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.