twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?"

Month: October 2008

  • woooorrrk! thing

    OMG! OMG! The (hopefully not illegal) piggyback thingie works! I can use my American iPhone with a Russian sim card! I keep looking at the moving bar on the top, showing that the phone is connected. What a beautiful thing. Total cost for the "jailbreak" $57.

    We stood in M. Video (They stole Target's logo, so I call it Not Target) for a long time, trying to decide on which beautiful tv to buy. We asked the sales person which he thought was better of the two we were deciding between. He pondered for a moment and then declared that the Sony was better. "Why?" we asked."Is more interesting," he answered.

    Now if I could just get the new tv going. It's in Russian, so I can't set it up. Hope it works! Must. Be. Working. By. Sunday. This weekend's Saturday Night Live (Which I should call Sunday Afternoon Rebroadcast) has both Tina Fey and, wait for it…the musical guest? David Cook! Our boy going big time, playing with his old band reconfigured (now he's the front man), singing one, maybe two songs off the new unreleased CD. "I hope I don't get caught lip-syncing," he says.

    Updated to add: Peter's co-worker got the tv working, not only working but advanced working, with sound and everything. Is it Sunday yet?

  • was it a party?

    IMG_0547

    Carl Sagan here. Billions and billions of boxes floating in space! Or on the floor, it's really all the same. We definitely have too much (beep)! The universe is constantly expanding. But not our apartment. 

    It reminds me of the time my parents retired, sold their Carmel Valley home, and packed up to move to Idaho (of all places)! My mother offered us some furniture and miscellaneous kitchen items including a Cuisinart, we'd never owned one before. We received it in a box and didn't bother taking it out until a year later when I was about to make the cranberry relish for Thanksgiving. I pulled it down from a dusty top shelf and pulled it out of the box. The interior of the Cuasinart had some kind of black and mildewed concoction. We finally determined that it was guacamole. Dina and I started laughing because we could just imagine my mother about to wash it and my father shouting as he's packing up his bar, "Just put it in the BOX!"

    We still use the same circa 1980 Cuisinart. Or we will when we unpack it.

    Wait! Is that wine in the foreground?! I think it's time for a break. DINA!

  • typical dinner

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    The closest grocery, Ramstore, or as Peter calls it, Ramshack, is a 5 to 10 minute walk. Today we bought light Jarlsburg (my favorite from Trader Joe's, same brand and everything) a big squash, orange juice, frozen string beans from Belgium, yogurt (they have the same kid brands as Niamey, it's imported from France) and a sesame bread, still warm. Stefan pulled our cart there. Usually he pulls it back too, but today he's still sort of sick and when we got home he had big circles under his eyes. 

    Stefan's homework was to draw a picture of what he had for dinner. Being sort of out of it, he fell asleep at 6:30, missed dinner and woke up at 10. I'm sure his classmates will have three courses illustrated: pork chops or roasted chicken and a salad with a homemade vinegarette, a fresh vegetable, then cheese followed by chocolate souffle. "Can't you draw what you had for lunch?" I ask him, at least that was soup and a tangerine. I'm a little embarrassed that his teacher is going to think I served us all Life cereal for dinner. 

  • moscow farmer’s market

    Farmers_market

    I bought apples, tangerines, carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, onions and fresh salmon. One of the vendors gave me some very nice grapes. The salmon was $10 for four steaks. We paid $10 a steak the other day at the fancy grocery store, so I hope they are good.

    Available items I I didn't buy: cucumbers, pomegranates, beets, a pumpkin, coleslaw, chicken, pastries, rose hips or a fur hat.

  • create your own caption

    OMc

    I stole this from my friend Mike's facebook page. (See his amazing design work here.) "Are you keeping up with the elections?" he asked. "Yeah! David Cook won!" I said.

  • moscow, month one

    St.basils 

    Stefan got sent home from school yesterday with a fever, today he stayed home and of course was fine, talking to me non-stop.

    Camille stole my mascara and is at an after school "social." Sounds scary. Can't wait to hear about it though.

    The clinic is busy, but Peter likes it that way.

    In Friday night pizza news: the commisary has turkey pepperoni! 

    Our car is here, but we don't want it anymore.

    Stefan talked to me non-stop, but every night he says, "Papa is reading to me!"

    Minor miracle: Peter. got. us. out. of. the. iPhone AT&T contract. Now we are waiting for some sim card piggyback thingie to make the sim card here work. It's all very hush hush though and no one really knows how to make a US phone work here. I guess I'll be the first.

    We got our air shipment and so we have plenty of oatmeal and flannel sheets. Wish I'd put the immersion blender for soup in there. Am looking forward to having the paintings here, but we won't get our household effects until Thanksgiving or so.

    The Embassy newsletter designer/editor position just (re)opened. I'm secretly hoping for this position; don't tell anyone.

    I had a workout session with the trainer, a Russian woman in full make-up, and I couldn't walk for three days afterwards.

    I dropped a jar of peanut butter on my toe and it's six kinds of purple and I'm sure the nail will come off. It's completely disgusting. And a good excuse to avoid the trainer.

  • hello is not for beginners: stras-vee-chee

    MoscowMom took me on a whirlwind tour of Moscow. Wow, is she amazing. There we were in our coats and scarves, standing in front of St. Basil's, the mausoleum with Lenin inside, the Kemlin, we walked through GUM department store, bought tickets for the ballet Gisele at the Bolshoi Theater box office, got drinks to keep our hands warm at Starbucks on the Old Arbat, saw Pushkin's house, bought pastries at a fancier-than-France French bakery, with an Olympic gold-medal-winning tennis player standing in line behind us. Then we had lunch at the fabulous Cafe Pushkin. I want to take you there when you come visit, just look at it!

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    At the coat check, you get, not a plastic ticket, not a clothespin with a number on it, but a brass token, beautifully engraved with your number. The dishes are lovely, they give you a footstool for your bag to sit on, they serve twenty-four hour old shechee–although I had borcht, they make it with goose and apple. Then came my huge piece of salmon served on a bed of grilled lemon. The whole thing was dreamy, a perfect setting for Peter's Victorian Russian, must go there with him. The coat check guy holds your coat for you while you put it on, he practically buttons it up for you.

    Now I am back to reality, unpacking our airshipment, 700 pounds of the stuff we thought most important. We have a lot of flannel sheets and oatmeal. Four bikes and no garage. Maybe we'll keep them in the car, since I don't think we'll be driving it much. Maybe the car will be our garage.

  • mmmm…let’s see….

    IMG_0501
    Here are a few observations and occurrences worth remembering in 20 years when I retire from the FS:
     
    a) Russian women go all out and dress to kill and Russian men do nothing and let themselves go and look like thugs.
    b) The health clinic is far busier than Niamey and I miss Amina terribly but I'm enjoying the newness of overwhelming patient care.
    c) The milk products in this country are to die for (and many people do die from the coronary artery disease they produce) and so worth it!
    d) Dina brought home beautiful salmon and trout last saturday which we broiled with teriyaki sauce and served with noodles and cabbage salad. It turned out to be smoked & salted fish and was so salty that it was in a hyper-osmotic state and the teriyaki sauce repelled off it and rolled off into a corner of the baking sheet as far as possible and refused to add any flavor. It was so salty, we couldn't eat it.
    e) I had 2 people resign (unrelated to me or my arrival) and suddenly I'm an administrator.
    f) Moscow is an expensive city to live in, especially if you haven't received your hardship differential, language, or cost of living adjustment.
    g) My Russian language instructors find me funny and I think they are all rotating me so that they can all have a chance to get a good laugh and look up some Russian words they haven't heard in years (A Gene-ism).
    h) Autumn lasts only 3 weeks in Moscow.
    i) I had my first medevac this week.
    j) Dina says it's more like Europe than Africa and our friend Alison says it's more like Europe than China and I agree.

  • gorky park

    Leaf_crownGorky_par4

    Russia has allowed me to have the internet!

    We rode the crazy-fast metro to Gorky Park, to visit the forest with tout de Moscou. The leaf bouquets and leaf crowns reminded me a Carl Larson painting. Then we sat in the park and had sheeshleek, the Russian version of brochettes, pork and chicken. You could also get a skewered whole trout, but we passed. If you go to walk in the forest of Gorky Park to make leaf bouquets you cannot be too dressed up. Four inch high heels are the correct shoe to wear with a leaf crown, apparently.