Victory Park

Here is Leah at the Victory Park metro stop. There are other stops with art I like better than this one, but this stop was the only one that was not so crowded that we could actually take a picture. Victory Park is celebrating World War II as well as the defeat of Napoleon. I find it interesting that all the fountains remind me of the WWII memorial in Washington DC.

Here we are on the train which was explaining all about the park, but of course I didn't understand any of it. I was also too busy retraining the children. Shortly after this picture was taken, Oliver dived over and started hugging Leah to death. He would not let go and when I'd pull him off of her he'd scream and lunge back at her. Sibling Love! He was just paying Leah back for all the times she has "hugged him" but really just wrestled him and smashed his face into the carpet.

This is the train we riding in the picture above.

Leah playing by the fountain. There were other "naughty" kids swimming in it and poor Leah wanted to swim in it so badly, but we didn't let her.

Taking a break and cooling off in the shade. I actually don't know how hot it has been, but it has felt pretty darn warm lately, though I know nothing compared to what we are missing in Maryland right now so we are not complaining too much.

Crap Dogs

Here is one of the things we see when we go out. There aren't too many Russian fast foods, but we do see Crap Dogs all over the place. I mean EVERYWHERE. This one is in Mitino - the closest subway stop to our current house. There is one across the street parallel with this one, and one across the street perpendicular. Does that make sense?

It is actually not Crap Dogs, it is Star Dogs, but the way the cyrillic works out it looks like crap dogs kind of. In this picture you don't see a line, but maybe that is due to the fact that there are 2 others a stone's throw away.

The one by the Embassy has lines 10 people deep at 9:30 in the morning. I've never seen it a lunch. Levin is the only American I know that eats at crapdogs. He gets one served in a wrap with mashed potatoes added on top.

There are other stands that sell Scharma. It is like shaved meat in a wrap, with kind of like coleslaw mixed in. I've had bites of 3 different ones. One not so good, one so-so, and one really good one. The other Russian fast food store is Kartoshka. It is baked potatoes. I got one once and it was heavenly. I'll try to get a picture some other time. I don't actually know if these are Russian Russian, but they are not American and they are in Russia so that is why I call them Russian.

Where We Live

I know I've been a slacker blogger, but there isn't too much interesting stuff going on. I mean look at this picture of our front door. It doesn't exactly look fascinating. You can see one of the workmen. They've been working our our front steps so we've actually not been able to use our front door a lot. Unfortunately, this isn't the workman who doesn't wear a shirt under his overalls, or it might be more interesting.

This is the view if you look the other way out our front door. You see the neighbors' garages. Exciting I know.

Here are Leah and Oliver playing hop scotch out our back door. Oliver crawls all over the roughest of surfaces. Today he was trying to use his feet more instead of his knees. Maybe the pain of it will inspire him to walk .. . or maybe his calluses will just get thicker.

This is actually just our temporary home. We are moving to the Embassy compound in a little more than a week. We are excited to be downtown, but there is less outdoor space there and a little less privacy.

Olivers Style Of Eating

Oliver has a new style of eating. He doesn't like to put things in his own mouth. He'll just throw them on the floor until I do it. BUT he discovered he can eat like a dog and lap up his food and still maintain his easiness of not actually lifting his had to his mouth.

PETA's Not Here I Guess

Here we are in our fur purchases. I wish I could remember what animal they are made out of but I cannot remember!

Madam Leah.
Fur Hat #1. They had many that were a lot poofier, but with my giant head I thought this was as big as I dared.

I am spoiled and got two fur hats. This one is crocheted and then fur whipped into it so more like a stocking cap. I like it better and it covers my ears more. Levin said I should get the first one because he thinks it will be warmer and that is what matters more than vanity. We'll see.

Her is Levin. He does a good impression of a drunk Russian when he wears this hat. Well, I haven't actually seen too many drunks yet to know if it is accurate, but it is funny.

Almost two years ago we found out we were having a baby and that we were going to Russia all right together. This is what I envisioned, a baby in a fur hat. Unfortunately, this is too big for Oliver, we couldn't find anything smaller, and he hates it. This is actually Leah's on him here.

If you noticed some boxes in the background it is because we received our air shipment on Friday. Imagine, we were here for 2 weeks before our air shipment arrived, vs. Nigeria where we were there for 3 months. Wow! How did we survive?

shopping at ismailovsky park

Levin accidentally posted these pictures to my blog thinking they were on his family's blog. So they've been here for a while before I had time to come explain them. Saturday we went shopping at Ismailovsky park. It is the outdoor market to buy all your souveniers and other random things. It was so nice and clean and more "orderly" than a market in Nigeria. By that I mean if we left a stall no one followed around trying to get us to buy and no one was grabbing at us begging us to look at their stuff. It was relaxing instead of stressful.
Here Oliver and I are modeling some of our purchases. We said we wouldn't buy anything the first 6 months, but hm . . . and maybe we didn't keep the exchange rate as clear in our mind as we should have. Oh well. We got an Uzbekistan plate for me. Oliver and Leah got this matroshka doll. We figured we'd buy them a cheap one now and let them play with it, i.e. destroy it and then buy them a nicer one to take home with us towards the end of our time here.

Here i am at th market. Looking at fur hats. Yes it was hot, and strange to be trying on fur hats, but we wanted to get them off-season for a better price, or so the sales man told us. Levin and I were talking to each other in English and the guy kept dropping the price. Nice.

Here we are picking out m plate. The kids were quite well behaved. Behind me you can see a stand selling matroshkas. There were several of those. I think that one is actually the one we bought our doll from though. Sadly they don't sell many "manly" ones so we just had Oliver share Leah's girly one.

We did see one that had football teams. They had the University of Utah so Levin asked why they didn't have BYU. They said that the men in white shirts that pray to God always come and buy them. We assume he meant the missionaries. Maybe next time.

Russian Cereal

We found our first love of Moscow. I don't know how to get a computer to type cyrillic so here is how it sounds - padushetchke. It has maybe almost replaced fruit snacks as Leah's favorite food. We don't have fruit snacks so this has to work. It is cereal, but we eat it as dessert, snack, and breakfast. According to Levin, it means pillowcase (I don't know enough Russian to know if he is right). It is a cereal with a little filling almost like a little frosting inside or something.
Leah is holding vanilla ones, but they come in more flavors. Here is another brand.
They are chocolate and carmel. We've also had blueberry (not so good) and strawberry. I am a little embarassed at how many boxes we have eaten in our 2 weeks here, but they are just so darn good! And in our defense, the boxes are small. Leah always begs for them and is quite good at saying their name right.