The potty mouth alcoholic.

                A couple of weeks ago Dave had to go to an impromptu meeting at company headquarters near Bryansk. Since we were going to be so close to the city, Carrie, one of my new American friends, and her daughter Hailey, and I decided to go to the mall. We all met at Carrie’s house and the guys carpooled to the meeting. We were originally going to take our truck since it has air conditioning, but only one seatbelt in the back works, so we couldn’t fit two car seats in there. We had to take Carrie’s truck instead. I offered to drive, I didn’t really think that this would be the day that Carrie found out that I was a potty mouth.

                Driving in Russia is intense. People pass you anytime they feel like you aren’t going as fast as a person could possibly be driving at any moment. They pass you in town, on corners, and around a solid line. They follow really close, and squeeze in around you on dangerous stretches. Luckily, because the roads are so terrible it is hard to go faster than 110 kilometers per hour. Even though everyone around you is driving like a crazy person, you probably won’t die if you crash.  I say everyone around you is driving like a crazy person, but really I have had to adopt a lot more aggressiveness in my driving. 

                The other day I passed a semi in a turn lane across a solid line. Dave waited until I got back in our lane and said, “Well, I think that was really illegal.” I promised I wouldn’t do it again.  When Carrie and I were headed to the mall, things were going really well till we hit the first round about, and I let one of my milder curse words slip. Luckily both of the girls were asleep in the back seat for the other round about. Russia is awfully fond of roundabouts, and I seem to always be in the wrong lane. Carrie heard a few more choice words and we made it to the mall.

                We had a nice lunch, and tooled around the baby store and bought baby shoes. Then we went to the grocery store in the mall. It was awesome. Clean and huge, it has an incredible selection of home stuff, clothes, and camping gear as well as a lot of food. And… and this is a big AND… THEY HAVE CORONA!!!!!!!!!!!!  Can you believe it? Mexican beer in Russia. It was awesome to see. So I put a six pack in my cart. Well, it looked lonely so I put another one in there. And then that was only 12 beers and we only get to Bryansk every so often, so I put another one in there. I ended up putting every Corona the store had stocked on their shelf in my cart, and if my Russian was better I would have asked for all the Coronas they had in the back too. As I was putting all of them in my cart I said to Carrie, “I promise I’m not an alcoholic!”  Hopefully she believed me. I didn’t really understand how they were priced and ended up paying a lot for each of them. So much that I didn’t tell Dave how much they were because if he knew what they cost he wouldn’t have been able to enjoy them.

                We tooled down to the “foreign food” aisle. Tortillas!! I grabbed about 10 packages of tortillas, salsa, and jalapenos. It was like a fiesta in my cart. All in all it was a good trip, even if Carrie now knows that I am a potty mouthed alcoholic.  

The other country in my life...

                Some things about Russia I like so much it makes me feel like I am cheating on America. My favorite bird has always been the crane, and I have been lucky that the ranches we lived on in California and Nevada had cranes, at least seasonally. They are majestic and beautiful. I think they are incredibly graceful and I always considered them lucky. I felt like if I saw a crane my day was bound to be a good one. Here there are storks. Lots and lots of storks. They are everywhere. They are also beautiful and majestic, but in contrast to cranes, they let me get a lot closer to them. I don’t know that I have ever been closer than 50 feet to a crane. Today I got to see a stork take flight directly above me. It was no more that twelve feet away. It was amazing. And they are all over the place. They nest on people’s houses and the top of telephone poles and like to hang out in the pastures by our house. Incredible.

                I also love the different landscapes that are near where we live. Our farm here is in the middle of rolling hills, and there are little groves of trees every so often. To get to our closest American neighbor’s farm you have to drive through a bit of forest. It is a pretty magical forest, and it is easy to imagine fairies and princesses. It is also really easy to imagine witches and evil spirits here too. It is no wonder that fairy tales originate in Europe. There is plenty of fuel for the imagination.

                While there are things I really enjoy about Russia, I appreciate and miss home. The contrasts can be pretty startling.  I often have the chorus from America the Beautiful running through my head. When I consider that a lot of the homes here do not have running water and people grow a garden out of necessity instead of as a hobby, I feel really fortunate to have been born in America. That might be pretty cheesy, but it doesn’t make it any less true. I miss infrastructure and emergency services. I miss abundance and ease. I miss Swiffer products and Clorox wipes. I miss taking for granted toilet paper in public restrooms.

                All these complaints are small and not really significant, and I wouldn’t trade this adventure for  anything. But, and I am really serious here, I am glad that when we are done here I get to go home to amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesties above the fruited plain.