Finishing Off April

Again, a month has passed without an update. This time, a lot has happened in a month! So I will post a series of blogs to catch you up on what’s been going on.  Here it begins with the last month of April:

My roommate accepted his dream job as an animator/entertainer in Cyprus, so he had to leave Moscow on the 27^th. We spent the last weekend wandering around the forest near our apartment. The forest was quite enjoyable as spring was starting to show, but many of the paths were still blocked by large piles of snow or sticky, sinky mud.

The week after my roommate left was quite relaxing. I didn’t have any lessons, so I met up with my adult student for lunch and to say goodbye(she was going to her summer home). The rest of the week I sat around doing nothing, not even packing.

May First was a holiday in Russia, celebrating Communism. Everything was shut down, so Kieran, Katy, and I wandered around a bit of Moscow. We enjoyed the sun and the heat as we walked past 18^th century to20th century architectures nestled together in various states of upkeep. After stopping and enjoying a beer at a Kozel brewery, we took the train a couple of hours north to a town called Sergiev Posad. It is a town built around a monastery. Unfortunately, half the monastery was under construction, but it was still a beautiful place to visit.

The day was so sunny and beautiful I didn’t spend much time wandering around the dark caverns of the churches. In fact, shortly after we reached the Lavre, all the masses started. The chants and bells rang through the entire monastery, so I sat on a bench in the sun next to newly bloomed snowdrops and enjoyed spring to the fullest.

On the way back from Sergiev Posad, I enjoyed watching birch forests fly past and quaint little towns with quaint little names like “43 Kilometer” (which is 43 kilometers from Moscow).  All of the towns were burning their garbage, giving a ghostly mist to the towns glowing in the twilight.

Katy, Kieran, and Jack gave me a great send off the night before I left for Israel. At first it had me questioning why I was leaving Moscow so soon but by the end of the night when the drama escalated, I remembered why I was so anxious to leave. There were no regrets when I boarded the plane, except maybe, being able to see the birch forests with leaves.  

Spring is here!

Now to recall all that has happened since April 7^th… umm… I managed to slide down an entire flight of marble stairs. My bottom is still bruised… probably drinking entirely too much lately… I’ve lost so much weight, my clothes no longer fit (yey!)… if I keep drinking, I’ll gain it back…had the first taste of peanut butter since leaving America, it was a strange experience. I had forgotten how to eat it…umm… I know!

Last weekend was the first really nice weekend we’ve had. Most of the snow seemed to melt overnight. Oliver and I headed to a park near Kievskaya and sat on a bench in the sun. We stayed all day, people watching and petting dogs.

The next day I literally rolled out of bed and half crawled, half stumbled to Metro Ploshchad Revolyusii and met my co-worker, Sasha. We both looked a state as we croaked and tried to stay steady as the escalator slowly crawled to the surface. We stopped to take pictures in front of the bright pink church and stumbled towards a noodle bar for a hangover cure. Unfortunately, it was closed. So we went down the street to Subway and ordered breakfast sandwiches and the hair of the dog. Then we shuffled to the dining room filled with people who looked worse than we did. At least Sasha and I had managed to shower and put on fresh clothes, these people were still in their tattered clubbing clothes.

Not too bad for such a hangover!

Sandwiches are not my hangover food, so Sasha ate my food while I nursed the beer. We then stumbled out of the shop and started towards Red Square, but we were too busy dwelling on our upset tummies and aching heads and took a wrong turn (in fact, we shouldn't have taken a turn at all). So we arrived at the Kremlin a bit later than expected.

By that time we were feeling a bit more human and Sasha managed to get our tickets for 80% off. Thank goodness for sneaky Russian speakers. However, he failed a bit when the ticket man asked where our child was and he said “oh he’s with grandma, you know how ten year olds throw temper tantrums.” But he let us pass any way.  I spent the walk up to the Kremlin musing how old I must look and what a spoiled child I have.

We hopped around taking pictures of all the cannons and got shooed away by some nice men with guns. For some reason we weren't allowed to see everything the map told us we could see and we were restricted to the churches only. Thank goodness we didn't pay the $25 to get in, it was defiantly only worth the $5 we spent.

My favorite church inside the Kremlin (and the first one we went into)

The churches were very nice, very beautiful, but you lose your excitement after the fourth church. They are all Byzantine style, with beautiful murals everywhere. Most of the churches were built in the 14^th and 15^th centuries and many of the paintings and relics from Ivan the Terrible had survived.

Finally our stomachs roused us to find food and we attempted the noodle place again. It was open! It is a little dive literally situated on a staircase. You order your food at the bottom of the stairs and walk up to find a table on one of the landings or a beanbag chair on a stair. We had the place to ourselves to enjoy our delicious soba noodles and more beer (the first one didn’t really cure us well). Unfortunately, soba isn’t my hangover food either. So, we rushed out into the “fresh” air and walked around the center.

We spotted the Soviet Diner, and I was quite curious what a Soviet diner looked like, so we popped in. It is remarkably like an American diner; only the long tables that filled the place only had one chair each.  It wasn’t Soviet sparseness, but the fact that they had just opened and hadn’t received all of the chairs yet.  Classic Russian movie stars and newspapers lined the walls. The menu was entirely Russian, with some burger options. I ordered an apple pie and a cream soda. The pie was really a strange pastry that reminded me of sweet pizza dough, filled with a couple of apple chunks.  Sasha ordered Navy Macaroni (think goulash with spaghetti noodles). It was ok. Russian food really has no flavor.

After the diner, I finally felt normal. So we walked along the Moskva River. About an hour after eating at the Soviet Diner, we stopped for food again, this time ordering some sushi. It was the best sushi I’ve had in Moscow. Thank goodness it was, because when the bill came, we nearly had a heart attack. Those helpful waiters decided to double our order since we were sharing (I was thinking it looked big), so we didn’t save any money by sharing food. Never trust a place in Moscow with an English menu!

We wallowed in our loss of money and finished our journey at Gorkey Park. It looks much better when it isn’t flooding, and I hear it looks even more beautiful when the grass actually grows out of the mud.

The week went by with nothing too exciting happening. The normal crap. Friday finally rolled around and we were meant to have a going away party for Sasha. However, his cousin rolled into town and started him on a traditional Russian binge and Sasha couldn’t even say his own name, let alone make it to Mintino for the party. Everyone managed to get over their hangovers enough to meet at Kolomenskoye Park on Saturday. We sat next to the river until food roused us (seems like food is the only thing that gets us moving on sunny days). Then we found a shashlik place and devoured quite a bit of meat and beer. I think Sasha had a great send-off (he probably didn’t think so on the way to the airport this morning).

 

Church at Kolmenskoye Park

Moscow Spring (worse than Seoul Spring could ever be)

Moscow Spring is a teenage girl! Three days fairly decent weather, and then many days of snow and freaking cold! Yesterday was beautiful! It was cold, but the sun was shining. Today, grey, snowing, windy, and freezing! I’m not so white any more, but wind burned pink.

So the week in review:
I had to eat in front of the students at the kindergarten. Monkey see, monkey do. The children ate whatever I ate. So when the cook put a large plate of boiled liver, mashed potatoes, and beets in front of me, everyone cringed. We all ate the beets and the mashed potatoes first. There was no way I was touching that liver. That is, until the teacher scolded me because none of the students were eating their liver either. So, down the hatch went the liver. I thought for sure I was going to lose my lunch on the way to the metro. 

I had some time to kill, and an upset stomach, so I stopped at Metro Arbatskaya. I had no idea what was there and just decided to see. I got out of the metro and followed the mass of people down the street, across some ice, and onto an amazingly beautiful Neo-Classical cobbled street. There were tourist shops, coffee shops, restaurants, and a torture museum housed in the mint green, candy pink, and light blue buildings. 

Despite the freezing cold temperatures, artists were on the car-less street selling amazing works of art and book sellers had heaps of used books for sale. I grabbed a coffee and wandered up and down the street enjoying the atmosphere, and truthfully spent way too much time petting and admiring the really old books.

Wednesday, a coworker I never see called me out of the blue and said “You need a visa run and I want to go to Kiev, let’s go!” so we met up and bought our train tickets to Kiev. I am really excited for this trip because this guy lived in Kiev for two years and knows it inside and out. 

After buying tickets, I hurried up to my ten-year old student. I waited until the end of the lesson to give him his birthday present of Pringles and Mars Bars. He was so excited that he ran out to tell his dad. His dad ran in with tears in his eyes, spouting a German/Russian mix and kissed me on the lips. He was so grateful that I had remembered his son’s birthday. 

Thursday I had a nightmare lesson with my kindergarten class. I remembered why I don’t like teaching the little ones. After my client at Gorky 2, the driver took me to the bus stop to catch the marshrutka . Thankfully he stuck around to make sure I got on the bus, because just as we got there, traffic stopped for forty five minutes while we waited for the president to go by. Despite having to wait to put me on the bus, the driver was quite cheerful (showing his silver teeth) and we attempted to chat about various things and rocked out to ABBA. He then put me on the marshrutka and waved to me as the bus went by.


After the drama class on Friday, I met my co-workers at a Chinese restaurant to celebrate my manager’s birthday. We wound up staying quite late and headed back to my manger’s apartment to continue the festivities. After one co-worker started to cry and another co-worker went insane, I made the executive decision it was time to go home. We took a cab back to our apartment. However, the driver got lost and I had to help guide him via metro stops. I am lucky to have a sense of direction in this city. 

Today we got up and headed to the WWII Museum. It was interesting to see yet another perspective. The first thing you see when you walk out of the metro is the Victory Arch to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon. Then you see a large empty square. At the top of the square is the Victory Monument for WWII, the eternal flame (a great place to get wedding photos, apparently), and the museum. 

Once you get into the actual museum there a long hall of weighty tomes. These books contain the names of all the USSR soldiers who died in the four years they were in the war. At the end of the hall is a large statue of a woman holding the body of a dead man. This is lit up by bronze chains with crystal tear drops-each drop represents a life lost. There are millions (estimated totally death from WWII for all of Soviet Union is between 26-27 million).

The dioramas of various battles and sieges were amazing and heart wrenching—especially the siege of Leningrad which lasted 900 days. Of course those years had really long, cold winters (-30 degrees C) and people were reduced to eating frozen dirt to stay alive—among other things.

On the second floor is the Hall of Victory. Here you begin to cheer up a bit, until you go around the bend and see the Holocaust exhibit. My mood did not cheer as I visited the art gallery. Here you see paintings of ghosts and sad corpse-like people from the war era at the opposite wing of the victorious portraits of leaders and generals. But at the end of all of this is a large painting depicting The Idiot bound and chained and Don Quixote being held by a masked crowd and forced to look on as young men burn books in a mass bonfire. Malraux would have been intrigued.

Heat Wave

Bye bye winter...

 Attended Maslenitsa yesterday. It was a beautiful 2 degrees C, so I brought out my spring coat. The warm temperature and the slight bit of rain we had melted half of the snow bank instantly.  Puddle jumping was no longer an option, you just had to take a breath and jump in. By the time I reached the metro, my feet were soaked. Luckily they had a chance to warm and dry before jumping yet again, into the stream that once was the sidewalk. It was hard to enjoy the festival at Gorky Park with soaking wet shoes and dropping temperatures.

However, it was fun to carry orange balloons around pointing to all the people wearing fox heads. Also, many Russians do celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but it appears to be some sort of green themed Ren Fair. So many kilts and medieval gowns, plus elven ears and capes. Lots of tiny, tiny, tiny green top hats.

I ate some blini and drank some traditional honey beer, tasted a little like mead. We then wandered around the various games, stilts walkers, donkeys and ponies. We watched as a traditional Russian music group played Rammstein, but the only words they knew was “Du Hast.” So I really do not know what exactly I have.  But you can get a feel for what it sounded like here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECfmyddwto8

We wandered above the most best ice rink I have ever seen. Too bad it was closed. They had turned the park pathways into an ice rink, so certain coffee shops and restaurants could only be accessed from the ice rink. You could just skate down the avenue. I wanted to go skating.

I eventually got too frozen to enjoy festivities anymore, so we waded our way past a giant Lenin statue to a Mexican restaurant. The food was pretty expensive. Chicken posole was $15 for a bowl of chicken and cabbage in tomato broth. But I was cold and hungry, so I ordered vegetarian nachos (cheapest, most Carmen-friendly thing on the menu), but they were out of vegetarian nachos. So I ordered and split beef nachos with Oliver. I really do not understand what they were out of. There were chips, cheese, beef, onions, corn, tomatoes, lettuce, beans, and jalapenos (yes, I know I am going to die after eating it).  So why they couldn’t make a veggy nacho? I have no idea. I then washed it down with a $10 beer that tasted like celery. I will stick to making my own Mexican food at home, thank you (however I only seem to make Indian or bibimbap these days).

Moscow Spring

I then went home. My feet had just begun to dry out when I exited the metro to find all the paths to my apartment flooded with ankle-deep ice water. I had no choice but to wade my way home. I was really happy to ring my socks out and warm my feet in a hot water bath.

Today it is snowing, again. I am running low on food, but do not want to go to the store. Wonder how long I can make two pieces of cheese, two eggs, a banana, and two boxes of chocolates last? 

Happy Maslenitsa!

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Well, Spring is still trying to fight her way through the snow. It seems that Winter isn’t quite ready to back down.  We had maybe three cold, but wonderfully sunny days and now, four days of thick, wet snow.  My snow boots have been walked in so much that the seams are wearing down—now my feet get damp. Thank goodness, they are able to mostly dry out while I’m teaching. Nannies are once again helping me take off my layers and put on my layers—making sure my scarf is tied just right and my hood is on. I really do appreciate it, especially when they greet me at the door with a cup of tea and some biscuits.

Thursday was a particularly snowy day. I was feeling ill and had to get up early to teach at a kindergarten. I stumbled through the snow to the metro. A bear was coming up the metro stairs—scared the bejesus out of me—not to mention, I was really confused as to why a bear was walking up stairs on two legs. Turns out it was just a very tall, large woman in a fur coat with a fur hood—damn those long-haired fur hoods! They are better than the double tailed coon-skin caps that some men like to wear here.

I was really disappointed when I found out I had to teach kindergarten, but I will admit, it is kind of fun. This kindergarten is not like the others I have seen in Moscow. This one is less institutional. I love walking through the mural forest halls to the clearing (intersection of two halls) where the dwarves’ house is and up the stairs to the fairy tale tree with the mermaid tree topper. Also, these kindergartens have awesome play houses—like the kind you see in Russian illustrations. Any way, we had lots of fun singing and dancing and learning about animals and I got a group hug afterwards.

After the school fed me some delicious blini (crepes), I put on my layers and dodged children on skis. The snow was coming down harder. I made it back to the metro, past the woman beggar who had been sitting out in the snow for these two hours and past the beautiful soaking, wet Burnese Mountain Dog who had smartly gone into the metro to get out of the snow. This got me thinking about the fact that humans will allow a dog to block half of the metro entrance but are annoyed when a fellow human takes up half that space. And I am just as bad, because while I felt sorry for the woman, I actually stopped and wanted to help the dog.

After kindergarten I headed out to Gorki-2, a wealthy suburb of Moscow. Just as I got off the bus, traffic halted. The president was heading somewhere and traffic was stopped. After that, the traffic was so jammed that it crawled. I was waiting outside for 45 minutes in the snow, waiting for the driver to be able to come pick me up. We then took some country roads, but unfortunately, so did everyone else, and we were waiting for another 45 minutes. When I arrived to the client’s home the nanny brought me directly into the kitchen for some soup and tea. Both the Pomeranian and the Maine Coon Cat (google it) scolded me for not telling them hello first. I need to get a picture of them together—the cat is twice the size of the Pom.

Last night headed out for a few games of pool. Nice to get out to a bar for a change and even more luxurious to take a cab home! Now I am waiting for people to wake up so we can go to a park, freeze our butts off, and eat blini for the big crepe and butter festival called Maslenitsa! I will freeze for blini. Of course, I could just make it, but I’m working very hard to break this strange view of women my male coworkers seem to have.

This brings me to last week and International Women’s Day. It is a huge deal in Russia. For three days men and women were walking around with huge plants and flower arrangements and giant boxes of chocolates. I was one of those women! My students gave me chocolates, flowers, chocolates, champagne, chocolates, cake, chocolates, mascara, and did I mention, chocolate. Anyway, long story short, I found out how some of coworkers feel about women (these men are all raised in Canada and America). It wasn’t very nice what they had to say, so I won’t repeat it. But they were completely shocked when I said I don’t like masses of children who aren’t potty trained—apparently, as a woman I am genetically programed to desire and love cleaning up after masses of poopy children. Also, as a woman I am genetically programmed to want to get married and spawn masses of poopy children. And apparently, as a woman, I am genetically programmed to desire each one of my co-workers as a potential mate. Basically they told me I fail as a woman--all I can say is if that is what being a woman is, THANK GOD I fail!

Oh, on my wanderings I discovered a really run-down, but cool building (really only cool because I haven't seen many like it in Moscow). I didn't have my camera, so I didn't take a picture, but I typed in the address and apparently, it is by a kind of famous Russian architect/engineer (designed mainly prisons and hospitals). 

Mock Spring

Those of you who are from winter country can understand the frustrations of mock spring. Mock spring is that evil time in winter where the sun shines all day, the days begin to warm, the snow begins to melt, the birds magically appear, and the trees start budding. Everyone is happy and brings out their spring coats and shoes. And four days later, there is a fresh blanket of snow, the wind is biting, the sun disappears, and you are freezing. This is what I am experiencing in Moscow.  We had nearly a week of nice, warm, sunny weather and then, bam, blizzards and black ice again. Depression ensues.

I lived that sunny week to the fullest. Any free time I sat, bundled up on a park bench (thirty degrees never felt so warm). I had been reading Oliver Twist and had to fight many personal battles to pull myself away from sun and book to teach. I also visited a few parks, wandering around in aspen groves dodging one horse open sleighs. A few of us even wandered through a street market, reminding me of living in Asia. Only the Russians will literally chase you through the market trying to get you to buy something.

My teaching schedule has changed, yet again. I no longer have the clients across the city at nine in the morning. They didn’t like me because I didn’t speak enough Russian. I danced for joy. Instead I got two more clients closer to home. The only downside of this is that I am walking under overpasses and bridges at nine o’clock at night with very little lighting—and in this weather, not many sane people are out that late under bridges.

I finally, finally, finally, got up the energy to go out on the town on a Friday night. But of course, no one else had the energy. So after wandering under bridges like a troll, I traveled an hour back across the city to a co-worker’s house. By the time I arrived my co-workers were all pretty far gone. It was attempting to blizzard and they had given me the wrong directions to the apartment (in their defense, I also came out at the wrong part of the metro). Luckily, my roommate found me. He had been on his way to the metro to pick me up and had gotten lost too. Somehow we found our way back to the apartment, but not before getting in a random snowball fight with our crazy Ukrainian co-worker. There were civilian casualties and we had to outrun an angry man… I blame the intoxicated members of our group, because I have an amazing arm and would never through a wild ball (ahem cough cough).

Last night my roommate and I headed towards the center again, for a sushi night, slash Carmen-thinks- she-needs-MORE-jewelry shopping. Of course I brought impractical jewelry instead one of those necklaces with a blue eye to ward off the evil eyes that old ladies keep sending me when I am so engrossed in my book that I don’t notice them wanting my seat on the metro.

The Exploration Continues

Back to the Red Square

This last week I had two more clients added to my schedule, so now I must get up at 6:30 AM on Wednesdays and Fridays to make it across the city to the clients by 9:00 AM. I was pretty upset about this at first because on Tuesdays I don’t even get home until 10 PM and my roommates have Fridays off so Thursday nights are stay home and drink night. But once I discovered that my client lives three apartment blocks down from me and has to make that commute every day and work until 7 PM, I quit my whining.

Because of these new clients, I have four hours to kill. This is not quite enough time to go all the way home and do anything, so I have been picking metro stops and exploring them. I managed to find a couple of decent malls with Gap, H & M, a tiny Uniqlo, and TopShop. All are highly overpriced, but the sales make them somewhat affordable. I also found a Starbucks and am strangely excited for this discovery. I even approached a man on the street to find out where he had found Starbucks. Of course he didn’t understand me and thought I was crazy and ran away. I don’t blame him, really. But I managed to find it on my own.

I took Oliver to the Red Square yesterday. We took a few pictures and then, having realized we hadn’t eaten at all, went on a mad food hunt. Prices are crazy expensive near the Red Square, so we went back to that mall where I accosted the Starbucks customer. I ordered us some “Gamburger” and “Kartofel Free” and a drink for a decent price of 175 rubles (almost $6).

I then met up with Katy and Kieran for a trip to the Wine Factory. It is probably one of my favorite spots in Moscow so far. It is an old red brick wine factory turned art compound. It is full of artsy cafes, tiny little shops selling jewelry, handmade passport covers, awesome journals made from copies of medical journals, school books, and magazines.  There are many art galleries to get lost in and a random Mustang Jeans store.  There is also an art supply store down where the wine barrels were stored. I think that it would make a better café, to have the chairs and tables placed under the low arches…but that is a bit too mainstream perhaps.  

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.

Dolphin Down

Red Square

                I have been here almost two weeks now. Feels like two months! The apartment is coming along, slowly. We now have internet. The dolphin faucet was taken out the day after I arrived because it shot water in all directions. Now, the shower head shoots water out of all the seams.  We have discovered the oven door does not latch. The washer broke last night and flooded the floor and doused the downstairs neighbor’s kitchen (and new wallpaper).  

                We met our downstairs neighbor because of this. Someone rings our doorbell.  My roommate opens the door and in bursts this middle aged man in his boxers and tank top. He was angry at first, but calmed down when he saw we were hurrying to clean up and remedy the problem. He was very friendly. I am always amazed who speaks English in this country!

                Oh and my other roommate finally has a door! After all that waiting and build up, it is just a cheap, plastic accordion door with a three inch gap between the floor and the door. So there is privacy, but he still can hear everything.  I guess it took the handymen several hours to install this door too.

                Yesterday we finally, after all this time of promising, made it to Ashan. Ashan is like the Walmart of Russia. It just too far away to go shopping before or after work. So, we had to go on Saturday. This is the same day that everyone else goes.  It was quite the experience.

                First, it is a huge warehouse. Secondly, the products were placed wherever there was room. So I found towels in six different places. You don’t know the price of anything, because the tags don’t match. Also there are fifty people and their carts piled into an isle that also is full of crates and pallets. While you are in this traffic jam, a forklift sweeps in, scooping up customers in its wake, to remove a crate or add a crate. You are only in the way of sales associates; they shove you out of the way and hit you with carts repeatedly until you move out of the way. I saw one sales associate hit a kid with her cart. The kid fell down and started crying. Everyone ignored the kid and stepped over him in their mad rush to get their bargains (which, like Walmart, isn’t really that much of a bargain).  My co-workers are in a constant battle of which is a better place to shop: Ikea or Ashan. I’m joining the Ikea side…

                It was great to be able to come back with home goods!  I finally have a duvet! The size was incorrectly marked, so it is too small for the bed, but I don’t care! I worked too hard and fought too many grandmas to get this duvet, plus carried it all the way to the metro and home! We finally have metal cutlery! And I bought some beer… again I chose a place with horrible taste in beer. 

On our way from Ashan to the metro, we have to walk through this ghost town. It is all new construction of bus stops and malls and government buildings. They are all empty, no people and no buses. There are four lane streets with only one or two cars at a time on them.  The only habited places are the Ashan and a yacht club, which has constant helicopter traffic, making walking to the metro a bit windy.

I guess I have been away from reality for far too long, because none of this actually surprises me. The only reason I know it is weird is because Kieran and Oliver talk about it so much and are so amazed by it.  They are the ones who stood in awe as I shouldered a big burly muscle-head out of the way of the beets. They stopped too take pictures of yachts parked alongside cars in a parking lot and the helicopter landing on the sidewalk. However, I did watch the dwarf sing and dance while his handicap friend played pirate music on the accordion on the metro… it was just too Eastern European.

Ok, I guess you all are wondering about my work. I teach privately, one on one every day but Friday. Fridays I go all the way across Moscow (about an hour on the metro) to an English academy.  I teach English conversation to 11 and 12 year olds. We sit in a café and talk. It is nice, but difficult at times. I have one talkative student who is into music, robotics, and nanotechnology, a student who “only likes to sleep” (her words), and one kid who has reached the age of not liking anything.  He gets along well with the barista who, judging by her attitude, doesn’t like anything either.

After  English convo, I head to the kindergarten down the street to teach drama to a group of students ages nine to thirteen. They are amazing kids so far, very active, very open.  They have just been studying Russian folk tales, so they had to tell me the folk tales. One girl told us “Little Red Riding Hood.” When her classmate said that it wasn’t Russian she said, “Well Little Red Riding Hood was bringing her grandmother some vodka! So there! Now it is Russian!”

I told them a Native American story. This story has Coyote, Man, and other animals as being one family. The reaction was hilarious, “Wait! What kind of family is this!?! Their mother must be crazy!” And when I finished the story, one student asked if coyotes are still alive and I said, yes of course. The student replied, “Amazing. They seem quite stupid.”  This is the end of my week…

                 I start the week off with a four year old boy in the center of Moscow. He is a spoiled little thing, but so cute. His mother, or nanny (cannot tell), is crazy. She has so much energy and babbles on and on in Russian. I have no idea what she is saying half the time and she has some kind of scheme that the child thinks is amazing. But whatever, it seems to work, and by the end of the day the child has spoken a few English words and hugs and kisses me goodbye.

                I go from there to a nine year old girl a few metro stops away. Her mother speaks fluent English and sits in on the lesson. Making it nerve wracking for all involved. But so far, luckily, the mother has had nothing but nice things to say about the lessons. I just think her daughter would be more receptive if Mom wasn’t around all the time.

                After that I go back towards home to an eight year old boy. He is quite active. The first day he brought out an English picture dictionary and turned to the ladies’ underwear section, demanding to know how to pronounce the words.  Also, he confessed his undying love for Hannah Montana.  Finally, at 8:30 I can head home.

St. Basil's Cathedral

                Tuesdays and Thursdays I get on a mini bus and go out of town to the dachas. These are where the wealthy ex-soviet workers live. I teach in a neighborhood behind the President’s neighborhood, so security is very strict and guns are trained on you at all times. The houses are quite unimpressive on the outside, but stunning on the inside. Every room has a chandelier and some stained glass, expensive hardwood furniture, etc.

                One client has a driver, so he comes and picks me up to take me to the next neighborhood and next client. This house is bigger and even more impressive. There is a wing for the help. There is an indoor pool, a bathroom especially for the dog and cat, and my student has a jungle gym in his room. These students are only 11 and can speak English fluently. So fluently in fact, the boy often uses “Man, what the hell!?!” and informed me that in America, when Mom is dating someone other than her husband, this boyfriend is referred to as “Uncle.”

                By the time I finish with this client, the buses have stopped for the night, so the driver takes me all the way back into the city to the metro. This is my favorite time, because I can sit back and watch the snow-covered aspens. It is so incredibly flat everywhere in Moscow, that it is amazing when I come out of the city and find rolling hills. Which, one day I learned are quite steep.

                I went with a co-worker who was supposed to show me how to get to a client’s house. Well, he got off on the wrong bus stop. Instead of waiting for the next bus, he charged on ahead. I will have you know, he had no idea where he was going. So we hiked over the hills (in three feet deep snow), crossed a frozen river (so freaking scary!), and walked along neighborhood walls with guns trained on us. I was not a happy camper. He was so shocked that there was no wifi for his GPS that he got lost. Miraculously, my survival instincts took hold and I got us out of the woods and amazingly, to the client’s house and only five minutes late!  Now I know that if he thinks walking is a good idea, to just let him go and I’ll wait for the bus.  

Whenever I drive by with the driver, I point to the woods and say, “I walked there” and the driver looks at me in amazement and goes “Silly American girl.” (I think this is the only English he knows). The driver tried to teach me how to drive too. He showed me how to start the car and put it into gear. He and his co-worker put me in the driver’s seat one day and showed me how to start the car. He was amazed when he discovered that I already know how to drive!

Wednesday is the same as Monday. So every day is a new adventure thanks to my crazy clients.  I think I will enjoy them more after I have kicked this “epidemic” that has spread across Moscow.  

Welcome to my Moscow Flat

Once in Moscow, we arrived at a very snowy (about two feet of snow, thankfully shoveled, kind of), mint green neo-classical metro station sporting a plaque of Stalin leading the troops. Somehow my co-worker found his way through the maze that is the metro station and got us onto the train. The trains are not like any metro I have seen before and quite different than Seoul and Busan especially.

My apartment is just off the metro, but one must walk through a maze of pharmacies, banks, and apartment complexes to reach it. To reach my apartment on the seventh floor is quite the process. First you must use one key to get through the heavy fire doors, go through another set of fire doors, up some stairs to an elevator (it really shakes and rattles), then use another key to open ANOTHER fire door, and then the key to open our door. Makes up for no keys in Korea, I suppose.

The apartment is what I expected and not at the same time. I kind of like it. The apartment is very open and light with wood floors throughout. The hall opens with an archway sporting a horseshoe for good luck. To the right is the bathroom—tiled in brown and tan tiles with clashing linoleum flooring and the shower curtain has blue dolphins and the shower faucet is a silver dolphin. Next to the bathroom is the toilet closet --papered in 90s pastel pink and green Navajo design and the floor is brown and grey linoleum.  These rooms are protected by a dream catcher that has wolves painted on it—very Wyoming one-stop souvenir.

 The kitchen is at the end of the hall. There are big windows that bring in enough light. We have two rubber plants sitting on the radiator under the window. The cabinets are blue and very high—I will need a stool. The counters are made of wood while the floor is white, blue, and pink tile.We have a mini bar, with a drawer that pulls out to become an ironing board.

There is a dishwasher (doesn’t work). We have an oven, electric flat top hob, microwave, fridge (which doesn’t work) and a washer /dryer, but it is recommended we don’t use the dryer. The cupboard above the sink is actually the drying rack. Not too bad! Oh and the walls are papered in white paper with African ladies carrying water jugs while the backsplash is grey tiles with flowers and apples. The curtains are pink.

If you go straight from the front door and under the arch, you enter a hallway which is papered in 90s grey textured lines. We have some kind of weird painting of a woman wearing a mask and another woman holding a horse and there is a basket of teeth in it. Ugly. In the hall there is a sofa, just as mismatched as the rest of the apartment. Also, the flooring is a bit rotten, so there are brown linoleum rugs.

Two the left is the living room, which is now a bedroom. There is no door. There is a TV, but it is black and white and only plays the apartment’s security camera footage. Off this “bedroom” is a small enclosed balcony (un-insulated though).

This is my "Yellow Wallpaper"

Off the hall are two bedrooms. One doesn’t have a balcony, but there are nice big windows. The wallpaper isn’t so bad in this room, kind of grey. My room is hideous. I have nightmares about the giant, pink and gold flowers coming out the blue background to smother me.  I swear they move around the walls. On top of that, the curtains are this golden yellow satin with more giant gold flowers.

View from my balcony

Another view from my balcony

I have two radiators in my room, so it gets quite toasty. I guess this is because the door out to my balcony won’t close all the way and cold air seeps in, also because the balcony windows don’t close all the away. But I have a huge balcony, which will be handy for freeze-drying my clothes. 

Welcome to Moscow

Idaho decided to show off as I headed out Friday and Sunday.  Grangeville sent me away with bright blue skies, warmer temperatures (25 degrees), and no new snow or wind. Less than two miles outside of Grangeville, still with bright blue skies, a ground wind whipped the snow and ice from the ground, creating a bad ground blizzard. Trucks were off the road, and we had to take a detour on the old highway (which was shortly closed after we passed due to a slide off).

The wind continued to blow as we drove down the river towards Riggins. I could see several hawks and eagles riding the various wind streams. The wind also blew the clouds away from the Seven Devils, making the mountains and White Bird hill look as steep as they really are.

Snow covered the mountains, leaving only small patches of brown where the deer grazed for food. The further south we went, the colder it got. A small orange fox searched a field for food in 5 degree weather. Quail, grouse, and wild turkeys wandered the yards in one degree weather. Deer again dotted the hills, front yards, and fields.

Saturday was a day of shopping and visiting. I stayed up very late doing last minute packing and transferring files onto the new computer. I managed to get five hours of sleep before having to head to the airport. The plane was delayed half an hour to defrost it. We took off in a temperature of -3 degrees.

As the plane neared Salt Lake City, the sun was coming up, casting an orange glow onto the snow-covered mountain peaks. Low-hanging clouds blanketed the valley, further mystifying the scene. The peaks became lava islands jutting out of a sea of clouds.

I ran to catch my zone boarding call and waited several minutes trying to get to the back of the plane where my seat was. I sat next to a nice woman who was a flight attendant and her daughter who was turning thirteen. They were on their way to New York for 24 hours just to see Wicked and the Metropolitan Museum.  The woman spent the four hour recalling her flights and layovers to Moscow during the time of the USSR.

I said goodbye to them at JFK and made friends with a gate agent who kindly gave me useful instructions on how to get from one terminal to the other… who says all New Yorkers are rude?  I arrived at my gate to get my boarding pass and get shoved onto the plane and straight into business class! Thanks to the amazing reclining seats, I was actually able to get a few hours of sleep on the flight.

I ventured a look out of the window as we were preparing to land. Flat, flat, flat country covered with strips of frozen ponds and rivers, alternating with strips of snow-covered fields and dense forests. Among these were large fenced in farm houses in a typical collective-type town.

We landed safely on the ice-covered tarmac and the pilot got a round of applause from the passengers. We had to wait several minutes for a plow to remove the snow from our gate. Then I zipped up the arrival to passport control, only to wait 20 minutes to have four people go ahead of me. Then I went to baggage claim, to find that one of my bags was sent to Orlando and was now sitting in Paris, France.

This required several forms to be filled out, confirmation by custom agents, followed by more forms and more customs. By this time I had spent over two hours at the airport and still had not been able to contact my co-worker to tell him to wait. Thankfully, he did wait at the airport for me!

We took the express train into Moscow, approximately 30 minutes away. During that time, my poor co-worker looked like a comedy skit with two phones up to his ears trying to resolve some kind of conflict (switching between speaking Russian and English). I tuned out his conversations and focused on the industrial revolution red brick factories, old farm houses, manors, and Soviet-style buildings turned apartments in various states of repair. Also popular are rows of heavily graffitied tin garages (resembling storage sheds). My favorite example of the use of space and construction is to bridge the two rows of garages by placing an old train car on top and use it as an apartment.