Let me start with two quick apologies. First off, I’m terribly sorry to have filled your email with all those photos. You would think that by now I’d have the hang of it, but for some reason you got a whole lot more moussaka than I intended. From now on I’ll limit photos to postings on the web as opposed to attachments to emails. My second mea culpa has to do with forgetting to wish grandson Aidan a happy birthday yesterday. You would think that with two other relatives sharing the same birthday, I would have remembered that I had a third, but my mind has reached new dimensions in dementia! Happy Belated Birthday Aidan.
We had our latest language lesson last night and at the end of the seventy-five minutes my head was hurting again. We love our tutor; she is smart, has a sense of humor and really knows how to teach people Russian grammar and syntax. If we were scheduled to live here for the next ten years, we would be throwing ourselves into the finer points of hard and soft consonants. However, all we want to do is learn how to order in restaurants, get gas, navigate public transportation, shop in stores and be able to meet and greet people. Last night she started by having us repeat, endlessly, ‘Do you know what this is? Yes (no) I do (don’t). It is xxxx.’ I started to write down in Byxbee phonetic spelling what she was saying and got yelled at. I was supposed to just listen to what she said and repeat it back, with no visual reference. I have a hard enough time trying to speak Russian when I have the words in front of me, but trying to be a parrot just doesn’t work for me. In fact, I think I sounded worse than Joey did learning French in that long-ago episode of “Friends.” We’ll work on getting her to do some basics with us over the several sessions. (From CC: Wm is right – I’ll settle for being able to remember and say the nouns she is teaching us; it’s way beyond me to say the whole sentence with proper verb endings. OK, you try it: Da ya znayu shto eto – or better yet, да я знаю что это.)
After our lesson and after some Skype Thanksgiving sessions we headed to the Georgian place for our Thanksgiving dinner. We had a new waiter this time who spoke some English but was only too happy to work with us on ordering in Russian. In fact, he provided us with lots of good new words that he wrote down phonetically. We had our usual appetizers and Cindy ordered the quail and I had the lamb kebab. He reappeared a few minutes later telling us that the quail was gone, which happens every other visit. Cindy instead had a very lovely salad, which she enjoyed immensely. When the waiter brought the bill I asked him if he smoked and he said yes. I still had Marlboro cigarettes that I had purchased in Duty Free for the driver who never showed on a return trip to Moscow some time ago, so I gave him one pack. He looked shocked and read the package and said, ‘From the USA?’ I said yes and he grinned like a little kid at Christmas. We hope we have him again!
When we arrived we noticed two gentlemen sitting at the next table with huge platters of meats and veggies and a big plate of parsley. They were drinking beer and vodka like it was going out of style and continued to do so the entire time we were there. They were having a grand old time and periodically Cindy and I could even understand some of what they were saying. Since we had just practiced our numbers we heard them talking numbers and while we didn’t have the context, we did have the numbers. As we were leaving one of them said to us, in Russian, ‘You eat too little’. We smiled and said thank you and he asked us if we were English. We said no, we were American and he stood up and shook our hands as his friend stood up and ordered us to sit down and have vodka with them. Cindy was tired and had another early morning but this was the first time we had been asked to join Russians and we decided we (I) would have one vodka and then leave. The older of the two, who spoke a bit of English and a bit of Italian, took Cindy’s coat and said ‘Made in China’, which we thought was a bit odd. We said no, made in the USA by Land’s End. NO, he said, Made in China! I took the jacket and found the tag, which said, Made in China. I was surprised that Land’s End would have clothes from China but I guess everyone does. It turns out this guy - Vladimir Dormidontov - deals in fabrics for furniture and clothing and he knew just by touching the fabric that it was made in China. These gentlemen were from Minsk in Belarus and were waiting for their train to head home, so they were killing time eating and drinking. They offered us some of their food, which I had and loved, and then came the carafe of vodka and a red wine for Cindy. We all toasted, and the men threw back the vodkas, my first time doing that, and I must say I enjoyed it. As soon as we placed the empties on the table they passed around the parsley, which I guess is a custom, and it tasted really delicious and according to Cindy, really covered the smell of the vodka. I did limit myself to one drink and we spent about fifteen minutes with these guys, having a grand old time in Russian. Cards were exchanges, promises to come and visit made, and then we were out of there. It is this kind of exchange that is delightful and unexpected and if we could do that every night, we would learn Russian really fast.
Here is an interesting, if somewhat disturbing, article on how the Moscow Metro is going to the Dogs. Thus far I’ve only seen bums, who exhibit the same skills as these dogs, but I’m sure the dogs smell better. And just to make sure all of you cat lovers have something to look at, check out these wimpy felines.
I’ve been told we’ll be four for dinner so I have to go get creative! Happy Weekend, Cindy and Wm
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