and some coffee.

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NB! We are taking our big trip to the US over the next two and a half weeks, so don't think that I have abandoned the blog if I am not able to add any tidbits until we are back, basically at the end of February.

Vlad Eats

I've been thinking of writing something about the food we're eating over here, and this weekend provided one interesting thing to say about that. We tried a recently opened restaurant called "Syndicate," a 1920s-, Al Capone-, Prohibition-themed steakhouse. I know, sounds cheesy. The logo here also would indicate that this is a place to be avoided. But, remember, we are in Vladivostok. We have limited options. So we went.

Be advised that the restaurants here in Vlad -- well, for that matter, most foods and manufactured products -- are actually no cheaper than in the US, and in many cases much more expensive.
A while back we poked our heads into a sushi place in downtown Vlad that people say is good, and were shocked to see that a small dinner of a few rolls, which probably wouldn't even fill us up, could easily cost over $100. The expense is not surprising in a place like shiny, world-famous Moscow, but that bite out of your wallet hurts a little more in a place like Vlad.

So we knew that Syndicate might be a little pricey. And we expected cheesy. But we went, together with a colleague and his girlfriend, and it was actually a quite a positive surprise! Dan in particular was raving about the place for hours after we went. It was not really overly expensive, considering that it's steak we're talking about. And the steak was surprisingly good -- cooked to just the level of done-ness that Dan wanted, pretty much medium-rare, and very juicy and flavorful. They evidently import their meat from Australia.

The interior was actually very comfortable and pretty -- lots of dark wood and brass, comfortable booths. The quiet recorded jazz playing when we first sat down was a welcome change from the booming dance music that is usually playing in places you go in Russia, and even the live music (played by two guys who probably unwittingly fit the contemporary visual stereotype of a Russian gangster very well -- a little scary), a violin and guitar, with the inevitable drum machine in the background, wasn't terrible.

One of our friends and I had burgers, which were not a total success (kind of just cooked, but not exactly tastily grilled -- probably also suffering from having been pre-formed patties, and also overwhelmed by all the other stuff that the "superburger" was dressed with). I think I'd get a steak next time. And as for the 'taters, as our friend said, "they have fry issues." Undercooked issues, to be precise. Our other friend had the seafood soup called "The Hudson is Resting" -- if anyone understands that joke, please let me know, because our Russian friend laughed right away, but I wonder whether her interpretation is what an American would also assume was meant. Anyway, she thought the soup was very tasty. And, for Russia, the service was actually bordering on friendly. That was another reason we are thinking this may just turn out to be a regular place on our circuit.

Oh, and I almost forgot: dark Leffe beer on tap! As well as Hoegaarden and (according to the menu) Stella "Artua."

In other food news, Anya is taking to solid eats, as our Flickr pictures and YouTube videos recently showed. She is almost bored with rice cereal and has shown enthusiasm for applesauce and pureed pears. Next we are deciding between peas and plums. Both are waiting in our freezer, dolloped into little servings in an ice cube tray especially reserved for this purpose.

And we continue to prepare a range of food at home that is not half bad: homemade Mexican -- with refried beans from scratch -- is helped greatly by the tortillas we make at home, and by the Armenian lavash flatbread we use when we are lazy; Georgian stews have turned out well thanks to our adoptive Georgian mom's spice reserves and recipes; chili has turned out well in the slow cooker, and skillet cornbread was just as successful as at home; and we have even added a new pizza to our repertoire: thanks to our neighbor's deepdish pan that was the only form available before our household shipment arrived, we now make a pie that -- blasphemy, I know -- rivals SF Bay Area Zachary's!

P.S. I can already tell that this article is being read and forwarded by many back in the US, but I'll get on that bandwagon myself and say that the recent "Unhappy Meals" piece in the NYT Magazine has had me thinking even more critically about food lately. Although I have to say, the reason I am so in love with the article, and Michael Pollan's other recent writings, and itching to read his book, is that this just echoes so closely what I've been thinking about food and eating for a while already, independently of what Pollan or others are writing (despite my admiration of a good steak...).

Ice, Ice, Baby

Ice, Ice, Baby
Originally uploaded by lkwalker71.

There hasn't been a lot of news lately, which I suppose is the inevitable result after the holidays (even though our holidays weren't even that exciting!). I did want to report on a Sunday outing last week, though.

We went out to brunch at the famous Vlad Motor Inn, and it was such a crisp sunny day that we decided to take a walk afterward out by the beach. This is basically an area full of recreation points and "sanatoria" in the best Soviet style (hence the fact that the electric commuter train stop there is called "Sanatornaia").

The little park by the sea has an ice rink and little windows where they sell tea and snacks and things. And then just steps away is the Amur Gulf, which in summer I assume is lovely to take a dip in. This time of year, especially when we've had several good days of temperatures in the -5-10C range, it is covered with a thick layer of ice.

Last Sunday when we went, there were just people everywhere, skating at the rink, walking along the paths that run parallel to the shoreline, stopping for a sandwich and a thermos of coffee or possibly something stronger, playing with their kids (the preferred mode of transport for anyone under about 8 and over about 1 seems to be the sled, dragged by a parent), etc. There must have been people out on the ice fishing, too, but mainly it was peppered with people out strolling and having a good time. It was cold, but the sun warmed us, and there was no wind at all: just perfect. We had Anya in her stroller (see Flickr photos for a dissection of how bundled she can get for these outings), and she slept most of the time. I guess I am having trouble coming up with much detail beyond this to convey what a great time it was, but maybe I have given a flavor of it: just a simple day out in the sun, feeling good, having fun with the kid and with each other, and seemingly enjoying something that many of our fellow Vladivostokians were also happily partaking in around us.

Of course, we forgot the camera, which was a real annoyance -- we could have conveyed it better with a few thousand words worth of pics. And we could have snapped photos of the interesting ice textures that had been created by freezing and thawing so far this season, as well as the hood of a truck that was sticking out of the ice about 50 yards out from the shore. And the interesting high Stalinist architecture of the main sanatorium building in the complex for the Ministry of Defense, complete with many columns, arches, and reinterpretations of Greek athletic statues.

But we didn't, so we couldn't. I took this photo today, over a week later, because the natural scene here on the Gulf right near downtown Vlad resembled what we had seen out at Sanatornaia, although it was much less populated since it was already Monday morning. Hopefully it won't be the last Sunday stroll we'll have out there, though, and maybe we can catch all the ice activity on film at some point soon.

Tasty Keys

Tasty Keys
Originally uploaded by lkwalker71.

Not a lot to report now that the holidays are over -- just getting back into the "normal" swing of things, to the extent that we had a routine before the holidays.

For her part, Anya seems to be the one with the most news to report: we think she is beginning the process of teething. At least the best evidence of that is her new habit of biting me while nursing. We are trying to give her good alternatives to that, teething rings mostly, but she is trying her best to substitute these keys here, too.

Of course, even aside from teething, she is in a stage where her preferred sense for the purposes of exploration is taste. Also this week she has been a lot more active and successful in reaching out and grabbing the things and human faces that happen to be close by. She is getting good at sitting with some support, and maybe someday soon will even be able to sit up on her very own.

Holidays on Ice

Well, I sat at the window this morning and watched the cars tiptoe their way down the "Church Road" -- the sort of steep road, but not as steep as another more major road, that leads from our location up on the ridge down to the lower elevation where the Consulate and downtown Vlad are located, and which is visible directly out our front windows. I find it kind of fascinating to watch the activity on the road and judge from that what it's like outside. Today what it tells me, or really confirms for me is: the slipping and sliding that everyone predicted for the winter has begun.

We had our first major snowstorm on Saturday, which was kind of exciting. It basically snowed all day, with the temperatures hovering around zero, and then when the snowfall stopped (see the photo), the wind picked up and the temperature began to fall. From Sunday (which turned out to be a White Orthodox Christmas) onward, it has been colder again -- minus 5-10C -- and, due to the lack of any salt or sand distributed on the roads, pretty slick. Happy to say that the XTerra does great in the snow, especially in 4WD, it's the other guys that you kind of wonder about!

Until today, however, at least there weren't many other drivers on the roads, since it was "The Holidays." I don't know whether you have seen this article in the New York Times about the winter vacation here in Russia, but it is pretty interesting: http://tinyurl.com/yzpl2h. Basically the whole place shuts down for a couple of weeks surrounding New Year's and Eastern Christmas. In fact, I hadn't really realized that this was only made official by Prez Putin in 2005 -- I remember things shutting down, in I guess what must have been an unofficial capacity, during my other winter stays here, too. Unfortunately Dan was down with the flu, or recovering from it, for the better part of the week, which he too had off from work. But we did manage to take a couple of drives and relax a little bit during that time, photos of which are on Flickr.

Happy 2007!

It's taken us a few days to comment on our Vladivostok New Year's. And even in the several hours of delay between uploading a little video of the merriment and writing this, I've already got questions about it on YouTube!

We spent a generally rather quiet evening at a colleague of Dan's, an American who actually doesn't live in one of the 5 townhouses where we are. He is just over the hill, so at about 7:30, we got a sleepyheaded Anya suited up in her outerwear, suited up ourselves, put the munchkin in her stroller, grabbed a flashlight, and climbed first up and then over and down the little road that leads from our house to his. Once there, we had a pleasant time, eating tasty Russian salads and roast chicken, care of our host's Russian girlfriend, listening to music, and awaiting midnight.

Actually, we were informed that Vladivostokians begin the salute of the new year at 10pm. Why? Because that's when the first of their neighbors to the east pass over midnight, out in Chukotka and Kamchatka, etc.

By the time our local midnight finally rolled around, we had heard plenty of commentary about how spectacular the fireworks would be, and we weren't quite sure how they could really live up to the predictions.*
But hopefully the video linked to the picture above will give some impression of it: completely different from any kind of fireworks you'd see in the United States (mainly for legal reasons), yet still mesmerizing and amazing. It seemed as though literally every individual household had stocked up on fireworks in nearby China or in local markets supplied by Chinese sellers -- our friends estimated that 1000 rubles, or a little more than $35, was probably the average spent on each display (spending habits here are just plain different than in the States).

Because of Vlad's hilly geography, and our position way up on one of those hills, when the clock turned midnight, we were able to go to the balcony and see thousands of explosions big and small (and many of them quite loud), all over the city, apparently coming from every other free balcony or front stoop. The wealthier "New Russians" living in the fancy houses neighboring our host's were setting them off right in front of their townhouses, triggering car alarms in the process, and by all appearances having a blast themselves. The show lasted for the better part of the hour following midnight.

We joked morbidly that more than a few fingers must be lost each New Year's -- and in reality I think fires and injuries can't be uncommon. And I think each of us wondered whether any of the rockets were going to hit the house. But despite all the safety issues, I think we were all pretty amazed by the sight of so many fireworks going off, for as far as the eye could see, the whole horizon filled with bright explosions. One of our friends commented that it was like a visualization of all the thousands of lives being lived out there in the city, all around us, each party welcoming in the new year with a private firework display, but in concert with everyone around them.

* I realized after writing this that I neglected to include one detail from life here in Vlad that may help explain our skepticism: practically every night here we experience some sort of fireworks being set off just to the west of us on the ridge along which Prospect Krasoty runs [see this previous post for a little geography]. It's actually become kind of a running joke that fireworks here are so prevalent and that any evening appears to be an occasion to light off some rockets. It's kind of made fireworks a bit of a mundane event for us. Given that, you can probably imagine a little better our puzzlement at the fact that New Year's Eve could even hope to improve on these nightly displays... Little did we know! [Link back to text]