Weekend Wonderland

TGIF!  Cindy needs rest and lots of it. Her schedule this week has been even more hectic than normal. Last night she didn’t get home until 5:45, which isn’t too bad if you don’t consider the fact that she left school at 4:30 in an effort to get home in time for us to review our language lessons before our tutor arrived at 6 pm.  For the past two days the only way that Cindy knows what I do all day is to read the blog!  We have no plans for the weekend, except for the gala on Sunday afternoon. We’ll not invite anyone over for dinner but will instead be selfish with our time and just hang together.

The lesson last night went pretty well for the first half hour. We got her to work with us on common nouns, kitchen stuff mostly, so that we can communicate in a restaurant when we need a fork or spoon or a glass of something. But it wasn’t long before we were right back into the agreement of pronouns in various nominative cases!  Boggles the brain, especially for me since I have no idea what that means in English, much less in Russian. I’ve been trying to figure out how I might have used that information when dealing with my cashier yesterday.  Mercifully, that was our last lesson for a while. We are taking her to dinner next Thursday in an effort to learn restaurant vocabulary, customs and practices.  In only two weeks from tomorrow we’ll be jetting home to West Virginia for a quick holiday respite.

Happy New Year, Russian Style

While shopping yesterday I purchased two holiday things, my concession to decorating the apartment for Christmas.  I hung the decorations so that Cindy would be surprised.  I thought the colorful sign said Merry Christmas, so it was I who was surprised when our tutor said it meant Happy New Year. (Have I mentioned how well I’m learning the Cyrillic alphabet!)?  She told us that New Year was the big event and that Christmas was just a holiday in Russia. We’ll miss both!

 By the time the lesson was done we barely had time to have a drink, while Skyping, and then I dashed into the kitchen to make some dinner since it was too cold to go out and we were both too tired.  I made a passable cheese/mushroom omelette with sliced tomatoes and pan-fried leftover smashed garlic potatoes.  We tried a new Gewurztraminer from Marlborough, NZ, which makes lovely Sav. Blancs but horrible Gewurztraminers. It was far too spicy/fruity/sweet and overpowered everything. Luckily we still had a grand Touraine so the meal was saved.

Mushroom/Cheese Omelette 

Today the temp is up to a lovely 15 degrees with overcast clouds and slight wind. This is much more hospitable weather. Tomorrow we are expecting temperatures in the mid to upper thirties, which I’m sure everyone will welcome, even if it does come with snow. We are lucky that we aren’t getting hit with the snow and bitter cold that is sweeping though Europe. Poland had temperatures that were 25 degrees below zero yesterday and it appears that most flights and trains are having real problems with running on schedule.  It is so nice that we don’t have to travel anywhere for a few weeks.   

Have a great weekend, I know we shall, Cindy and Wm