Flip Flops Were a Bad Idea.

                I have often joked that if my life were a novel the subtitle would be, “Flip Flops Were a Bad Decision.” Wearing new flip flops in Disneyland, bad idea. Flip flops when Dave is in a hurry, bad idea. Flip flops in the barn, bad idea. Flip flops in Russia in a sketchy truck with no minutes on your phone, no water in the backpack, and no snacks for the baby, really bad idea.               
                We had been without the truck for about three weeks when Dave drove it home at lunch. It had been declared “fixed” and was ready to go. I had been going a little stir crazy so I decided on a last minute trip to town that afternoon. I was out of minutes on my phone so I called Dave through Skype and told him I was going to town to fill up my phone and get a couple things at the store. He said that sounded good and let me know he was going to be late again, probably wouldn’t get home until eight or nine.  I thought that was perfect because that way I could fix a late dinner and take my time in town.
                Normally I have a drawer in the wardrobe by the front door dedicated to getting ready to go stuff. Snacks, baby shoes, and all the goodies you need as a mommy to make things go smoothly. I was so ready to get out of the house that I just grabbed the diaper bag without even checking to see what was in it and hit the road. This was my first time going to Trubchevsk by myself, so I was a little nervous that I might not be able to find the grocery store on the first try, but no big deal, I had plenty of time.
                By the time I was driving through the nearest village, Kotlokova, I knew something was a little fishy with the truck. Not being a master mechanic, I decided to keep going and let Dave know it was a little funky when I got home. I made it just outside of Golevesk and the truck totally stopped working. I wasn’t thinking very clearly because I didn’t get it all the way off the road before I came to a stop. So. There I was broke down, half on half off the road in the middle of Russia with no way to phone for help, 10 miles from home, with no water and a cranky baby and wearing flip flops. Yikes.
                I checked the time, it was 5:15. Best case scenario, Dave would get home at eight that night, wonder where I am, and call. Then I could let him know I was stranded. My phone could take calls but not make them. I really was not looking forward to sitting in a hot truck for three to four hours. So I put AJ in the carrier, grabbed 300 rubles and my travel dictionary and started walking to Golevesk. The town in really tiny and doesn’t have a store, but there is a nice babushka that sells potatoes, carrots, onions and flowers in a little stand by the side of the road. I had bought carrots and a lily from her the week before and I thought maybe she could help me.
                I made it to her house and saw to my amazement a pay phone that I had never seen before. Yay!! I had 70 Rubles in coins in my pocket. Problem solved. Three barking dogs started running at me and I couldn’t get any closer to the phone. The nice babushka shooed them away as I said, “Machina niet roboto,” which is essentially, “Car no work.” One of the first things you learn in Russia is, “Niet Robota,” because a lot of things don’t work. I gestured to the telephone and asked if I could use it. I asked, “Rubles?” and she replied, “Niet. Carta.” I had left all my debit cards back in the truck because I didn’t think I would need them. Oh well, back to the truck for my debit card. This time, I grabbed my whole diaper bag and wallet and walked back to the pay phone. She was waiting outside her house for me and got the dogs out of my way and let me walk up to the pay phone. I put my card in… nothing. Niet roboto.
                Babushka was ready to come to my aid, she tried to wave down several cars for me so I could get a ride. Finally, a cargo truck stopped, but based on what he said, I think he was going to a different town and didn’t want to drop me at the farm. A bus passed by but it didn’t stop. Argh. An actual taxi stopped but he must not have liked the look of me because even though he did not have a passenger he wouldn’t give me a ride. She decided to try and call and get me a taxi. She went inside and got her phone, and I said, “Plejalsta, ya telephone mush.” Essentially, “Please, I telephone husband.” She happily handed me her phone and I punched in Dave’s number… niet roboto. She dialed his number… niet roboto. I tried one more time, held down the zero key to get the plus sign and dialed again, and then I heard the long thin ring of a Russian phone ringing and Dave answers the phone.  
                He says he will try and get somebody over to me, and that he will do his best. His best is good enough for me, so totally relieved I say to my new bestie, “Bolshoy Spasiba!!! Bolshoy Spasiba!!” I try to hand her some rubles while I say, “Big thanks, big thanks!” She won’t take the money and tells me, “Nasdarovia!”  It is, “To my health.” Awesome. She tries to convince me to sit in the shade on the bench in front of her house, but I don’t know who is coming to get me and they aren’t going to be looking for me there, so I decline and start to walk back to the truck. When I get to the truck I try and push it off the road, but my awesome flip flops won’t let me get purchase, so it stays right where it is. As soon as I give up I see a Miratorg car pull up behind me and the farm mechanic has come to my rescue.

                I am convinced that the only reason this happened is because I left the house with no minutes on my phone, no water, and in flip flops. If I had been prepared or wearing tennis shoes this never would have happened. Please don’t interpret this as me giving up on flip flops. I’m just going to start stocking my phone and the diaper bag a little better. 

Water Balloons, Weenies, and Nuggets.

                Things have been pretty quiet around here recently, our truck has been in the shop, so we really haven’t been able to go exploring. Dave has been working a lot because this farm artificially inseminates a lot of their cows. So, other than Dave and I both getting colds, we don't have anything new to reprort.

                Last Sunday was a lot of fun, all the American families came over for a weenie roast and the kids had a big water balloon fight. The houses here don’t have water spigots on the outside so we had to run a hose through the bathroom window and attach it to the shower. The water balloon nozzle wasn’t the right size so one of the dads took apart a syringe and put it over the end of the hose and filled up the balloons that way.

                The hot dogs here are really different. They come individually wrapped inside printed packages and when you take them out they are very pale and icky looking. I think they taste pretty good but they look so gross they kind of freak Dave out. 

                The night before last AJ walked for the first time. She was standing by me next to the couch and she looked at Dave and just took off over to him. It was amazing. She is getting progressively sturdier. It is pretty cool. She has added chicken nuggets and scrambled eggs to the list of things she likes to eat. She also clearly says, “No.” Dave and I disagree as to whether her, “Dog” is actually “Dog” or if it is in fact “Dooo.” She is definitely changing every day.

Adios, Surazh.

                We are on our third farm here in Russia. We moved right before our vacation from our farm by Surazh to a farm near the town of Klitnya. We got there on Friday and left for our vacation on Tuesday. It was barely enough time to get everything clean and get some laundry done. We got back to the Farm on Friday and found out on Sunday that we were moving to a farm in the Trubchevsk district. The next day. So, we were on our new new farm on Monday.

                I was excited when we moved to the farm near Klitnya because we were going to be closer to other Americans and I liked the layout of the house better. There were a couple funky things about that house but it wasn’t too bad. There weren’t any forks or pans but there were 7 spoons. The windows didn’t have screens but there was a decorative butter dish and a floral dessert plate set. The floors were really cool and looked like they were made out of a distressed wood but even after two moppings AJ still had dirty knees and hands from crawling. And then there was a funky smell that came out of the pipes. I would have been able to deal with it, but I’m really glad I didn’t have to.

                Since our truck was broken down our friends Matt and Cari came to help us move. Luckily they have a trailer so we were able to throw everything in the back and hit the road. It was not one of my best packing jobs, but pretty much everything made it, except the eggs. It was a good thing Matt was driving because the roads were really bumpy and I kept on thinking, “I wonder why we aren’t going faster?” only to realize that it was to keep all of our possessions in one piece.

                Our new neighbors met us at the new place with dinner and a couple beers. That night AJ slept through the whole night. It was a wonderful treat and kind of a teaser really because she is still recovering from jet lag and has yet to repeat that. So, we have been in this house about a week, and as I am still recovering from AJ’s jet lag too, I have yet to get really settled in.  I like this house, it kind of has a vacation cabin feel to it and I’m really pleased with it.

                This house has spoons and dishes and one thing neither of the other houses had: a dog. Her name is Puddy Anne and she likes to bark. A lot.  The funny thing is though is she really only barks at the Russians. I think she might be having an identity crisis and I tried to explain to her that she was Russian and barking at other Russians was just rude, but my logic failed to convince her so she does her doggy duty and protects the house from Russians. Unfortunately, the entrance to the farm is beyond our house so there are lots and lots of Russians for her to protect us from during the day.  The last couple days there have been workers cutting weeds along the driveway and she has been following them and barking. They are very nonchalant about it and ignore her. I don’t think it has affected her self-confidence, she still lets them know they are not welcome. Pretty rude.

                The other awesome thing about this house is that it came with a planted flower bed, and luckily it has been raining a lot so it is going to be very hard for me to kill them! I bought a started lily plant from a lady on the side of the road on Friday, but since it has been raining pretty hard every day since I bought it I have yet to get it planted. When I told Dave I bought it he said, “Oh, good. That is exactly what I was hoping for.” Given my track record with flowers I think he was joking.

                The Russian farm manager lives next door and he is a pretty friendly fellow. After Dave’s first day at work he stopped by in the evening with a little vodka. He speaks a few words of English and Dave and I know a few words in Russian so we were able to cover the really important topics like the sounds animals make in Russian and in English. Sheep baa wherever they are, but chickens say something really weird. A couple nights later the farm mechanic came over with the manager and brought a gigantic jar of raw honey with strict instructions that we should give lots of it to the baby to make her grow strong. We were also supposed to dip raw cucumbers in there and take huge bites of them directly after a big drink of vodka. Not my favorite thing ever, to say the least. Dave went over to the manager’s house for “Choo Choo” vodka. Choo Choo means a little, and Dave might have had choo choo by Russian standards, but it was a little more than choo choo by our standards. He washed it down with pork fat and sauerkraut. I’m really glad that AJ was sleeping, because I got to stay home. Not that I don’t like to try new things, it is just hard to give an excuse why you don’t want that third shot of vodka when there is a huge language barrier keeping you from polite excuses. 

Half a World Away

I knew when we moved to Russia that we would be far away from family and friends. The literal truth of half a world away never hit me until I needed to get home in a hurry. Late last month I got a call from my mom and we needed to get home quick. Well, the call came on a Friday, which meant the soonest we could really get a flight home was Tuesday. With the realities of time zones and international flights, that put us in Salt Lake City on Wednesday at midnight.

Our driver showed up at 6:00 in the morning and our flight left at 3:00pm. The seven hours to Moscow were pretty stressful and involved our driver driving on the shoulder of the highway around traffic stopped for road construction. We made it to the airport, got in the wrong line, found the right line, found our gate, found food, and in a hectic mad rush got on the plane only to realize we had two tickets, not three.  That poor flight attendant probably thought I was a crazy lady as I stood there with a baby and a car seat and no place to put them. Luckily the flight wasn’t full so we got a row of four seats to ourselves.

In New York we had to get our baggage and take it through customs and re-check it. Got in the wrong line again. Found the right line, found the bathroom, found the right terminal. At this point Dave and I have come to an impasse. I am sure that it is morning and Dave is pretty sure that it is evening. So, we ask the next person we see for the time. He kindly informs us that it is 6:20, and I say, “In the morning?” and he looks at me like I’m a nut and says, “No, in the evening.” I guess I’m no good at time travel. Dave was momentarily gleeful until we realized that we only had an hour to get through security and get to our gate. Yikes.

We made it to Salt Lake City and AJ promptly got the stomach flu followed very closely by Dave getting the stomach flu. I’ve never been puked on so much in my life.

It was a short two weeks in the states and then we were headed home again. We flew on a different airline this time and they did not let me bring the car seat on board since we still only had two tickets. That was a long eleven hours. I know a lot of moms are okay holding their babies on long flights, but my wiggle worm was not too happy. When we made it to Moscow we got in the wrong line again. This time though it was a Russian line which is very different from an American line and involves pushing and cutting and yelling. Made it through that line and our driver was late so we had to wait two hours in the airport for him to show up.

The time change has been pretty rough on all of us, and the last three nights have involved midnight mommy and AJ parties. I’m pretty well partied out.