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
Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
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).
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).
Saturday, April 07, 2007
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!
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!
Monday, March 05, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
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.
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