Part of my world

Back by popular demand, pictures of Russia.First off, we have the demonic duo: the scary looking bear and rabbit team who greets us every morning. Say goodbye to them, because they're being moved into a box on our balcony for the duration of our stay. No offense, Valya.

Second, we have our friendly neighborhood power plant. When I told Cecily I thought I'd be grateful for even a four-legged child after all the weird places Charles and I have lived, she said, "Well, the easiest thing to do is to line all of your clothes with lead." That's why she's my best friend.

We recently found a little pizzeria on the other side of the building behind ours, and we quite like it. The waitress recognizes us when we walk in, and knows automatically that Charles will have a Coke and I'll have a Fanta. The first time we went there, she complimented Charles on his Russian after she heard us speaking English and realized that he was actually American. That made me very proud!

They don't have American style pizza; they have more Italian style pizza, and it's good. Very thin crust and sweet tomato sauce. I really want to try their pork chops next. They're pretty cheap, and they haven't made us sick yet, so we're very optimistic! They're such a cute little family that runs the place.

This car says "Sputnik" on it in Cyrillic if you look closely. Makes me laugh everytime I see it. Charles just finished reading a very interesting book about the space race and the cold war. It was called Red Moon Rising. Sounds pretty funny, from what he's told me about it.

There are all these aluminum storage units around the apartment buildings here, and they almost all have murals on them. Some of them have summer scenes and some of them have winter scenes. I personally would want a summer scene so that I can have a bit of summer during the long, cold, dark, Russian winters. I always long for summer, but I detest winter at all times. Everyone always seems to talk about how dark Russian winters are, because they hardly get any sunlight at all here during the winters. But nobody told me to expect so much sunlight during the summer! The sun goes down around midnight, and it comes up around four or five am. I'm loving all the sunshine! Sometimes it makes me grumpy to be woken up so early, but it's really nice to go for late walks with Charles while the sun is still up.

There is a really nice playground right outside our building. Actually, all the buildings around here have big playgrounds. This is a newer area, and it's pretty spread out, so I don't know if this is the norm, but it's cool! The sad thing is, the baboushkas are still bundling the babies so warmly that I'm always afraid they're going to overheat! It's JUNE for crying out loud! It makes me kind of mad, but I've never seen any of them faint or anything.

This picture has a better view of our building. We're the big skyscraper behind the playground. On the other side of the playground there's an auto repair place. I wonder if that's why we hear car alarms all hours of the day. It's just background noise to us now, so we don't really notice it except at four am when it's the only sound!

Charles and I are feeling tons better, minus a migraine this morning, so we're going to be out and about more, and you can expect more pictures soon! We'll leave you with our beautiful self-portaits from when we went to dinner the other night. Don't be jealous of our beauty. Some get brains, some get talent, some get beauty, and some get it all. What can I say?