Merry Christmas!

I'm sitting in an uncomfortable airport chair at Schiphol International, babysitting piles of backpacks and coats while the girls are off finding sandwiches and real European milk. European milk, for the record, rocks our world. We have no idea how they do it but European cows are happy cows. We needed a dose of happy cow after spending three hours sitting on a plane with not one but three under four year-olds screaming within a two row vicinity for what, 1/2 the plane ride? KLM has civilized food (couscous salad, Greek style), Russians are the worst airplane passengers I think I have ever seen and I am grateful for new Christmas headphones. Wanted to wish you all Happy Christmas (the British way) and hope that you aren't stranded in an airport somewhere or waiting for lost luggage, that you are with family or people you love and can enjoy the gift of the season. Tomorrow we will be in the land of yodeling, crepes and Gruyere cheese with the Swiss branch of our family. We love and miss our friends around the world--from our beloved Kangs, Brimhalls, Densleys, Benners, Packhams, Chelsea, Laurel and Bridget in Portland, the Clayton and Jarman clans scattered around the Western US, friends along the Wasatch front--too many to list--and friends from the Moscow branch who are scattered to the winds until the Russian holidays are over. We are thinking of you and remembering you fondly!

When it isn't so glamorous to be an expat

A lot of people hear about our travel schedule and think that we're just a regular group of Paris Hiltons jet setting around the globe. Believe me when I say that travel is the safety valve of our existence. I have logged many, many hours in coach class, meditating my way to sanity in spite of the stench of the Aeroflot fish selections, simply because I can't stand Moscow for one second longer. There's a reason why Moscow, Russia is ranked between Nicaragua and Tripoli, Libya in terms of difficulty and desirability of expat assignments. There are some cool things. Case in point: today, Emmy-winning Daily Show writer Kevin Bleyer was the guest speaker in my daughter's English class. Not many junior English students have such interesting lecture material. Last night, would I have cared about "The Daily Show?" Not really. Yesterday Abby came home from school sick. Not so much home as my friend Carolyn's house in Pokrovsky Hills, the expat compound adjacent to school. I've been camping there during the week because I've been substitute teaching early morning seminary. I'd sleep on Carolyn's couch, snuggling with her miniature schnauzer Kate, do some reading for my Latin American history class and eat lunch at the school. Since we had so many school events this week it was nice to be close by. At first, I thought Abby was simply exhausted from lack of sleep and school stress. By around 4PM, it became clear we would have to skip her choir performance. By 7PM, she was doubled over in pain, running a fever and crying because of her misery. This presented me with a problem. I couldn't tell from her symptoms exactly what she had. She didn't present with classic stomach flu symptoms like vomiting or cramps. Her whole belly was sensitive and the pain seemed centered in the mid to lower right-hand quadrant of her abdomen. Hubby's family has a history of appendicitis before age 20 so a malfunctioning intestine was not out of the question. The level of her pain troubled me, the violent nausea and the sudden onset of fever were bad signs. I called my friend the nurse, called the European Medical Center (useless--the triage nurse barely spoke English) and figured out what taxis I could call in the middle of the night that had dispatchers that spoke English and operated 24 hours a day. Our driver lives a good 45 minutes away without traffic. There's no way he could make it in a timely fashion. Have I mentioned how much I hate Moscow traffic? It's worse right now because the Russians are out 24/7 shopping for New Year's, spending everything they have since they think the ruble is going to collapse in a few months. She finally collapsed on the couch in a fitful sleep. Her fever stayed elevated. I haven't felt that kind of panic since my children were little. I'm stuck in a compound on the outskirts of a city that has traffic jams at 6:30AM with no car, no doctor I'd find trustworthy within 5 kilometers of my house and waiting to see if my daughter has a gastrointestinal virus or whether she'd need surgery. I have no pharmacy that's trustworthy within 5 kilometers (counterfeit drugs are an issue in Russia). The temperature is hovering around -6 to -8 Celsius, lower with wind chill. It's a special kind of stress you feel in moments like that. I even bought a bottle of vodka to have on hand in case we had to give her an alcohol bath to get her fever down (an old trick I learned from my Indian cooking teacher/friend Anita). No way you can use Tylenol when pain is the only symptom you can follow. I slept on the couch beside Abby, waking up periodically to check on her fever and her pain level. By about 3AM I was satisfied that it wasn't appendicitis and I crawled in my bed to sleep for two hours. I taught seminary and discussed why sometimes we are more 'Glinda' from Wicked than 'Elphaba'--what can I say? My brain was having serious serotonin deprivation issues. I missed the trip to the children's cancer hospital because Abby's insides weren't cooperating. I baked cookies for the mission's Christmas zone conference, talked to a sister missionary whose bank card is coming with my daughter on Saturday, edited my college daughter's paper on Russia/EU relations, slept for an hour because I had a headache that would slay an elephant and tried to catch up on the laundry. My friends Elke, Gloria and Sister Cranney, the mission mom, and I all talked about what we're going to do when the economy crashes and the grocery shipments to Moscow start being hijacked and compared notes on the latest attempt by the Kremlin to shut down free speech. One twin staggered home on time. The other twin called at 6:30PM to tell us that she'd been in a school bus crash, that she was fine, but that they were stranded until they could find another vehicle to bring them to our compound. At least they travel with an armed security guard. One twin is only halfway through the biology lab from hell (2800 words so far); the other pleaded with me to let her stay home tomorrow. She's about two notches above the walking dead. Elke did let me know that she would be available 24 hours a day to take us to the EMC in Moscow Center should it come to that. Bless Elke. I may be able to sleep without taking a Benadryl tonight. I may be able to relax without stress eating my way through my only remaining box of Nilla Wafers. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Abby has watched all of "Psych" season 1 today. She's now working her way through "Monk" season 3--on German DVDs borrowed from St. Elke the Good. We heard this morning that Sara was upgraded to business class on her connecting flight to JFK tomorrow. This may mean the difference between wheeling her out of Sheremetyvo on a luggage cart or her walking out of her own volition after inevitable weather/air traffic delays. And so, gentle readers, don't be fooled by the travelogues. Life as an expat isn't all cultural enrichment and family pictures taken in front of iconic landmarks. Sometimes its sleeping on your crappy IKEA couch with nothing to watch but "Russia Today" propaganda, fingers crossed that you won't be stuck in holiday traffic at 2AM and fantasizing about "Target" and PF Changs lettuce wraps. When I inevitably write about my upcoming trips to Switzerland and Paris, France, please remember that I would trade my frequent jaunts to Europe for a WallMart--especially after a night like last night.

The Ghosts of Nazis and Stazi Past

I grew up believing that one day, a nuclear warhead from the USSR would land on the Air Force base not 30 miles from my home, and that I would die a slow painful death from radiation poisoning. We didn't need Chucky or Bride of Chucky or "Saw 5" to be scared: we had the KGB. Imagining being trapped behind the Iron Curtain, on the run, praying you'd make Checkpoint Charlie in West Berlin without first getting a bullet in your back was enough to make me break out in a cold sweat. When I watched the Berlin Wall come down on CNN, I witnessed something that I never, in my lifetime, had I fathomed would be possible. Two weeks ago, I saw several sections of the Berlin Wall, standing where they would have stood 25 years ago in no-man's land, but this time surrounded by bustling shoppers, burdened with bags, rushing from the glamorous, glass train station to the Potsdamer Plaz mall. This area had been the busiest square in Europe pre-WWII, before being bombed out in air raids and left desolate for decades during the Cold War. I had never imagined I would see this place outside of the pages of a John LeCarre novel. The prosperity and glitz of post-unification is on display wherever you care to look. And yet there is enough evidence of the past to make me shiver as I passed scarred building facade, riddled with bullet holes, imagining what these walls would say if they could speak. When I passed Tempelhof Airport on our way into the city center, I saw both Hitler's vision for a grand and glorious reich and the Berlin Airlift. The Reichstag, standing near the massive memorial to the Jewish holocaust, stands as an eeire reminder of the glorious old Germany, post WWI Weimar Republic. The Brandenburg Gate, illuminated for nighttime and Christmas, recalled both John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan ordering Gorbachev to tear down the wall. In Dresden, I sensed the ghosts in the soot-blackened surfaces of so many baroque buildings and in the new Frauenkirche, rebuilt primarily by money raised in the US and Britain whose air forces destroyed the heart of Dresden in their firebombing in 1945. I heard the Bach Christmas Oratorio performed in the Frauenkirche; Bach himself played in the original Frauenkirche. Everywhere I looked on the road from Berlin to Dresden, I saw the stark, stripped down Soviet-style architecture, spruced up so it was less bleak (my favorite was an apartment building that had been painted bright yellow with a massive red lobster logo stenciled on the side), but still it was a reminder of the time when Germany was East and West. Then and now. Us and them. As much as we move on from the past, we don't; as F.Scott Fitzgerald says in The Great Gatsby, "So we beat on, boast against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

The weirdness that is my life

I returned from Germany early Sunday morning. Lovely trip that I will blog about. Bach in the Dresden Cathedral. Ghosts of Nazis past. City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style...all of it was a much needed respite from the rat race that is Moscow. But this isn't where my head is this morning. I realized after I'd woken up that will have been in 7 countries between October 1 and the end of the New Year's holidays. Most of those countries are places I've never visited until this year. I don't even dream about the US anymore. There was a time when I'd wake up and took a moment to remember that I lived in Russia. Now if anyone speaks to me in English I nearly pass out with shock. My daughter's high school has enough in common with "Gossip Girl" that sometimes I don't find that show very fun. Case in point: one of the twins was assigned a Russian glam princess as her biology lab partner. "Where are you going for the break," the princess cooed. "Switzerland. Where are you going?" said the twin. "You'll love Switzerland. I'm going to Paris." "For the fashion?" "No. To ski. Like you." "I travel to eat," the twin said, visions of fondue and chocolate filling her head. It's like when Brenda and Brandon Walsh came to Beverly Hills 90210 from the Midwest. Or when Little J tries to connive her way into the White Party or whatever other weird excuse for an exclusive get-together that rich people come up prance around in designer clothes. We are living in a TV show when it comes to school. For her part, Abby is in "Lizzie McGuire." I bought all my Christmas online except for the candy--which came from Germany--and a few items from H&M--also from Germany. The online Christmas isn't coming in Santa's sack, it's arriving via Delta 30 from JFK to Sheremetevo packed, tetris-style, by my mom, brought by my personal sherpa, daughter Sara, who spends various parts of her Christmas break in three countries and five airports. At least she will spend New Year's Eve on the Champs Elysees. When we sit around with friends, sometimes we talk about favorite airports the way other people talk about favorite shopping malls. Hate: Frankfurt, Charles DeGaulle, Heathrow Love: Berlin Schoenfeld, Athens, Milan. The groceries in my kitchen have information labels in at least 15 languages including some odd ones like Uzbek, Kazakh, and Estonian. I cook in milliliters, grams and deciliters--a conversion I have to look up every single time I see in on the cereal box. We eat porridge, not hot cereal and my children get hot chocolate croissants for snack time at school. My kids take "assessments" not "tests." They have "marks" not "grades." When someone says "football," I think of Christiano Ronaldo, not the Super Bowl. We have half-term break, not school vacation. My children take school field trips to Croatia, Siberia and Thailand. The majority of their friends have parents from two different countries. My daughters won't obtain their driver's licenses until they graduate from high school. At any given moment, I know the dollar currency conversions for pounds, euros and rubles. From start to finish, it takes between 5-6 hours to do church on Sunday. At least half of that time is in the car inhaling exhaust fumes from bumper to bumper traffic. I can order from McDonalds in at least three languages at any given moment in time, depending on where my last vacation was. "McNugget," however, is still "McNugget," even in Greek, German and Estonian. When we talk about "food storage," we mean "how much food will we need when the rioting in the outlying regions starts and trucks can't get to Moscow for weeks at a time." When we talk about "Emergency preparedness" it is code for "have enough money and a strategy to get to the Finnish or Estonian borders as fast as possible in the event of coup--via plane, train or automobile." We watch James Bond or the Bourne movies and say "Hey! I remember that street corner!" In contrast, when movies try to "fake" a country, we're prone to say, "Hey! That's not London!" the same way we used to when Hollywood tried to substitute Vancouver, Canada for Seattle. My girls watched the latest Hollywood blockbuster, "Twilight" on You-Tube, not in a theater. I watch US TV via iTunes or on DVD disks burned on my Los Angeles friend's TiVo and sent through the mail. A weekend trip is to Berlin, Tallinn, Vilinus, Riga or Helsinki--not St. George, Utah, Vegas or Seattle. The primary airline I fly is "Aeroflot." I could probably come up with ten more weird things about my life. Sometimes weird=novel. Who wants to be ordinary? Sometimes weird=get me out already. Sometimes I think that a lot more people should have the experiences I'm having living in this alien world, being generally disliked by our host country and having to figure out what really matters. Sometimes I will read these group blogs of people in the US and part of me snorts derisively thinking, "You call *that* a problem?" I confess as I was reading an entry about charity for the holidays and how people were trying to serve the less fortunate in their neighborhoods, I thought about the stark contrast between what is "needy" in the US vs. what is needy elsewhere in the world. I doubt there is anywhere else in the world where obesity is a huge problem of the lower classes. Where people have the time and energy to whine about not having access to organic food or spending a significant percentage of their income on expensive nutritional supplements or chasing fad diets to combat "toxins" and "evil FDA conspiracies where business is determined to poison us for profit." If your biggest problem is that you're stressed about whether the plastics you put in your microwave are emitting toxins, I'd say that's a great problem to have. I'm sure there are lots of starving people in Russia who will be happy to take your toxin ridden Mac&Cheese and your Costco vitamins so you can spend your $500 on the probiotic powder that really works. The poor in rich nations like Western Europe and the US get better health care, better nutrition and have safer homes than many of the middle classes do in Eastern Europe and Asia. What they would give for the vaccinations that the Western world is so quick to toss aside. It is tempting, from time to time, to say "Get a real problem" but then I realize how uncharitable that sounds. I'm not talking about my friends who face serious challenges of unemployment, health issues and financial disaster, but more the sense that perhaps these things would seem less dire if they could see the poverty and desperation in Eastern Europe, particularly Romania, Ukraine and Russia. Figure in the Central Asian countries and the contrast between the West and East becomes more stark. What I wish for is that some of these people could gain some perspective--not because I have that perspective (I wake up many a morning craving PF Chang's chicken lettuce wraps and Hershey's kisses)--but because it might help people feel more content, more grateful, more satisfied with what they have. It's so much easier to be satisfied and content when you are constantly reminded how little you actually *need* to get by. I need a smackdown from time to time so that I remember how blessed I am. As much as the stories of orphans and the starving elderly break my heart, sometimes I need to hear those stories because it reminds me that I have enough food, I have heat, my husband is getting regular paycheckes, my children are in an amazing (however socially obnoxious) private school and I have the resources to solve my problems. Hearing those stories spurs me on to want to do better, to try harder, to be a better citizen of the world. I live a weird life. I hope that this weird life changes me in a way that will matter in the long run. In the meantime, I'm going to go to the gym and use a treadmill that is labeled entirely in Russian and hope that the sound is working on the Discovery Travel and Living channel so I can watch three year old episodes of "Flip That House." I'm happy with the small stuff.

Yes Yvegeny, there is a Santa Claus

If Santa Claus has a living surrogate that secretly relays the deepest wishes and desires of children to his fortress of the north, I believe that person must be my father. More than any grandfather of my acquaintance, he delights in making the most heartfelt, secret dreams of children come true. My mother is his able accomplice. I vividly recall one Christmas when all my daughter Sara wanted was one of those dratted Furbys. It was that year's "Tickle-Me-Elmo" or "Cabbage Patch Kid" Toys-R-Us stampede item--the one that radio call-in auctions were selling off for outrageous amounts. My mom happened to be in a store when her ever ready shoppers instincts sniffed out a great find--I imagine much like those truffle-hunting pigs in Italy that find hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of the precious fungi. Mom knew there was buried treasure somewhere amidst the piles of Chinese manufactured trashy trinkets. There it was: the Furby. Sara had her Christmas wish come true that year. My mom was a hero. Why it became necessary to kill the Furby is another story. But my dad's brilliant legal mind hides the softest, tenderest heart of anyone I know. He delights in the wide-eyed wonder of kids eating in dark, firefly lit environs of "The Blue Bayou" restaurant in Disneyland or the excitement of a grandchild who catches a fish "this big." He loves springing the best gifts on his children and grandchildren. He loves being the guy who makes dreams come true. When we are able to surprise and delight him, there's a tingly kind of excitement that makes the occasion so much more special that we smile until our smiles start to hurt and then we keep smiling. I had one of those moments today that reminded me of my dad. It makes me want to be Santa's special helper. My daughters' school has an annual gift program for several orphanages in and around Moscow. Last year it was a lot of generic, impersonal requests for toys, shoes, items for a 16 year old girl or a soccer ball for a 12 year old boy. Shopping wasn't unlike many shopping trips I've had in the past where I picked a paper ornament off a tree, discovered that "Girl, Age 8" wants a "Snow White Barbie with Special Sparkle Gown" and went off in search of the item that I would then deposit beneath a tree in the store. This year, the school took a different approach. Students went out and visited the orphans, asked for wish lists, obtained pictures of the kids and charged each student with making a personalized package for a specific orphan child. My three daughters were assigned four children: high school aged twin girls, a 12 year old boy and a 7 year old boy. After discussing the orphan's wish lists, I set off for the mall to see what I could find. Shopping in Russia can be like a cross between hunting through the piles of a garage sale or climbing over neverending piles of stuff that give America a run for its money in terms of opulence. There's often too little of the right stuff, too much of the wrong stuff and a lot of ticky-tacky junk in between. What might be in stock one week may vanish from the shelves forever the next. The 12 year old and the twins didn't have difficult requests. I quickly located some adorable clothes at Esprit for the sporty teen girls and a fire-engine red Ferrari car for the boy. What concerned me most was the 7 year old boy. Rachel had sent me one specific request: Spiderman clothes. I'd already had my friend Elke out combing the stores for anything with a SpiderMan logo. Because there isn't a WalMart in sight (our neighbors the Belnaps are hoping to change that--go team Belnap!), finding logo clothing is difficult if not impossible. When I asked Rachel for further clarification, she explained that what this boy really wanted was a SpiderMan costume but no one actually thought there was one out there, especially at this time of year. The class had decided to go for the next best thing--a SpiderMan sweatshirt. I searched high and low. I looked in every store. I dug through the bins. I scanned the displays. Not a SpiderMan sweatshirt in a kids size in sight. In the meantime, a picture of this scrawny 7 year old orphan boy began to form in my mind. I could see his short, coarse brown hair with a insolent cowlick, maybe in the back. The quintessential Russian Slavic bone structure, pale skin--maybe blue eyes, narrow lips, tightly pursed smile. Skinny kid whose clothes probably hung off his bony little body. And I imagined this boy whose, parents abandoned him, who statistically has a very bleak future here in Russia, that just loved SpiderMan. SpiderMan, an outcast super hero--misunderstood, ordinary guy with a very special secret. I could imagine this little boy longing to have his own special secret, finding an escape in this American myth and wondering what it must mean to him. I wanted to take him in my arms and give him a big hug and beg him to not give up hope when he grew up, to find a way to live and be happy in this hard, cold country. Finding a way to find this kid a SpiderMan Christmas began to possess me. I wasn't hopeful when I arrived at Detsky Mir, a store that translates to "Children's World." Everything on the list had been found without too much work. I was feeling warm and fuzzy--and it wasn't just the cold medicine sustaining me--except the SpiderMan boy. I canvassed the floor, looking on every shelf, through racks of clothes and costumes. When I found a SpiderMan action figure, I thought I might find something that would "make due." I even found a SpiderMan transformer car that I hoped would excite him. I was ready to give up when my friend showed up, prepared for the last leg of shopping, when I looked up on a wall at a display that had been hidden behind racks of Russian folk-style costumes, and there it was: SpiderMan. Not just one, but THREE styles of SpiderMan. I jumped up and down where I stood, pumping my arm in the air in victory. Not only did they have several to choose from, they had his size in what, in my opinion, was the coolest of the three. (For the record, the security guard who helped us take off the security tag, pronounced it "Хороший костюма" with a big smile on his face ("Good Costume." ) Our family's littlest orphan had his Christmas wish. We will not be there when he opens the package--or even with the package is delivered. I have no idea if the picture in my mind of this little boy is in any way related to the reality of this little boy. At this point, I don't know if that matters. He wanted a SpiderMan costume; he will have--the once a year he is remembered--something his heart dearly hoped for. He may forget about it a week from the day he opens it. For today, I feel like my father's daughter. Am I selfish for savoring this tingly, joyful moment? Giving today has given back to me a thousand times. There are so many days I feel hopeless and helpless in this country. I look around at the despair--the blind babushkas in the crowded metro, the grizzled veterans in their threadbare, but neat as a pin clothes shuffling up the walkways, the homeless, the handicapped and most of all the orphans. The tens of thousands of abandoned Russian children who, statistically, will die before they reach their 25th birthday, victims of street crime, drug abuse, homelessness, and suicide. The reality of these children haunts me, breaks my heart and makes me weep for the tragedy of it all. Other than stuffing a hundred ruble note into the outstretched beggar's cup, I usually feel overwhelmingly helpless in the face of this pain. I want to fix it all. To make everyone happy. I imagine what my Heavenly Father must feel when He sees what His children do to each other and wonder if there is anything I can do to make it better. To imagine that Jesus Christ suffered all of the pain that each orphan feels--their loneliness, their heartbreak--and carried this on His shoulders on one hand is awe inspiring but on the other hand is hopeful: at least there is one Great One in the universe who understands these children and knows their deepest sorrows. How can I, the least of servants, make a difference? Today I tried. I may not save a vulnerable girl from prostitution or prevent a runaway from freezing in his sleep in an alleyway, but I made sure that one scrawny orphan boy will receive the one wish he had on his Christmas list. Yes, Yvegeny, there is a Santa Claus who hopefully brought a little hope, a little light--however reflected it may be from the Greater Light--to your life for Christmas. This is all I know how to do for now--I wish I could do more. Tomorrow it will be back to the harried, hassled ways of life in Moscow but today... today something is right.

Sick

So I'm sick. Big shock. What began as a sore throat and head cold about three hours after completing Thanksgiving dinner became an upper-respiratory infection. I've spent the day reading, working on Christmas plans and trying to get better. I go to Germany on Thursday. The sweet smell of freedom is close at hand. I just can't get worse. On the bright side, I can always go see a doctor in Germany. I suspect that they may be more trustworthy than most of the doctors I would see in Russia. There might be a silver lining to bronchitis after all.