We are a little over half packed (and a little under half baked) and getting ready to get back on a plane tomorrow midday and do that journey all over again (10 hours to Singapore, 5 more to Seoul, this time an overnight in Korea, and then the 2 hour flight back home to Vlad).
Since it's still fresh in my mind and my eyes while we are here, I figured it was wise to make an update now, rather than when we're back home, once all the preoccupations of life there take over.
[Sorry for the formatting -- I've got to figure out once and for all what I'm doing wrong. For now I need to leave this as is and fix it later.]
What we have been spending our time doing:
not sleeping (especially for the first 4 days or so)
greeting the morning with a "caw! caw!" in homage to the hadidah ibis birds that are so prevalent and which wake us when it gets light at about 4:30am)
visiting parks, botanical gardens, game reserves, and zoos
eating lots of breakfast with Loren, our fellow egg worshipper
rearranging the onions, limes, and tea boxes in Loren and Caroline's kitchen
enjoying sundowners and other cocktails in and out of the house with Caroline and Loren
sleeping (thankfully, more in the last couple of days/nights -- just in time to undergo readjustment back home!)
driving between Johannesburg, KwaZulu-Natal province's premier state game reserve, Hluhluwe-Umfolozi, and Durban
communicating with various friends and colleagues to determine whether a stay in Dushanbe, Tajikistan is really in our future
charming the pants off of people (primarily the diminutive ones in our group), especially in our gorgeous party dress at the wedding (pictures to follow on Flickr)
What we are saying:
[the vocabulary is shooting skyward so rapidly that this is of necessity going to have to start being less exhaustive than previously...]
pissi, pishi, shi-shay = fishy
pay-tay = pencil
pay-day = PJs
beow = beer and/or bear
om = down
up = up
heppah = help
koo-kay = cookie
manna = banana
soss = sauce (including ketchup)
tuh-tuh = turtle (as encountered in the bathtub)
tickah = circle and/or tickle
teba = zebra
pala = impala
toe-uh = towel
toh = toe
pee-ah = pear
ack! = egg
hadda = hadidah
yeh-rah-yeh-rah = yeah, right; yeah, right (as heard among the big people in conversation)
tade = shade
What we are listening to (a selection):
Born to Run on the road through Nongoma
Sticky Fingers in Newcastle and on the road through Vryheid
sounds of the bush (and unfortunately from time to time the whining of a less-than-interested toddler) in Hluhluwe reserve
What we are eating and drinking:
Kingklip-Prawn Jalfrezi from the Indian restaurant in Norwood
Diemersfontein pinotage (a LOT, before, after and during the wedding party)
much biltong and draewors
South African fastfood on the road from Hluhluwe to Durbs (and lots of chips/french fries all the time for the little people)
huevos rancheros a la Landau
delicious "tuk-tuk" cocktails from the kitchen of Caroline and Loren (involving passion fruit, ginger ale, and vodka, among other blended ingredients)
fruit and nut bread from Woolworth's
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
A Little Pre-South Africa Update
What we're listening to:
Can't get away from those Tiny Cities (I forgot to mention last time: this album holds a special place at least in my heart, since we played it constantly during the first couple of weeks after bringing Anya home from the hospital, when we were just figuring out that she was a pretty colicky baby. This was the music to which we did that legendary baby-soothing shuffle that folks from Marc Weissbluth to Harvey Karp love to talk about)
Pierre Akendengue, Espoire a Soweto (OK, so we won't be staying in Southwest Township exactly, but we are getting pretty amped up for our South Africa trip)
La Bamba: Sones Jarochos from Veracruz
Ravi Shankar, Three Ragas
What we're saying:
ball: "baw," "bah," "boe"
water: yes, "wa-wa" does appear to mean all things liquid, from milk (sometimes interchangeable with "nam-nam"), to water or juice, to coffee, tea, wine or beer (referring to when big people are drinking them), to water from the faucet or in the bathtub
diaper: "day-ba"
(OK, I hope you won't get grossed-out by a few bathroom-related words, but, hey, that's life with a toddler...)
ca-ca: I guess this one's universal. I can actually see where the word may naturally arise from, since Russians encourage babies to make a little grunting noise when trying to go to the bathroom, and it's really just a slight shift from there to "ka-ka"
pee-pee: "pay-pee" (easily confused with "bay-bee" but decicedly not the same thing)
Clearly our bathroom related vocabulary is growing, even if the connection made between relieving ourselves and actually hitting the pot is not yet really within our (OK, just Anya's, thankfully) grasp.
A: "ay" (Usually quickly followed by "Anya," in recognition of what most important function this letter often fulfills. [Yes, I think that a combination of the A-shaped Anya cookies and the talking Alphabet Pal toy my mom gave Anya for Christmas is surprisingly helping Anya really recognize the letter A, and say its name correctly. Pretty cool.])
cock-a-doodle-doo (which in Russian basically translates to "ku-ka-re-ku"): "kakaraga"
peek-a-boo: "pyka-paw" (rhymes with "Ty kuda," as in "where-ya-go, where-ya-go")
ice: "ais" (and the recent weather here, hovering around -12C, but going down to -20 last night, has given us plenty of opportunity to practice that one!)
What we're eating:
homemade sourdough bread, made from daughter-starter scooped from the jar of our neighbor, Noriko
(Anya especially likes sourdough grilled ham and cheese sandwiches)
Ginger chicken a la Madhur Jaffrey
What we're reading:
I am on an 18th century jag -- finished the masterly, truly inspiring New York Burning, and now am on to The Speckled Monster, but am reading it intermittently with The Oracle Bones.
And surely I will pick up something interesting in South Africa, too.
Can't get away from those Tiny Cities (I forgot to mention last time: this album holds a special place at least in my heart, since we played it constantly during the first couple of weeks after bringing Anya home from the hospital, when we were just figuring out that she was a pretty colicky baby. This was the music to which we did that legendary baby-soothing shuffle that folks from Marc Weissbluth to Harvey Karp love to talk about)
Pierre Akendengue, Espoire a Soweto (OK, so we won't be staying in Southwest Township exactly, but we are getting pretty amped up for our South Africa trip)
La Bamba: Sones Jarochos from Veracruz
Ravi Shankar, Three Ragas
What we're saying:
ball: "baw," "bah," "boe"
water: yes, "wa-wa" does appear to mean all things liquid, from milk (sometimes interchangeable with "nam-nam"), to water or juice, to coffee, tea, wine or beer (referring to when big people are drinking them), to water from the faucet or in the bathtub
diaper: "day-ba"
(OK, I hope you won't get grossed-out by a few bathroom-related words, but, hey, that's life with a toddler...)
ca-ca: I guess this one's universal. I can actually see where the word may naturally arise from, since Russians encourage babies to make a little grunting noise when trying to go to the bathroom, and it's really just a slight shift from there to "ka-ka"
pee-pee: "pay-pee" (easily confused with "bay-bee" but decicedly not the same thing)
Clearly our bathroom related vocabulary is growing, even if the connection made between relieving ourselves and actually hitting the pot is not yet really within our (OK, just Anya's, thankfully) grasp.
A: "ay" (Usually quickly followed by "Anya," in recognition of what most important function this letter often fulfills. [Yes, I think that a combination of the A-shaped Anya cookies and the talking Alphabet Pal toy my mom gave Anya for Christmas is surprisingly helping Anya really recognize the letter A, and say its name correctly. Pretty cool.])
cock-a-doodle-doo (which in Russian basically translates to "ku-ka-re-ku"): "kakaraga"
peek-a-boo: "pyka-paw" (rhymes with "Ty kuda," as in "where-ya-go, where-ya-go")
ice: "ais" (and the recent weather here, hovering around -12C, but going down to -20 last night, has given us plenty of opportunity to practice that one!)
What we're eating:
homemade sourdough bread, made from daughter-starter scooped from the jar of our neighbor, Noriko
(Anya especially likes sourdough grilled ham and cheese sandwiches)
Ginger chicken a la Madhur Jaffrey
What we're reading:
I am on an 18th century jag -- finished the masterly, truly inspiring New York Burning, and now am on to The Speckled Monster, but am reading it intermittently with The Oracle Bones.
And surely I will pick up something interesting in South Africa, too.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
A New Year's Sampling
The New Year's season in Vladivostok has brought some renewed social activity and, especially during the long break from work that is now a pretty well ingrained tradition in Putin's Russia, some new wintry activities.
The interesting thing to me about a lot of these New Year's events is that, despite having spent a bunch of time in Russia before, I guess since that was without a kid and sometimes involved taking advantage of the holidays as a time to get away, I never got to see some of the things Russians associate very closely (and enthusiastically) with New Year's.
I should note that, thanks to the official atheism of Soviet times, Russian New Year's encompasses a lot of the kinds of celebration that Americans associate with both Christmas (and in fact also Thanksgiving, given that it comes so close to Christmas) and New Year's. You get the family-oriented time of Thanksgiving and Christmas, the gift-giving traditions of Christmas, and the dress-up, go-out-and-party ethos of New Year's all rolled into one holiday. And even though anyone who wants to is now free to celebrate Orthodox Christmas, it seems like this latter holiday is either more singularly a religious occasion, centered around the church and spiritual life, and/or an added chance for family-centered gift-exchanges, rather than supplanting the familiar New Year's traditions for which I can now fully see Russians have a great fondness.
Thanks to a friend from VladMama, Anya and I both experienced our first "Yolka," the traditional children's New Year's party that takes its name from the holiday fir tree that is its centerpiece. Kids apparently tend to go to more than one of these, or probably as many as their family can afford, and at the very least a morning New Year's party (utrennik) with all the same trappings we experienced is de rigueur for those who attend preschool in Russia. Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the utrennik for an American is the fact that all kids wear costumes to the party (as our nanny Marina confirmed for me, if we were to go to the party in just regular clothes or even party clothes, people would definitely think we were weird parents). So, after I first fretted over how to make time to go and buy a costume, and what might be the least amount of money I could get away with spending on it, Marina came to the rescue and reminded me that the Jack-o-lantern costume she'd seen tucked away in the closet would make a fine costume, and had none of the associations with Halloween here that might have caused a few raised American eyebrows were we to wear it anytime outside of October in the US.
So we set out to the VladMama-sponsored party as a "tykovka," a little pumpkin, together with our friends Nina (fellow VladMamochka) and her daughter, Vika (who was dressed as a princess). It was really quite a morning, especially since the smaller of our pair (well, heck, and the larger of us, too) is not all that used to interacting with very many others at one time, especially not a crowd of excited, screaming kids, running around in all directions in anticipation of Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost, or the twentieth-century version of Santa Claus that is still very much a Russian cultural icon).
There are some videos of this on YouTube: two help you to imagine the jubilation that was on display even during the preparatory stages, prior even to Santa's warm-up act of a Rabbit and a Wolf with a very witty repartee, and probably a full half-hour before Moroz made his big appearance and had us hopping and touching our toes and guessing various things and dancing around the holiday tree. All with his usual sidekick, the beautiful young snow-bunny Snegurochka. The third video shows Anya off to the side, reveling in the miracle of the Velcro that was intended to hold her costume on, and ignoring the kids and moms dancing in a circle and awaiting the time of the party when Moroz would hand out the presents.
Imagine my surprise when it turned out that we had not really flown under the radar, but that "Tykovka" was actually one of a handful of guests at the party who were discussed and admired online on the VladMama forums. The general consensus was that Tykovka was a real cutie.
What other parts of Russian New Year's did we experience for the first time, with fresh eyes, or with a new twist? The work/professional New Year's party, now in its post-Soviet incarnation (we splurged for the VIBA [Vladivostok International Business Association] Christmas/New Year's party). We do not yet have photographic or video evidence, but Dan was an avid (if reluctant) participant in the silly reverie that is the adult version of the children's utrennik. (My armchair interpretation of why Russians are so extremely fond of New Year's is that not only do adults engage in some heavy nostalgia during this period, everyone gets to be a kid during the extended festivities -- and much more than we tend to in American Christmas or New Year's celebrations.)
[As you might have gleaned from this post, our closer look at post-Soviet New Year's has given me new interest in this as a cultural and historical phenomenon. If you're curious like me, here is one interesting (Russian) article I found exploring some of the roots of the familiar twentieth-century New Year's traditions that Russians continue to enjoy, and which themselves continue to evolve, today. And here is a blurb and photoessay tracing the New Year's Yolka from its 1936 reintroduction into Soviet life up to the (recent) present.]
We also -- again thanks to my friend Nina -- were able to see the latest cinema craze to hit Russia: a sequel to the very classic New Year's movie "The Irony of Fate (or, Happy Steaming!)" (that is obviously a rough translation: the parenthetical part of the title refers to the engine of all the mischief of the 1975 original, where vodka plus banya plus a trip to the airport plus the monotony of Soviet architecture and city planning equal mayhem on New Year's Eve). The annual viewing and the antics of the plot easily bring to mind a Soviet version of "It's a Wonderful Life." The 2007 version of the New Year's movie has a similar scenario of mistaken identity and mistaken location playing out among the adult children of the pair(s) who were central to the original movie. And in grand Russian capitalist style, it featured loads of annoying product placements. But it was fun -- so much so that I planned the following day, December 31, around the scheduled TV broadcast of the original.
Finally, what else? Well, probably that's it for New Year's and maybe I should leave it there, and promise to report on the more general outdoor winter sporting and recreational activities at a later date. You can see some scant pictures of this on our Flickr pages.
And now for an update in other categories...:
What We're Saying:
ah-choo!: "Aaah-TCHEEE!" (Cf. What We're Listening To)
water?!: "wa-wa" (so far almost exclusively, in the two days I've noticed it used, in reference to a cup or bottle of some liquid)
hi: "hai," "ha," and sometimes even an honest-to-goodness "hi"
Edgar (the cat): "Adda," "Agga"
Sanchez (the cat): "Didi," "Didji"
omelette: "omma" (Cf. What We're Eating)
Responses:
1. Question: What do ducks say?
Response: "Wock, wock!"
2. Word said: Bear (teddy or otherwise)
Response: [smile, close eyes, hold hands and arms to tummy] (= hug!)
3. Shape seen: "A" (Cf. What We're Eating: Anya cookies)
Response: "Aing!" (or even "Anya!")
Points to in response to the word:
Ears, eyes, mouth, teeth, nose.
Also much pointing to head and recent fascination with belly buttons (own and parents').
What We're Eating:
pan-seared duck breast with mushroom-red wine reduction sauce, with spinach salad
(fancy night! thanks to Dan)
omelettes
(Hot Feeding Tip from Anya Kronenfeld: If your toddler refuses to eat something, even something she ate with gusto just yesterday, or even this morning, just cut/mash/puree it and add it to scrambled egg and a little milk to make a pan-fried omelette. Fool's 'em every time!)
cassoulet
(mmm! but rich -- note to self: limit portion size next time)
Simple Things: non-instant oatmeal ("Gerkules" to Russians) with fruit (dried or fresh) and brown sugar almost every morning; chicken and rice/arroz con pollo with homegrown windowsill basil; roast vegetable and Molinari's pepperoni and salami pizza
"Anya cookies" (see below for recipe)
Recipe for Anya cookies (with apologies to Joy of Cooking):
Cream 1/2 c. white sugar with 1/2 c. unsalted President butter.
Beat in 1 tsp. vanilla from your belated honeymoon to Tahiti;
2 Ussuriisk eggs;
2 1/2 c. sifted all-purpose flour;
2 tsp. double-acting baking powder, Clabber Girl, brought from home;
1/2 tsp. salt.
Chill 3-4 hours (or 3-4 days) before rolling.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Roll on a lightly floured cutting board. The play rolling mat from your old toy baking set will do just fine.
Use your only cookie cutter (heart-shaped), or look for something in your shape-sorter toy (especially suitable is the "A" shape for "Anya) to use as substitute cutter.
Place cookies on greased cookie sheet. You may decorate them with sugar, or sugar and cinnamon. Makes several days' worth of extra-small not-too-sweet cookies that little girls named Anya love very much.
The Most Unlikely Toys From Around the House:
A ribbon
Your winter hat with the ear flaps
Measuring spoons and cups, preferably in a combination of plastic and metal
Tupperware
Bibs
What We're Listening To:
"Jim Gill sings the Sneezing Song and other Contagious Tunes" (especially good for laughs: The Sneezing Song; Cf. What We're Saying. also fun, esp. when mom pantomimes: Silly Dance Contest)
Sun Kil Moon, "Tiny Cities" (songs from Modest Mouse in a very different mood)
The interesting thing to me about a lot of these New Year's events is that, despite having spent a bunch of time in Russia before, I guess since that was without a kid and sometimes involved taking advantage of the holidays as a time to get away, I never got to see some of the things Russians associate very closely (and enthusiastically) with New Year's.
I should note that, thanks to the official atheism of Soviet times, Russian New Year's encompasses a lot of the kinds of celebration that Americans associate with both Christmas (and in fact also Thanksgiving, given that it comes so close to Christmas) and New Year's. You get the family-oriented time of Thanksgiving and Christmas, the gift-giving traditions of Christmas, and the dress-up, go-out-and-party ethos of New Year's all rolled into one holiday. And even though anyone who wants to is now free to celebrate Orthodox Christmas, it seems like this latter holiday is either more singularly a religious occasion, centered around the church and spiritual life, and/or an added chance for family-centered gift-exchanges, rather than supplanting the familiar New Year's traditions for which I can now fully see Russians have a great fondness.
Thanks to a friend from VladMama, Anya and I both experienced our first "Yolka," the traditional children's New Year's party that takes its name from the holiday fir tree that is its centerpiece. Kids apparently tend to go to more than one of these, or probably as many as their family can afford, and at the very least a morning New Year's party (utrennik) with all the same trappings we experienced is de rigueur for those who attend preschool in Russia. Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the utrennik for an American is the fact that all kids wear costumes to the party (as our nanny Marina confirmed for me, if we were to go to the party in just regular clothes or even party clothes, people would definitely think we were weird parents). So, after I first fretted over how to make time to go and buy a costume, and what might be the least amount of money I could get away with spending on it, Marina came to the rescue and reminded me that the Jack-o-lantern costume she'd seen tucked away in the closet would make a fine costume, and had none of the associations with Halloween here that might have caused a few raised American eyebrows were we to wear it anytime outside of October in the US.
So we set out to the VladMama-sponsored party as a "tykovka," a little pumpkin, together with our friends Nina (fellow VladMamochka) and her daughter, Vika (who was dressed as a princess). It was really quite a morning, especially since the smaller of our pair (well, heck, and the larger of us, too) is not all that used to interacting with very many others at one time, especially not a crowd of excited, screaming kids, running around in all directions in anticipation of Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost, or the twentieth-century version of Santa Claus that is still very much a Russian cultural icon).
There are some videos of this on YouTube: two help you to imagine the jubilation that was on display even during the preparatory stages, prior even to Santa's warm-up act of a Rabbit and a Wolf with a very witty repartee, and probably a full half-hour before Moroz made his big appearance and had us hopping and touching our toes and guessing various things and dancing around the holiday tree. All with his usual sidekick, the beautiful young snow-bunny Snegurochka. The third video shows Anya off to the side, reveling in the miracle of the Velcro that was intended to hold her costume on, and ignoring the kids and moms dancing in a circle and awaiting the time of the party when Moroz would hand out the presents.
Imagine my surprise when it turned out that we had not really flown under the radar, but that "Tykovka" was actually one of a handful of guests at the party who were discussed and admired online on the VladMama forums. The general consensus was that Tykovka was a real cutie.
What other parts of Russian New Year's did we experience for the first time, with fresh eyes, or with a new twist? The work/professional New Year's party, now in its post-Soviet incarnation (we splurged for the VIBA [Vladivostok International Business Association] Christmas/New Year's party). We do not yet have photographic or video evidence, but Dan was an avid (if reluctant) participant in the silly reverie that is the adult version of the children's utrennik. (My armchair interpretation of why Russians are so extremely fond of New Year's is that not only do adults engage in some heavy nostalgia during this period, everyone gets to be a kid during the extended festivities -- and much more than we tend to in American Christmas or New Year's celebrations.)
[As you might have gleaned from this post, our closer look at post-Soviet New Year's has given me new interest in this as a cultural and historical phenomenon. If you're curious like me, here is one interesting (Russian) article I found exploring some of the roots of the familiar twentieth-century New Year's traditions that Russians continue to enjoy, and which themselves continue to evolve, today. And here is a blurb and photoessay tracing the New Year's Yolka from its 1936 reintroduction into Soviet life up to the (recent) present.]
We also -- again thanks to my friend Nina -- were able to see the latest cinema craze to hit Russia: a sequel to the very classic New Year's movie "The Irony of Fate (or, Happy Steaming!)" (that is obviously a rough translation: the parenthetical part of the title refers to the engine of all the mischief of the 1975 original, where vodka plus banya plus a trip to the airport plus the monotony of Soviet architecture and city planning equal mayhem on New Year's Eve). The annual viewing and the antics of the plot easily bring to mind a Soviet version of "It's a Wonderful Life." The 2007 version of the New Year's movie has a similar scenario of mistaken identity and mistaken location playing out among the adult children of the pair(s) who were central to the original movie. And in grand Russian capitalist style, it featured loads of annoying product placements. But it was fun -- so much so that I planned the following day, December 31, around the scheduled TV broadcast of the original.
Finally, what else? Well, probably that's it for New Year's and maybe I should leave it there, and promise to report on the more general outdoor winter sporting and recreational activities at a later date. You can see some scant pictures of this on our Flickr pages.
And now for an update in other categories...:
What We're Saying:
ah-choo!: "Aaah-TCHEEE!" (Cf. What We're Listening To)
water?!: "wa-wa" (so far almost exclusively, in the two days I've noticed it used, in reference to a cup or bottle of some liquid)
hi: "hai," "ha," and sometimes even an honest-to-goodness "hi"
Edgar (the cat): "Adda," "Agga"
Sanchez (the cat): "Didi," "Didji"
omelette: "omma" (Cf. What We're Eating)
Responses:
1. Question: What do ducks say?
Response: "Wock, wock!"
2. Word said: Bear (teddy or otherwise)
Response: [smile, close eyes, hold hands and arms to tummy] (= hug!)
3. Shape seen: "A" (Cf. What We're Eating: Anya cookies)
Response: "Aing!" (or even "Anya!")
Points to in response to the word:
Ears, eyes, mouth, teeth, nose.
Also much pointing to head and recent fascination with belly buttons (own and parents').
What We're Eating:
pan-seared duck breast with mushroom-red wine reduction sauce, with spinach salad
(fancy night! thanks to Dan)
omelettes
(Hot Feeding Tip from Anya Kronenfeld: If your toddler refuses to eat something, even something she ate with gusto just yesterday, or even this morning, just cut/mash/puree it and add it to scrambled egg and a little milk to make a pan-fried omelette. Fool's 'em every time!)
cassoulet
(mmm! but rich -- note to self: limit portion size next time)
Simple Things: non-instant oatmeal ("Gerkules" to Russians) with fruit (dried or fresh) and brown sugar almost every morning; chicken and rice/arroz con pollo with homegrown windowsill basil; roast vegetable and Molinari's pepperoni and salami pizza
"Anya cookies" (see below for recipe)
Recipe for Anya cookies (with apologies to Joy of Cooking):
Cream 1/2 c. white sugar with 1/2 c. unsalted President butter.
Beat in 1 tsp. vanilla from your belated honeymoon to Tahiti;
2 Ussuriisk eggs;
2 1/2 c. sifted all-purpose flour;
2 tsp. double-acting baking powder, Clabber Girl, brought from home;
1/2 tsp. salt.
Chill 3-4 hours (or 3-4 days) before rolling.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Roll on a lightly floured cutting board. The play rolling mat from your old toy baking set will do just fine.
Use your only cookie cutter (heart-shaped), or look for something in your shape-sorter toy (especially suitable is the "A" shape for "Anya) to use as substitute cutter.
Place cookies on greased cookie sheet. You may decorate them with sugar, or sugar and cinnamon. Makes several days' worth of extra-small not-too-sweet cookies that little girls named Anya love very much.
The Most Unlikely Toys From Around the House:
A ribbon
Your winter hat with the ear flaps
Measuring spoons and cups, preferably in a combination of plastic and metal
Tupperware
Bibs
What We're Listening To:
"Jim Gill sings the Sneezing Song and other Contagious Tunes" (especially good for laughs: The Sneezing Song; Cf. What We're Saying. also fun, esp. when mom pantomimes: Silly Dance Contest)
Sun Kil Moon, "Tiny Cities" (songs from Modest Mouse in a very different mood)
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