Friday, 10 September 2010

Mailing Address

Timothy Gardner
Ul. Kalyaeva #167
Krasnodar, Russia
350047

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A Whirl of Gaiety

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Saturday, 12 June 2010 23:47

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Did you ever read the Little House on the Prairie books? Not only did I read them over and over as a kid, but a few years ago I re-read them as an adult, and loved them more than ever. I’ve always been amused by one particular chapter in the 6th book, Little Town on the Prairie. The chapter is called, “A Whirl of Gaiety,” and it chronicles one week in 16 year-old Laura’s life, when she’s living in the town of DeSmet, Iowa. I’m not sure of all the details, and I can’t look them up, because that’s one of the books Tim’s already shipped back to America, but I remember that the description of that week’s events included things like an ice cream social, a debate club meeting, and a night of community charades at the schoolhouse. In the end, Ma Ingalls collapses into a chair, declaring that the “whirl of gaiety” has been too much, and she’ll be glad when things get back to normal. 

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Advice from the Other Side of the Front Seat

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Thursday, 03 June 2010 13:59

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In my last post, I mentioned that we’ve already sold our car. Plus, half our furniture is gone (the other half is bought, but by the grace of the buyers, not yet collected.) In a big sense, it feels like we’re back at the beginning. I remember one particularly painful and humbling moment 2 1/2 years ago, when Tim and I sat on our bathroom floor with a Russian-English dictionary and our brand-new clothes washer, trying to figure out what the words written on the front of it meant. You haven’t felt humble until you’ve been unable to wash your own socks because you can’t read the instructions about how to do it. We had no furniture; no beds for the children.... Now, with no car, we’re back to The Good Old Days of taking public transportation everywhere we go (not for the faint of heart, when the heat and humidity are 80/80,) and, when the food shortage in the cupboards finally becomes too pressing to ignore, calling taxis to take us to the supermarket for A Big Shopping.

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Everything, Plus the Kitchen Sink

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Wednesday, 02 June 2010 16:04

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When we got back to Krasnodar this time, we had a Great Plan in place for selling off our household stuff. It involved carefully timed and orchestrated advertisements placed with local churches, especially the big Baptist church “where all the money is,” as we were told; we would tell certain people who know certain people in the market for large items of furniture; we would announce it in the business community, where the more well-off people have money to burn... But we never got a chance to do that. No sooner had I gone through the house and made a list of items for sale, and no sooner had we listed our car on the internet… when Garage Sale Fever hit Krasnodar with a vengeance.

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