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).
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).
