Long Overdue

Ugh -- I have been feeling terrible for the lengthy bout of "radio silence" here on the Vladiblog. And the longer it gets, the more I feel behind, the more stuff there is to report on, and it just snowballs and I feel like I'll never do it all justice. Clearly it would be better to just take the heat off of myself and dash off a few little updates, but that just doesn't appear to be my style, try as I might.

I'm not sure why it's been so hard for me to write any updates in the blog for so long. Partly it's that I've been really busy, which has mainly been a good thing.

I took two research trips in the months of June and July to the other major city in the Russian Far East (yes, there are others aside from ours), Khabarovsk. I've been a big fan of this city since my first visit there with Anya and Dan in fall 2007. It makes a nice escape from Vlad -- green; broad straight avenues to stroll on; clean, well cared for, etc. I went to collect some material in the archives for my history of tick-borne encephalitis in the RFE. My June journey was the first time away from Anya alone, and both of the trips were hard to take in the direct sense of having to leave her, and in having to arrange for Dan and Marina, her nanny, to pick up the slack on things that I normally do for her. But in the end, of course, she barely missed me, if at all (and as Dan's July post shows, they made a great dad-daughter connection without me here, which is really nice to see).

The trips were great from a research perspective. I gathered so much more material than I ever would have been able to in a comparable amount of time in Vlad, given the way the archives here work. And they also amounted to a really positive experience in allowing me to feel a professional confidence that I still find hard to fully grasp here at home, where I'm fulltime juggling being a mom, being the primary (if only by a hair) person responsible for keeping the domestic front running smoothly (which has its own difficulties in Russia), and being a historian. And from a personal point of view it was good to get away, have a little alone time strolling around the town, and enjoy Khabarovsk a couple of more times before we leave.

In general, I feel really good right now about my project -- I feel I've exhausted most of the avenues I was trying to research, gotten as much as I can in a place I'll likely not return to, and I've basically shifted completely to writing and getting two overlapping papers ready to present this fall.


Also, by way of explanations of what's been keeping me busy while I've ignored the blog: it's been summer, of course, so there's been much more opportunity to spend time outdoors (although that doesn't completely hold up as an excuse, since there have also been a number of the typhoons that regularly hit Vlad in summer, so we've been stuck inside on plenty of days while the blog has run dry). And then we took a quick trip to Beijing -- you know, we figured, why not hit it right at the height of the summer heat-humidity-pollution index, and just ahead of the Olympics? (Actually, although the weather was indeed amazingly energy-sapping, it was great. Have to sum it up in some other post, or maybe in the Flickr captions...)

And now here we are back in Vlad, for just 3 short weeks, as we try to wrap this puppy up: get our stuff given away, dumped in the trash, packed up & shipped off, or left on the stoop with some extra food for the next few months (OK, that last one is only likely for 2 of our possessions: the cats), with as few regrets as possible for the way we pursued and for the most part did not find happiness in this town. (I guess that's my way of expressing what else "partly" explains my silence, in addition to being busy: the anxiety level rises as we get closer to departure day, and that has to do not only with the logistics of moving but of course with all that is being left behind and left undone or unaccomplished or insufficiently enjoyed. While overall both Dan and I are glad to be moving on, that doesn't mean there aren't some things we're sorry to leave and people we're sorry we didn't spend more time with while we had the chance. And that bittersweet feeling, and the anxious ways that each of us tries to avoid it, don't make it easy to update the blog.)

As of August 22, it's back to the US for some time with family and friends, until early October, when we fly to Dushanbe. I'll try to practice brief update skills as we leave, but I can't make any promises. In the meantime, the ballot box is open for blog names/concise 'n' snappy URLs for the next incarnation of the Vladiblog...

Coming Home

We're back, once again, at home in Vlad, after our "Rest and Recreation" trip to the United States.

It's strange, since we've made this transition back plenty of times now, with all of our travels, but it's still jarring in a new way each time we return from a trip. This time weather probably plays some part: we traveled at perhaps the best time of year to Southern California and Arizona, and had what passes for great summer weather to us by now, with temps in the upper 70s and low to mid 80s the whole time, and mostly sunny. (We also had our grownups' getaway to the Bay Area, where it was a little chillier of course, cf. Mark Twain and all that "coldest winter" commentary; but that was more about other kinds of fulfillment than what the weather can give.)

There are certainly other things banging around in our heads that are making us nervous this time around on the return end -- our ever more closely impending permanent departure from Vlad is certainly one of them. (We will probably leave in July or so, but, without a firm plan, our approach to these last 3-4 months [ulp!] in Vlad and the logistical preparations for the move are just a bit more anxious.) But mainly we continue to try to re-establish routines and work enjoyable and satisfying things into our lives, as always.


Our Vehicle, Off Road
Unfortunately, just as it seemed we were close to obtaining that precarious balance again, we discovered a problem with our car. First the steering wheel was a tiny bit loose, and then we took it in to what apparently passes for a Nissan service center in Vlad, where Dan watched the "master" (Russian for mechanic) poke, pry and manhandle the steering wheel much more violently than he felt comfortable with, as he tried to get in there to disengage the airbag and see what was wrong. Their diagnosis was that we need a part that must be ordered from the US (since it's a US model car, not Japanese, which is the norm here), so we are in a bit of limbo.

In principle, the car can be driven, and Dan has talked to more than one American Nissan repair place (in which we have a bit more faith, although of course they haven't seen the car), where he's been told that it is unlikely to be unsafe to drive it rarely. But when your house is perched on an outcrop and you can either tumble down a steep and dusty path to one of the main bus arteries, or pick your way over a similarly dusty path up to the main road, without sidewalks, to catch a minivan taxi-bus into the center, and when you are used to driving around town both for work and for many errands, the prospect of having to use a combination of feet, public transportation, and taxis to accomplish your routine activities and keep the household running is daunting. (And unfortunately, since Nissan USA has trouble figuring time zones and area codes, a certain household in Riverside is also feeling some of our pain in the form of early morning phone calls....)

[I originally had a section here with some thoughts about food, but I wasn't happy with it -- I need to think some of this through better and then I'll put it back up in edited form.]

The Roundup:

What we're watching:
more "Arrested Development" on DVD
all the boring movies Lisa accidentally allowed to surface at the top of our Netflix queue (oops!), starting with "The Battle of Algiers" (yes, I know, we are philistines, but it all sounds well and good and edifying until you have just put your kid to bed and the last thing you want to watch is a subtitled movie from 1966 that will broaden your appreciation for what has happened in Iraq and perhaps much of the rest of the Middle East... You really want something to make you laugh.) (But, that said, we did like it.)

What we're listening to:
can't get enough of that crazy "Upper West Side Soweto" mix on Vampire Weekend's album (who let them describe their music that way??)
finally, the new Diggs album!
yet more Feist
the live In-Concert-at-MKhat stylings of Garik Sukachev

What we're saying, in the US and in Russia:
fingum = finger
hmumm = thumb
yabbi = rabbit
oyey = ears
sseepie = sleepy
izzi = Izzy, Judy and David's dog
Gnamma, Nimma = Grandma
Gha-pah = Grandpa
fann-ee = funny
ma-mom = gabonk, the splash-accompaniment sound made in the pool when you slap your cupped hand into the water
bop = (in addition to bread) "pop," the sound made when your Grandma undoes your buckle
bakk-l = aforementioned buckle (and when you want a big person to help you buckle it and unbuckle it ad infinitem, that's the word you want to repeat over and over and over again)
hman = fan, as in ceiling fans, of which there are many in the Old Pueblo, aka Tucson
tapp! = stopped!, as in, "The fan has been stopped!"
fokk = fork
hmun = spoon (excellent progress has been made on the utensil front)
ba-yell = bottle (not such great progress has been made on the bottle-weaning front)
yizza = lizard
fwow = flower, pronounced early and often in the lush spring landscape of the Southwest US
yakki = jacket
buud = bird
wokk = work
manum = building (these last 2 said often, together with noi [=noise] and man, to describe what's happening at the handful of construction sites visible from our outdoor play and strolling area)
syo = vsyo, Russian for "that's all" or "I'm done"
kudtka = kurtka, Russian for jacket

And I should add that many of these words are now employed in combinations that appear to be proto-sentences. Such as: "Tay-tay sseepie. Sseeps." (?? Why, "Sanchez is sleepy. He's sleeping," of course.) Or: "Man. Noi. Manum. Wokk." ("Those men are making noise and working on the building.") Very exciting developments!

Thaw

These past few weeks, and especially after we returned from South Africa, we seem to have broken that winter inertia and have begun to get out a lot more with friends and colleagues. And I seem to have fallen into a routine of sorts that involves finally trying a lot more activities in town and more interaction with people than I'd previously engaged in. Well, it feels like a pattern was beginning to emerge, and then I finally left my job at the Consulate to return to my research, and of course I'm going through the inevitable period of adjustment to that, figuring out how to approach work and actually accomplish something, and concentrate well enough during work (or really nanny) hours to really get done what I want to do. But, between preschool classes, playdates, yoga, the theater, poker, and exploring Peter the Great Bay, we've seen a boom in social and exploratory activity in past month or so that's been a great change.

Pink Elephants
I'm not really sure what "Pink Elephant" means to Russians, but I've been told it has various meanings that aren't really appropriate to the toddler set in English. Be that as it may, we are still big fans of the "Pink Elephant Montessori Early Development Children's Center."

We go Thursday mornings to the Pink Elephant, 10:30-12. Essentially that means an outing from 10-12:30, what with getting dressed to go outside into the cold (which this week has thankfully started to end), driving down to the place (although it is relatively close, and just a short distance from the Consulate in fact), getting undressed once we've arrived, etc., etc. But it's worth it. I really enjoy getting out, having a change of scenery, seeing (if not really interacting to any significant degree) the other parents, and getting even more varied Russian language practice. And I think Anya too enjoys it -- seeing and interacting a bit with other kids, which seems so important right now at her age, and also the change of physical scene and the variety of toys and kinds of activities that it introduces for us.

The place is in a converted apartment, on the first floor of a typical older (1930s construction? I'm really not sure) Russian apartment building. The place itself is nice, even if you are greeted with the stink of the common areas when you enter the stairwell/entryway (some things in Russia never change). If we get there in time, all those who're attending that session sit together in a circle to introduce themselves and greet one another, and then it's just off to the races, following what I understand is typical to the Montessori method, letting the kids themselves choose what to do and providing guidance once they've chosen. We gather again just at noon, when the teacher tells a little story with figures, which inevitably has some kind of moral lesson (the time there was an obnoxious, bratty boy, whose behavior actually was really surprsing, given how good most of the children are, she told a story about a boy who always was mean to people and animals and got his comeuppance when he offended a hedgehod and learned his lesson that he should be nicer to everyone). And we all say goodbye in a similar way and then begins the process of getting dressed again, with all of those layers and hats and scarves and boots, etc., etc.

The place has four rooms: the main one has all sorts of developmental toys, from puzzles, books, play tables with sand and beans to rake through and pour; there is the "wet zone" with play tables and basins for playing with water; there is the "blowing off steam room" with more playground-type equipment, for physical play; and then there's more of a creative activity room, where I think you can draw or paint -- we haven't really gone in there much yet.
For some reason we seem to start out at the plastic and wooden fruit, often do some work with the sand/bean stations, trying not to make that much of a mess to clean, spend some time in the "blow off steam" room, and sometimes get preoccupied with the shiny marbles and colorful, flat stones in one of the rooms. This last Thursday was our first real foray into the water room, where we got wet enough to resort to our change of clothes before leaving. The sponge, and all of its properties of gathering and releasing water, made a real hit.

The Pink Elephant has been so inspiring, I have us set to try out a second local preschool on Friday.

The After-CLO
I'm getting out more myself, too. Something about the process of thinking through what we should do next, together with the fact that there is now an increasingly close end-date of our life in Vlad, has me fighting inertia more and getting out and doing things.

I've now been twice to the Sarasvati Yoga Center -- apparently the only one (only dedicated center -- in its own freestanding structure, no less! -- devoted to yoga and only to yoga) in Vlad, although yoga classes are given in various settings around town. This place is actually for me a fascinating mix of The Familiar and The Alien. In some ways it is so very much like the (very few) yoga places I've experienced outside Russia, in the level of informality, the serious dedication to yoga, yet the mix of sports-minded and more consciousness/Eastern-spiritual perspective on yoga. But the funny thing to me is the way the women (so far all the clientele I've seen are women) are just so very Russian in the end. For starters, they all wear makeup. And I guess, for whatever reason, Russians can't imagine going out in town wearing exercise clothes -- it isn't really something I ever thought about, but now that I do, I realize you really don't ever see anyone dressed in obvious exercise clothes outside. So, for yoga, everyone wears their street clothes and changes there. I guess that is part of the reason that all of them also wear surprisingly nice undies and bras, too -- as usual, in Russia, although this time in a new and different way, I feel soooo very un-zhenskii. And finally (I've only been there twice so far; I'm sure I'll come up with more as time goes by), instructor and students alike had no problem sitting down together right after class last Saturday with a big chocolate cake, tea, and champagne to celebrate March 8, International Women's Day, together. This was very nice for me, since they were so welcoming to a newcomer, insisting that I take off my already-donned coat and scarf and join them, yet also for me so curious, since I can't imagine anyone at my old yoga center in DC doing anything of the sort.

The yoga taught there is primarily Iyengar, which is different from the Ashtanga I've done, but still very enjoyable. It's great to get out and see other people, to participate in a class. Iyengar, at least in the way they're teaching it at this place, involves much less intense movement with breath (the "flow" of the style with that name, which I understand is like Ashtanga), and much more attention to individual poses and one's stance and the placement of nearly every single muscle and body part, and how they should be tensed or relaxed or stretched or pointed within a pose. It feels like a good slow, concentrated effort, and it complements nicely any of the more athletic Ashtanga I'm able to fit in at home over the week (which inevitably is unfortunately rushed and/or abbreviated, and done with the aid of either my own memory or an audio recording only, so my attention to each pose is inevitably rushed and more superficial). And, yet again, just like the preschools, this is proving a great way to practice and broaden my Russian: I come home each time and have a handful of anatomical words to look up and/or confirm that understood correctly in class, such as coccyx, shoulder blades, kneecaps, groin, and spinal column.

Exploring More Primorye
We took a ferry ride with friends across the Peter the Great Bay this weekend, for an overnight stay in Slavyanka, and had a surprisingly good time just seeing a new place, hanging out, and enjoying spending time with a fun, well-behaved Anya. In fact, it went so well that we're reminded of how, especially now that spring is really sproinging, we need to get out and explore more, whether on day trips or again staying the night on the road.

It's hard to describe what was good about this trip: it isn't as though Slavyanka has much to offer, really. Our New Zealander friend, a longtime resident of Vlad, suggested that taking the ferry across the bay while the ice was still present was an experience not to be missed, so we agreed to travel as walk-ons on the Saturday evening ferry from Vlad and return on the Sunday afternoon ferry (the only options on offer), for a trip that has us gone from home a little less than 24 hours in all.

It went appropriately not-as-expected in several ways. Anya was great, and our apprehension about travel with her was allayed. After the trouble with sleep in South Africa, we were wary of what might happen in a strange hotel room. And even despite this (and the hotel's lack of a crib), we decided to travel light and not bring our portable crib. But the kid did great, going right to sleep on the bedspread bordered by pillows that Dan set up for her next to our bed when we laid her down at 10, and waking up only at about 7:30.

The hotel (the "best in the town" according to our taxi driver) was pretty good, all things considered, but since we chose to travel on International Women's Day, the cafe downstairs was fully booked and rocking out when we checked in at about 9:30. But we were able to order food (from some skeptical waitresses) up to the hallway outside our rooms on the third floor, where the 5 adults in our group sat around a low table and enjoyed surprisingly good salads and starters, pork chops smothered in cheese and mayonnaise (hey, we've lived here a year and a half -- some things you just get used to) and scallops. On Sunday morning, three (and a half) of us set out to explore the town on foot, and finally found the closest thing possible to the joke fantasia that was spun out the night before about a now settled itinerant Frenchman, an espresso machine and some expertly made pastries. There was no Pierre in sight, but the Buffet "Tranzit" was nothing like what the name may call to mind. It was clean and sunny, with an unexplained American-themed decor, complete with cheesy Route 66 pictures and a photo poster of a double-decker sightseeing Big Apple tour bus on the streets of New York. The pastries were actually quite good (OK, not French, but surprisingly good), and there was even real brewed coffee, even if we were charged a dollar for about 2 ounces of it.

And when we met up with our New Zealand-Russian pair and their 2 kids, we made a post-breakfast tour of Slavyanka and surroundings, care of our previous night's taxi driver's colleague with a minivan. His vehicle did yeoman's service on a couple of muddy inclines and a dusty climb to the top of the local hill, during which our Kiwi friend recited some kind of antipodean mantra to ward off the possibility that our vehicle might roll sideways. The pictures (which really do give the sense of what a non-destination Slavyanka was -- it really was about getting out, exploring, and enjoying each other's company and the beautiful weather, complete with temperatures above 10 degrees C) are on Flickr, as usual.

And in other news...
Things We Learned In South Africa and Haven't Unlearned
A call and response number that goes like this:
Anya: "Tapp!" ("Chop!" from the Nigerian hip-hop song whose refrains asks...)
Mom or Dad: "Whatch'ou wann chop?!"
Anya: "Pah-tah!" ("Small stout!," an adaptation of the response in the song, a baby voice that says "I wann' drink small stout!")

Well, you probably had to be there, or at least have to listen to the song yourself to understand the humor...

What we're listening to:
the new Bettie Serveert, Bare Stripped Naked
more Feist
The Pretenders greatest hits (especially my favorites, Kid and Talk of the Town)
Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

What we're saying:
O-key!
U'-oh! and Uups!
Hah-reh! = hooray!
tikka = kitty-cat (also kissa = kittycat in Russian) Both variants followed by squeals and giggles of delight, and, if the cats are unlucky, various attempts to pet or scare them.
shi' = shirt
patt = pants
tait-ss = tights
boo-tay, boo-day = for some unexplained reason, mittens
pato = sweater
bah-koo = buckle
sjak, hyak = sock
yek = light
dahk = dark
bikk/bekk = 1. milk, 2. book
Tatti = Charlie (son of a friend, whose photo sits by the highchair and therefore is very familiar now)
Maya = Mara (family photos also sit nearby)
da-dya = all men who are not daddy, including Grandpas and Great-Grandpas ("Dyadya" does have that meaning in Russian, when it doesn't mean "uncle.")
Ghamma = grandma
Nongo = Noriko, our neighbor
Ngimmi = Jimmy, Noriko's son
yammi/nammi = yummy
yakki = yucky
gabig, kabig = garbage
doo-dats = dirty
koht = cold (Cf. aisseee)
haht = hot
kavvi = coffee (and sometimes cough)
oon = orange
tu-tu-tu = Cheerio
deppi = dipping sauce
hman = pen
hmoon = spoon
man-key/bah-kki = monkey
boii = boy
rou = loud
kah, kau = car (tends to rhyme with "rou")

1910-2008

(click on the photo to see a video of Anya meeting Great-Grandpa in March 2007)

Earlier photos of a long, full life

We miss you, Grandpa

From the Southern Hemisphere

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

Let the Vladiblogstokking begin!

Well, we have arrived in Vladivostok. Let the Vladiblogstokking begin! There is a lot to tell, having just arrived -- where do I start? I guess I’ll tell a little about how we got here…

Our travel here, from its start in DC and continuing through Seoul and onward to our new home, was surprisingly easy with little Anya, at least in the air. She did great on both of our flights: the fourteen-and-a-half-hour leg from Dulles to Seoul, and the two-and-a-half-hour one into Vlad. She slept for about four hours at a stretch on the long flight, and only had one minor crying jag. And on the short flight she was conveniently hungry right as we took off and nursed again as we landed, so that on both flights we successfully used this nursing strategy as a way to keep her calm and unaffected by the change in air pressure.

But on the ground she has really been thrown for a loop and, in turn, is throwing us for one. Already in DC, at the hotel where we spent the eight nights after we moved out of our house, she had begun to lose the good nighttime sleep habits she’d formed over her first seven weeks of life at home in Bethesda. And I think, between the extreme time change and all the new places and spaces and smells that she must sense, her little baby biorhythms really have been thrown out of whack. After the ease of flight # 1, once we were in Seoul, our overnight in the windowless little cube of a room at the transit hotel at Incheon Airport was pretty rough, with Anya waking up about every two hours and super-cranky. It didn’t help, of course, that we too were exhausted and jetlagged. We made it from about 8pm to 7am, and then we took refuge in the business class lounge, had some brekkies, a couple of cappucinos, and enjoyed the quiet and some welcome sleep from Anya.

Ahhh, business class. Dan has enjoyed this pleasure a few times in recent years, on trips over fourteen hours, when the State Department allows employees to fly that way. Once on a trip to Russia with my job at Health and Human Services, in 2004, I also received an upgrade to business, but Delta and other US airlines of course in this respect as in many others do not compare to international companies. Korean Air’s newer planes, like the one we flew here on, have those great fully reclining seats that I’d heard Dan and others rave about from British Airways, and they really do make a difference. After some difficulty with our seat assignments in the beginning (the KAL desk attendant who checked us in at Dulles for some reason switched our originally assigned seats, which were all together, to another set that, despite his assurances, had us separated), we had a full row of three to ourselves, with Anya set up in her carseat in the center and mom and dad on either side. In particular now, in retrospect, I’m glad we had the comfort of that flight before the difficult days and nights that followed.