The Wedding - Part 2 of Holiday Home

The mascot of my trip home, Bailey, the Wilder's dog. This is how I found him in the morning when I came downstairs!
So if you talked to me at all this summer you probably heard me mention that I was going to a wedding several times. I probably told you about the dress, what we were planning for her bachelorette party and etc. Needless to say I was excited! And finally the big day happened.


On August 30th, my friend Suzanne and her boyfriend Robb got married. The wedding was in Cincinnati at an old movie theatre. It was a great time. I knew that hanging out with the Wilders would be one of the best parts of my trip back to the states. So here is just small sample of the pictures taken at the wedding.

Liz, Suzanne, and Me before the bachelorette party. Liz was excited because she got to wear her beautiful beaded dress. And Liz and I picked out Suzanne's dress, surprise surprise! This is Liz, Suzanne, and Me dressed up for the rehearsal dinner. We ate tons of food and drank great wine at this restaurant called Bella Luna in Cincinnati.
The happy bride and groom.
The wedding party. Also, I got to see great people at the wedding. Andrea and Dave came and it was so nice to catch up after almost 4 years! And then I got to meet Cody's fiance Dana. They are such a lovely couple.

Dave , Me , and Andrea

Dana and Cody

Random Pictures of Parks

It has been PARK MANIA here in Moscow for me the this last month. I feel the call of mother earth and want to return to her natury goodness, so I have been visiting all the famous and close parks. Here are some of the ones I have been to.

This park is called Patriarch Ponds. It is famous because one of the scenes from Bulgakav's novel "Master and Margarita" takes place here. If you haven't read it, then you should. It is quite entertaining.

It so happened that the reason we went to Patriarch Ponds was because I wanted to feed some old bread to some ducks. Unfortuantly I learned that you can't feed the ducks here and that there in fact only one "ponds." There used to be two but the other was filled in and now has a building sitting on top of it.

In the quest to find ducks to feed on this particular day, Todd and I ventured to sokolniki park. At first we were put off by the fact that we had to pay to enter (60 Rubles!) but were delighted when we saw the form of transport depicted below. How unbelievable creepy is that train! All I can say is, "Yes, please!" The park is really quite nice. It has enough trees and open space to make you believe you have left the city. We plan on going back.

This park is called Pioneer Park. It was probably used for the young pioneers who endeavored to be like Lenin. Nowadays it is just a park. This park is neither famous or very nice but it is close to my house (25 minute walk away). I asked one of my Russian co-workers if she knew of a park within walking distance and this is what she recommended. It is a nice place to sit amoung the trees.This is Kuskovo park. A rich family used to live here and they collected porcelain and if you come before 6pm you can be the lucky guest of the porcelin museum! Lucky, indeed! Too bad for me, I arrived too late to see it. So one of my students and I walked around the pond.

And look! Ducks! And not just ducks but baby ducks! But alas, I had no bread on this day. :(

One of the most famous parksin Moscow is Park Pobedy. It was constructed to commemorate the victory over Nazi Germany.

And like any good park in Russia, it has lots of fountains!

Tula

In June Todd and I took an excursion that our company organized to the town of Tula, south of Moscow. It is famous because this is where Tolstoy lived. He owned property a bit outside of town where he lived his ascetic lifestyle.

It was a great trip. Good weather, good company, and eventually, after we got the bus running again, a comfortable ride!

Our bus. We had a nice 3o minute break on a random street in Tula.

The first stop of our trip was Yasnaya Polyana, aka, Tolstoy's estate. Todd wanted to listen to what our tour guide was saying at this point but I made him pose for a picture, look how well he fakes a smile!

Here is Tolstoy's house. Since Tolstoy was an aristocrate he was obligated to provide money or troops whenever the Tsar went to war. Well once, when he didn't have either, he sold the house he was born in and it was disassembled and carried away brick by brick. The house in this picture was one of the wings off to either side of the main house. He lived here for most of his married life.

Tolstoy also maintained a farm and they have continued to keep it up. I was trying to get close to those geese but I was afraid they would chase me!

Tolstoy owned a huge piece of land. It is quite beautiful.

Next stop: Tula Kremlin. Here is the view of it from across the street of the main entrance. Even Peter the Great had visited this Kremlin!

A view of the walls inside the Kremlin. I think that tower was used as a place to torture people.


And a video. Listen to the quiet comments of our favorite four-eyed friend!

The Developments of Spring

Spring has progressed and is almost on the verge of summer. I wish that it felt like the verge of summer but the temperature remains at a cool 65 degrees. I have always looked forward to the change in the seasons and now I long for a climate where I don't have to wear a jacket outside. There may be global warming in the rest of the world but in Moscow, it refuses to get hot.

This is the dacha.

But nonetheless I have been busy. Last month one of my students invited me to her dacha (see previous blog to see what it means) and I got to see first hand what it was like. The weather was a warm 4o degrees, so we stayed indoors most of the time, which only made the time there better. It was great to be in a home. By that, I mean a place with a comfortable couch, a dinning room table, good company, and a person who cooks. Living the single life has left me wanting some of these creature comforts. And I got to try a Russian banya for the first time, I was even beaten with tree branches! It was great. Behind my friend's house she has her own banya where she can sit and sweat. It was an interesting experience but I'm not going to lie, I prefer onsens to banyas.

This is the banya (sauna).

Spring also produced an unexpected surprise. For the last two weeks, when you walked outside, your person was pelted with white balls of fluff, somtimes so thick that you had to put your head down to keep them out of your eyes. Apparently there are trees all over Moscow that produce these seeds and they infest everything. Luckily we have some ingenious youths running around with lighters, now don't be afraid, they are doing their civic duty. They make big balls of the fluff and light it on fire and it goes up in a flash. It is cool to watch.

Here is the white fluff. It is resting on a wet spot on the curb.

One of the best aspects of spring has been on the foliage. Russians love their trees and they all love the untamed forests that fill their lands, so it is no wonder that if there is a place to plant a tree, they plant it! Our neighborhood is now all green and leafy, struggling to combat all the pollution. I like walking down our green street, so I figured I would take some pictures.

This is our claim to fame in my neighborhood, a monument to Ho Chi Min, and you should feel ashamed if you don't know who he is! This is the street where I live. Isn't it green!
This is the side of my apartment building from the street. It has five stories.

And this is the entrance to my building.

With a couple of friends I revisited Novodevichy Convent but this time toured the cemetary. We saw some pretty famous tomestones. I am always a bit amazed to see pictures on graves here. It is very interesting to look at faces but at the same time off putting. Perhaps I don't like thinking there is actually a person below that slab of rock. Nevertheless, I took some photos of the most famous ones.

This is the entrance to different sections of the cemetary.

This is the monument just put up for Boris Yeltsin. Here is a famous clown.


This is the tombstone of Anton Chekov, a famous author.

And unlike most of you slackers out there, Sandra (a friend I met at OU) came to visit me for five days. It was a good time and I got to do some stuff that I hadn't yet done in Moscow. One of the best things we did was take a boat ride down the Moscow River. I really enjoyed it and will probably do it again. But prepare yourself, I was utterly exhausted after four days!

Sandra and I on the boat.

Spring In Moscow

Spring arrived early this year to Moscow. It was a sunny 65 degrees in the middle of April and the good weather has more or less continued. With the birds chirping (something I didn't realize I missed), I decided to head outside and explore parts of Moscow that had previously kept me away.

This is one of the churches at Kolomenskaya park, it is a Unesco Heritage site.

There were some big holidays recently as well. One of them was Easter. During the Soviet Union going to church was restricted and even monitored by the KGB. One of my students related to me the fact that if you wanted to be a prominent figure in your work and were caught going into a church, your career would hit the glass ceiling suddenly. But things have changed now. They have changed so much that the former head of the KGB, Vladimir Putin, went to mass for Easter. The same student told me he almost laughed out loud when he saw Putin standing next to the Patriarch because 20 year previously he would have been sent packing from his post for such a thing.

This is my friend Artyom. He took me out for a ride in a boat even though I thought I would fall in.

Arytom also took me to Moscow State University, where there is a lovely park for walking.

With the church up and swinging again the Russians have brought back some old traditions. One of them is having your decorated Easter eggs and Easter cakes blessed. So hundreds of people lined up the evening before Easter Sunday and waited to have their eggs blessed. Since I was raised a protestant, the whole idea of mass and blessing were a bit beyond me. Usually in a protestant church there is enough room for all the congregation at one time but the orthodox churches are small, so people wait their turn to come in and kiss icons, light candles, get blessed, and cross themselves. I never realized how much the religions diverged.

The crowded church at Kolomenskaya.

Also, when it is warm, you can't keep a good Russian inside. They all drive out to their dachas, which should take an hour or so but because EVERYONE is driving out to their dacha, it takes about 4 hours (no kidding). Once they are there, they enjoy the fresh air and the freedom to barbecue (the national past time of Russians, they love it). So what is a dacha? They often translate it as a country home but that isn't very descriptive. It is just a house outside of the city. The house can be as simple as having no running water or electricity or as sophisticated as a normal house in American suburbia. Often the little houses are squished together, where your neighbor is 10 feet away. But no matter the kind they have, Russians relish and cherish the ability to leave the city for a few days.


On May 1st the Russians celebrated "Workers Day". During the Soviet Union this was a huge holiday and everyone was "encouraged" to march through the streets holding banners that said, "World, Peace, and Labor." This holiday originated in the US but when the Soviets took it up as well, the Americans changed their appreciated for the workers to Labor Day. Today the holiday was celebrated with about 20,000 people march through the street in support of communism. Todd and I followed the march for a ways. It was quite somber. This might be due to the fact that most of the people marching were elderly, which means the members drop dramatically each year.

Some demonstrators.

I thought the line of police looked cool.

Finally, Russia celebrated their biggest holiday of the year, Victory Day, on May 9th. This is the day that Nazi Germany finally surrendered to the Allied forces in World War II. Since Russia lost as many as 20 million people in the war, Stalin made it a huge holiday and propaganda tool. I was discussing with a British girl how both our countries never bother to remember VE-Day or even VJ-Day. So Todd and I watched the military parade through Red Square on television because the event was only for VIPs or else we would have gone in person to watch. Then we headed to Gorky Park to check out the veterans. Usually the veterans receive flowers from children as sign of respect for their efforts during the war. I was surprised to realize that a lot of the veterans are women. They were employed as snipers, pilots, and of course nurses and doctors. It was funny to see them walking around with their chests covered in metals too!

Great Citizens!

One of the veterans.

Look! The fountains have been turned on!

The America ride.

Todd heard one of his favorite songs being played while scantily clad economic students danced. Moscow is truely a great city. (Give it a moment to play through and can you tell which song it is?)

Hopefully, as spring turns into summer, there will be more interesting things to talk about from sunny Moscow!

My friends took me to the park. Zhenya, Elena, Artyom, and Olga.