Views around town...

I've been showing our co-workers around town so I took a few pics myself. While we were walking around town I bumped into Dolgarmaa (the oldest mongolian girl). So good to see a familiar face!!!! We will probably start up our English club again starting on Friday- seems they still want to do it and we sure enjoy it. Time for bed....

Winter Playground

Usually they build the ice sculptures and slides right downtown by the theatre but lucky for us it looks like they will be building it by the museum now which is right across the street from us! So we can get to it more often- on the way to the store or on the way to the office. Sure was cold though but the kids still had a great time. There is a really tall slide too but we didn't go on it yesterday. maybe today.

The plan for today is to walk to the center of asia and see the Buddhist temple etc. We are hoping it isn't -40C again :) I'm not sure it did get that cold yesterday, maybe just -36 or -38C but we were so so cold. I think we will get used to it though...we had those strange 15C days in Calgary before we left :)

Happy New Year!!!!

Today is the Tuvans New Year's Day (they call the holiday Shagaa). Last night they all stayed up all night (as the gods look in the apartments to see if anyone is at home sleeping instead of being at the theatre or up somewhere with friends) and then in the morning they had campfires (preferably up on the mountain). There are a few more traditions but those are two that we have heard over and over so I'm sure are fairly accurate. Apparently if you sleep on New Year's Eve night you will have bad luck the whole year. I didn't sleep much last night but David slept the whole night through- we'll see what happens :)

Today they have some things set up downtown and have a concert in the theatre. David is there now with our co-workers- so glad they will get to hear some throatsinging and see some traditional tuvan dancing as well. I took these pictures this morning, they were just starting to get things set up.

Super cold today- should be -40 C they say. brrrrrrrrrrr I can't believe the tuvans don't wear mittens/gloves. Sometimes they do but most of the time the don't. yikes. they are tough.

Good to be back with our Tuvan friends...

Today we called up our friends Aldunai and Edik (and their son Tumiin) to let them know we are back and they immediately invited us over. She made her manti (little meat dumplings) which are soooo good and we were also able to introduce our future co-workers to them which was what we were hoping would happen. We really appreciate this Tuvan family- they are so hospitable and easy going and we always enjoy our time with them. They will have a new little baby in the summer...so glad we will be here with them.

Today is like New Year's Eve again as it is Tuvan (Chinese) New Year tomorrow. They call it Shagaa here (and in Mongolia I think). We will head downtown tomorrow morning to see what kind of things are going on as far as celebrations. We know that many gather in the theatre downtown to spend the night in prayer, or dreams and they play chess and stay up all night. We don't really understand it all yet but we'll learn a little more about it tomorrow. I'm going to sleep though :) I'm not sure if there will be fireworks tonight- I'll find out soon.

Today...

Emma played for quite a while outside today but when her friends kept calling and asking for her to come outside to play more I suggested they come in and play. We really enjoyed having Alina, Orlanaa, Valeriya, and Anyuta over. They are so sweet and we just love them all so much....can't wait to spend the next few years with these young girls...

Funny thing was that they called this morning (while david was out at a meeting) to ask if David could come out to play. When I said he wasn't home they said to tell him hi from them and then they asked if Emma could come out to play. These girls don't have fathers in most cases, or if they do they aren't close with them like David is to our kids so they absolutely love to spend time with him. He really does a great Russian barbie voice.

Today is mens day here in Russia. (I think my man is pretty fine...)

Emma and Oorlanaa

If you asked Emma who what friend she missed the most while she was in Canada her answer was always Oorlanaa- even the boys would talk about Oorlanaa lots. Well..here she is. It was so great to see Emma and Oorlanaa out there chatting and playing together. If only it was summer they'd stay out the whole day but after about an hour Emma just has to come in because she is frozen!!! We will have to have Emma's friends over sometime soon so they can play without being so cold.

We will have to get set up with some tuvan teachers soon- we are anxious to speak in Tuvan instead of Russian with the tuvan people. Yesterday at the store, when david was buying some food the lady told david the price etc. all in tuvan...she realized what she had done and apologized. (not that David minded... he asked her if he looked Tuvan and she said- yes, very tuvan with a smile :) We would love for the store clerks to be able to speak to us in Tuvan... hopefully soon we will be able to...better work on those numbers and phrases.

Icy Playground

I haven't got our kids to it yet, but just a block away from us is an area with ice sculptures and ice slides etc. set up. It's just so cold I can't imagine playing there for a reasonable amount of time but I think we are slowly getting used to it again:)

Drive through the Sayan Mountains

The last part of the journey is the 6-7 hour taxi ride from Abakan to Kyzyl. (there is no train route yet and there are no flights) It was so snowy there this time...beautiful...but unfortunately you couldn't see the real tall mountain peaks. I thought we'd have a tough time driving through the area as the road had been closed because of so many avalanches and so much snow on the roads. You can see how high the snow banks were on the sides of the road. But our drivers (the guy we usually get Igor, drove David and our bags and his brother Kostya drove the rest of us) have good cars and even though they drive very very fast we never slipped or had any troubles at all. The kids were great on the drive so we just sat back and relaxed and enjoyed the beautiful views. Our windows were all frosted up so I only got a few pics. There are tons of ski areas on the way, maybe when the kids are older we'll take a trip out there to ski. Anyway, now we are here- we are so thankful for how easy the travelling was. We are busy unpacking and trying to find all the stuff we packed away before leaving. We are really looking for all our warm clothing cause it is freezing!!!! So I'm gonna get back to unpacking...

Last Train Pictures

our little friend Matthew
Josiah and Hudson having a little dance party on the train

Back with their Tuvan friends...

This top picture is the first time we sent them out to play in our playground... there weren't any kids out and it was sooooo cold. Emma, Josiah and Hudson just looked up at our building hoping that their friends would see them and a few minutes later....they all came out!!! Well...not all of them but most of the main ones. It was saturday afternoon so many of the kids would be at school as they have school Mon-Sat here.

Emma and Josiah are just out again and as soon as they went out I could hear kids coming down the stairs to go out to play with them. It thrills us to see that the tuvan kids remember and enjoy our kids so much. You get scared that it won't be the same after you've been gone...but we can tell that nothing has changed...

I see Emma chatting away out there so I'm guessing her russian will be back to where it used to be soon! Even Huddy is so involved out there now with the other kids....so nice. I enjoy sitting by the window here watching them interact with the others. Yay!!!

First load of train pictures....

phew. i forgot how incredibly slow the internet is here...and I already forgot to disconnect once...not good when you pay per minute. I'm sure I'll be doing that again...not used to this process :)

Anyway, here are some pictures of our ride, there are still more to come but it just takes so long to upload that this is all you get for now :) We seem to be back to normal as far as sleeping. We got SOOOOOOOOO much sleep on the train as there isn't much else to do and the rocking motion really puts us to sleep easily. One day Josiah went to sleep at noon and didn't wake up till 5 am the next morning. Crazy. he still took a nap the next day and slept normal the next night. So we are completely rested up and ready for work/play. Our apartment will take a bit of work to get back to normal as I had packed up everything before we left because I knew that everything that was left out on the shelves etc. would be covered in coal and it is!!!!

It really is great to be back...we feel so at home here and our neighbours light up when they see us which of course makes us happy. Thanks so much for thinking about us...

P.s. Laura- those mugs are the traditional train mugs. they are just the silvery holders with glass cups in them...very cool. We were having coffee- if you call it that. Those packages of instant coffee that have cream and sugar already in them... they do the job but well....we miss Tim Horton's already:)

We travelled with our future co-workers (they will join our team this summer). It was great to have the company on the train- Bobbie did great entertaining the kids, blowing bubbles and reading to them. Thanks Bobbie! (i usually just make them look out the window:)