"...Wake Me Up at About Half Past May."

Do you recognize the quote from "Adventures of Frog and Toad?" It turns out Toad had it all figured out; May is proving to be a wonderful month to come out of hibernation. The weather here has been, in my opinion, just about perfect. It has been surprisingly dry, with temperatures mostly in the 40s and 50s during the day, but occasionally gets into the 60s and even hit 70 once! It seems like Novosibirsk is always windy so its a good thing Duluth helped us acclimate to that. On the rare occasion that the wind isn't blowing the dramatic drop in air quality helps us better appreciate the wind. Have I mentioned how much I dislike cities? But alas, we are living in one, and there are many aspects of it that we have come to really appreciate. Russian cities (and probably most cities outside the US) are of genius design, with public transportation and walking at the focus, and roads for cars the periphery. I still haven't figured out why anyone in this city owns a car! This past Saturday we spent the afternoon with a young family we have gotten to know

pretty well from English Club. They have a daughter, Alisa, that is Finn's age. We started the day out at English Club (5 minute walk, 15 minute metro ride, 10 minute walk) and then reconvened afterwards at a "culture park" 2 kilometers away. We walked to the park; they drove their car. Which was faster? Walking, of course! We ended up getting to the park and waiting for them for nearly 30 minutes!

There are "culture parks" scattered throughout the city (I'll have to ask Matt how many he thinks there are... I would guess well over a dozen). They consist of a large wooded area that is populated with hilarious looking squirrels, a surprisingly large carnival-type area complete with rides, bounce houses, remote control cars for kids to ride in, and vendors selling cheap toys from China. Some of the parks also have a small, free petting zoo where you can buy snacks to feed the animals.

This petting zoo had camels, ostriches, goats, reindeer, potbelly pigs, bunnies, raccoons and ponies that you could buy a ride on. The kids loved feeding the camels and reindeer. Finn and Alisa also enjoyed tumbling around in a huge bounce house while Lev tried to master riding Alisa's scooter. After the park, we went to the family's place for some lunch of homemade borscht. This time they made better time in their car, as we caught a rather slow trolley bus, but it went almost from door to door, so we didn't have to do any appreciable walking. This is the second time we have been to their place, and it is really neat to see how a rather typical Russian family lives. Their place is a small (~500 sqf), cluttered yet tidy, two room apartment (which means one bedroom, and what we would call a living room). It is amazing how much stuff (mostly toys) they can fit in there, but it all has it's place; Alisa definitely isn't deprived. The kitchen is a tiny little galley kitchen, but it is designed to be very efficient and she even has a miniature dishwasher (roughly 2 feet by 2 feet, it probably fits four place settings) under her kitchen sink!

A couple of weeks ago we went to a performance at the planetarium with Alisa and her parents. For that outing there weren't any convenient public transportation options so we took a taxi; it was about 20 minutes and $5 each

way. We were able to order a taxi with a car seat and add ours to it; it was pretty slick, although rather cozy in the back seat. We stashed the car seat in their vehicle for the afternoon, otherwise I'm not sure what we could do, short of carrying it around for the day.

The performance was... interesting... Russians have this funny idea that children need theater and culture starting at a really young age (I'm not saying I disagree, there just seems to be a excessive emphasis on it), and every performance (including things like the circus or aquarium) details the specific age group the show is geared toward. This particular show was for ages 3 and up, but they allowed Lev in as well. It was a really neat theater, much like a miniature I-Max, with reclined seats and a semi-circle screen overhead. Not knowing Russian, I didn't really follow much of what was going on. A cartoon pig was the main character (he appeared both on the screen overhead and as a person dressed in costume on the stage in front of us) that was lost in space, trying to find his way home. So he wandered past each of the planets telling us a little about each one. At one point we passed through an asteroid belt and in addition to meteors flying at us from the screen above, they actually launched massive balls into the audience,

sufficiently scaring Lev out of his skin. After we survived the asteroid belt, a creepy talking skull appeared on the screen and made us solve a riddle. He had a deep, booming voice, so that made almost every child under the age of 8 get scared and start to cry. Needless to say, it was an interesting Russian experience, much like the rest of them. :-)

Back to the weather, I'm starting to worry a bit about how we will survive the summer. I'm told it can get really hot, but then other people tell me it isn't so bad because it cools off at night. And I can't get a good gauge for what to expect for mosquitoes. Will it be like Duluth where the "summer is here!" honeymoon comes to a screeching halt right about Memorial Day weekend when the mosquitoes hatch? Oofta, I hope not. I'm also somewhat dreading the absurdly long days; Finn is pretty convinced he only needs to sleep when its dark out. Dawn currently starts before 5am and dusk is not until nearly 10pm and we still have a month and a half to go before we get to the solstice!

He must run out of energy eventually, right?

Lev's vocabulary continues to grow exponentially, and I'm getting better at understanding him. It is hard enough to understand new words from a 21-month-old, but when you first have to figure out which language he is using the challenge is compounded! He spends a lot of time mimicking Finn, and Finn is speaking more and more Russian, so maybe our plan is working? Last week most people had Wednesday-Friday off work for the May Day Holidays, which meant that this mama did not get a holiday from Finn on Wednesday or Friday. This week Thursday and Friday are federal holidays as well for Victory Day. Why can't we have 14 federal holidays a year?!

I suppose because I tattled on mom and dad for accidentally buying a duck, I should share my latest chicken buying fail. I bought what I thought were chicken thighs for a chicken and rice casserole we were making for the workers, only to discover upon opening the package, they were chicken backs! Matt kindly ran out and got a whole chicken to part out, and the chicken backs are simmering on the stove for a wholesome bone broth. It turns out there is not very much meat on chicken backs.

Finn is determined to potty train Lev and I'm not complaining. Yes, that's a toy gun Finn found on the playground; we aren't in 'merica anymore.