The New Olympic Sport

It has been warming up in this artic clime. With the warmth comes melting snow. The melting snow allows for the perfection of a new Olympic sport in the track and field portion: extreme puddle jumping.  At first this started out as a slight skip and hop to avoid a small stream of water, now it has become calculated and timed leaps over streams and lakes of water. 

snow...

I am not kidding. Foot traffic slows down as each pedestrian scans the perimeter for the best way to get around these large bodies of water. Some people will knock down the bank of snow and walk through three feet of snow instead of tread through the water. Others (like me) skip and hop to the islands of ice, hoping that you don’t slide off into the water. I’ve even seen a few of the more sportier people take running leaps into the seven foot mountains of snow (some sink a good deal) and climb up this mountain and fall over onto a car to avoid these “puddles.”

Not only does a pedestrian or the vehicle have to watch out for the Baltic Great Lakes and flying humans, but also boulders of ice falling from the balconies and roofs.  The other day I tried to outrun an ice boulder while walking on black ice… it was quite cartoonish, but I made it!

Of course, it is the artic, so these huge ice rocks and mini lakes freeze at night…

Today the sun actually came out! I was so happy that I wandered a park for over an hour, using my puddle-jumping skills to avoid the shadows.   I managed to get some pictures of the space program memorial.

Before heading to the park though, I went on a coffee hunt. Finding no suitable and affordable coffee in the area, I gave up and headed to MyMy (pronounced moomoo), a cafeteria style place where I can point to the food and say “Eta” (that).  My awesome deduction and Russian skills failed to tell me that that MyMy was in the basement and that the restaurant I was heading for was actually an over-priced Central Asian restaurant. How I could miss the fact that the giant cow print-paint was heading down the stairs is beyond me.

But I felt adventurous from the sun and decided to attempt to order central Asian food. I honestly had no idea what I was going for—except that it wasn’t chicken. So I ordered a coffee and pointed to a soup and said “eta!” I successfully managed to order goat rib soup (literally a goat rib sticking out of a soup bowl).  It was quite tasty with giant chunks of goat, peppers, onions, and potatoes.

I then went from there, probably reeking of goat, to my client. From that client I went to my four year old client. I walked into his bedroom to find him covered from head to toe in bright blue dots. Upon further inspection (he hugged me), I noticed the dreaded chickenpox (my roommate has not had them, by the way). So now I am a carrier, go me!  I am also paranoid about shingles. But, having already been contaminated, I played with the blue leopard child any way.