The Gallery: My Blog

This post is for week 55 of The Gallery: click here to see all the other fabulous entries...

Tara's prompt this week was - after last week's humdinger of 'Tomorrow' - billed by her as going to be easy. Tara, you fibbed; this week's prompt was 'My Blog'. How on earth to post a photograph that represents my blog? How on earth to show you in one or two pictures a representation of what my blog means to me?

Well, I couldn't do it. So I decided instead to focus on one aspect of what my blog means. Right now, the fact that I'm living in Russia experiencing things that I never thought I would, and being exposed to things that were so far from my previous central London reality, is a lot of what I write about. So I'm going to show you two things that I would not - as a matter of course - come across in South Kensington, and both of which were photographed here.

This first shot was taken last week and shows the latest in fashionable attire. Not for you and I, oh no. For dogs.

And the second is quite simply a beautiful photograph that I took on a walk through Izmailova last Autumn. I love the colours. And since this is My Blog, I feel at liberty to post whatever I want, just because...

Turn and turn about; the expat dance

Dammit.

It turns out that one of the biggest advantages of being an expat - the opportunity to make deep and meaningful friendships in a much shorter time frame than you would ever do in your home environment - is also one of the biggest disadvantages.

It's all very well being thrown together with a group of amusing, warm, outgoing, outward-looking individuals, many of whom are similarly at sea in this world of serial expat-ness and likewise wondering if they will ever manage to make it back into the work-place of their home town when they eventually get there, but it's another thing entirely when they start to up and leave in large numbers.

It happens every year of course, in Expat-ville's the world over. Do the maths; most serial expats (of which I am not one) do postings lasting 2 or 3 years. Occasionally these postings are extended to 5 years, but more often than not, just around the time a family is getting used to their surroundings and starting to feel like locals, it's time to repack the containers and be on their way. As a result, Boy #1's grade last year lost around 30% of it's pupils, and is set to lose somewhere around that number again this June.

This is one of those hardships that are ignored by people who speak dismissively of 'expat brats'. Sure, these children are often ridiculously privileged. Some of them have never seen their own parents drive a car in their country of residence, they are overly-sophisticated in many ways, and the thought of spending a school break just kicking around in their (temporary) home country instead of jetting off to their country of origin never even occurs to them. But look back at your own childhood, and whilst you may have made one or two new friends from time to time throughout your primary school life, I suspect that the same faces appeared year after year every September, often in the same class. Here, however, and as I understand it in many expat schools, even when children stay put classes are deliberately mixed up at the beginning of every school year. As a result, this school year Boy #1 was in the same class as only 2 of his friends from the previous one, and if we stay for another year (as is increasingly likely), that pattern will probably repeat.

On the plus side (and as the school rationalises), this does mean that children become very good at making new friendships. Which is lucky, given that most of them need to do this every 3 years or so in any case. On the downside, it also means an uneasy settling in period each September and that as a mum there's no comfort to be had in knowing which are the kids to invite back for tea and which to avoid at all costs because they will wreck your home and never say please or thank you (amazingly, not a skill that is universally taught).

It also means, from a purely selfish and metaphorical point of view, that good friends are leaving and that my 'class' is being mixed up too. And that makes me a little sad.

Silent Sunday

Contain your excitement; it's Wk 3 of Potski Spring Watch...

So, here we are at Week 3 of the Potski Front Flower Bed Spring Watch (note to self; MUST do something about that title).

Sigh.

Here it is.

As you can see, there have been vast improvements since last week. Vast. Spectacular. Look, I'll prove it to you. This week, again:

And last week:

This week:

Last week:

Oh, who am I kidding? There's no bloody change. In fact, there may even be more snow on the ground this week than last...

Sigh.

Time for another Potski reconstruction to alleviate the boredom, then. This week children, we're looking at a classic morning on the highway.

Just another day. Just another day when all the traffic feeds into the left-hand lane of the schosse (get me with my local word for highway) for no other reason than that each car wants to avoid the attentions of the two gentlemen on the left (heaven only knows what uniform they're wearing) and above all, avoid eye-contact with them as they drive to work.

It's well known here that the last - the absolute LAST thing you do when behind the wheel of a car is actually look directly at any semi-official person on the side of the road.

If you do mistakenly catch their eye, you stand a much higher chance of being directed out of the traffic and then encountering the scenario I described in last week's Front Flower Bed Spring Watch... Of course, this may also result in the odd accident when you look so hard in the other direction from the person in uniform that you don't notice the driver in front of you doing the same thing and not spotting you pulling in from the right, but... at least there will be a policeman nearby to deal with the paperwork.

Glass half-full. That's me.

The Gallery; Tomorrow

It's Week 54 of The Gallery (click here to see the other entries) and Tara's theme this time is 'Tomorrow'. Bless her - she does like to make life interesting, doesn't she? (Mutter mutter).

Initially I had a beautiful photograph of one of my sons all lined up. It was meant to represent all his tomorrows, and seemed to do the job quite well. I took it with a fancy camera and everything... Instead, though, I'm going to show you a snap I took with my mobile yesterday, when I took the Boys to the Darwin Museum here in Moscow. Unbelievably this museum was the first of it's kind - you have to love the Russians' lack of truck with creationism (the small 'c' was intentional, by the way; I'm not going to give it the compliment of using a capital letter) - and was established back in 1907.

Like most museums here each room is staffed by one or more scary-looking older ladies, who at first glance seem totally bored and not at all engaged by where they are. Often their sole role seems to be suck the fun out of the experience for small children, telling them to 'be quiet and for heaven's sake, stop showing so much damn enthusiasm!' The lady in the photograph below was, as you'll see, reading a magazine before Boy #2 and his friend rocked up. But after I took the photograph and looked at it properly, I reassessed.

Here she is, a lady probably in late 50's or early 60's (you might think she looks older but life can be hard here in Russia, especially for those who grew up during Soviet times, and it shows), still working. She's in an enriching and cultural environment. The chances are she's passionate about her subject and is a font of knowledge on all things Darwin and his Theory of Evolution related (if you ever engage these ladies in conversation they will usually astonish you with their depth of knowledge of the subject on display). She is looking warmly at two small boys in a way that makes me think she is probably a grandmother and enjoys her grandchildren's company. And - possibly quite importantly, for her anyway - her job allows her to sit down, read magazines, and perhaps even eat chocolate...

I don't necessarily imagine - or want - my Tomorrow to be like her Present. But if it includes some of the details I mentioned in the paragraph above, I don't think I'll be doing too badly.

It's Spring? Pull the other one...

Glancing out of our window yesterday, I saw three waxwings sheltering crossly in a tree.

The cold wind ruffled their feathers as they glowered out at the sleet, and if I could speak Waxwing I know exactly what they would have said to me; "For this we flew 1500 miles looking for Spring?"

Today, they've gone.

And frankly? I don't blame them.

(All of which is a roundabout way of saying that if I have to read one more tweet about how warm it is back in the UK right now...)

Silent Sunday