Raindrops on Roses

When the VonTrapp children were scared by a thunderstorm, Maria sang "My Favorite Things" to them as a way of dispelling their worries. I hope the same tactic will work on a gloomy Russian Thanksgiving day. Rain. Clouds. Mud. Dark. Blech. I've been chased by the shadow of a bad mood for a time now. I can't discuss many of the reasons because they involve other people whose business is not mine to share. Suffice it to say, there is plenty of suffering to go around and I'm grieving with those that grieve. The perpetual rain storm a'la Portland is not helping. Being far away from home at the holidays often makes the days feel long. Every time I receive one of those family emails directed to a bulk mailing list inviting me to the Messiah sing-in or a Christmas party 7,000 miles away, my heart dies a little. A reminder of how not-normal my life is. Time to trot out my favorite things so then I won't feel so bad. What do I love, besides my family, my church and my country? Let's keep this more mindless and shallow, shall we? 1. Waffle cookies. I forgot how much I love waffle cookies until, in my new church calling as nursery leader, I was handed a bag of Russian waffle cookies because one of my regulars, a beautiful young lady named Aviana, loves them. Those light crunchy layers, the sweet creamy filling. Yum. 2. Ugg boots. I have written before about Ugg boots. I love my sheepskin lined warmth for the toesies Ugg boots. I will probably never be able to wear cute Manolos or high-heeled, high fashion drama pumps without crippling myself, but Uggs make me happy. 3. Celebrity gossip. Can't wait for Lindsey Lohan to go Britney Spears. 4.Twinkle lights. They can make an otherwise desolate, lonely looking Russian birch tree look magical. 5. Finding something rare at the grocery store. Found fresh sage, sweet potatoes and fresh cranberries at the store in the last two weeks. :happy dance: 6. Being a nursery leader at church. One of my two church jobs, I take care of 18 month to 2 year old children for two hours every Sunday. I love the kids and I love the job. Life is great when all it takes to make you happy is a nap and some matchbox cars. 7. Books. Priorities are: reading, breathing, eating. 8. Laughing. I've been watching "The Big Bang Theory" sitcom on DVD. My friend Bethany is a PA to one of the producers. I've watched some episodes four times. Laughed. I watched Friends' "The One with all the Thanksgiving Flashbacks" yesterday. Laughed. 9. Nice people. The new mission president invited us for a Thanksgiving meal--that I don't have to cook. I needed someone to be nice to my family today and the invitation was heaven sent. My neighbor has offered to help look after my twin girls when I go to Boston in two weeks. Abby is going to Lindsey's apartment by school. Heaven sent. My sister Julie is hosting my twenty year old daughter over the weekend. I don't worry about Sara being lonely if she is with Julie. Heaven sent. My friend Bethany burns TV shows to DVD from her TiVo and mails them to Russia. Heaven sent. 10. Sleeping in. Thanksgiving prep for Saturday means I will not be sleeping in much. However, there is nothing like waking up when you feel like it. Without an alarm clock playing nasty Russian techno music. There. I came up with ten. No white copper kettles or warm woolen mittens, but I know I'm blessed.

In the Land of the White Witch

I dreamed that I was attacked by a Russian woman in the Rosinka sauna. She was smoking cigarettes and allowing her child to run wild. I told her to put out her cigarette or I'd report her to management. She refused. I marched out into the locker room, prepared to go to the sports center management. She tripped me. I fell and broke my arm. Rosinka paid for my medical bills at the European Medical Center and offered me meals delivered to my house from the Rosinka restaurant. I told them that the smoking woman should pay. They told me she was the wife of a rich client and they would rather take care of me so I wouldn't cause any trouble.

I woke up from this dream at 3AM. The light from Parry's computer screen combined with the street lighting from the road outside our Istanbul apartment bothered me. I took my blanket, my pillow and stalked into the living room to sleep on the futon couch. I fell back asleep until the call to prayer woke me up at 5:30AM. By the end of our trip, hearing that eerie voice out of the darkness stopped scaring me and started being a comfort.

I slept until 7AM. Woke the twins up to take them Cemberlitas Hamam, the Turkish bath. It was raining. The old man at the desk had no clue what to do with three American ladies at 8AM. Much confusion ensued. The black stretchy panties they give to all their clients were not forthcoming. They barely got their bath attendant coupon. There was more confusion. Finally I marched them back to the waiting room and got them going. While the twins were being scrubbed, we (Parry, me, Abby) went over the Galeta Bridge to the baklava place in Karakoy for the third time in three days. This is supposedly the best baklava in Istanbul. As usual, the food was delicious but I had had so many trips to baklava, Turkish Delight and tourist shops that I was sick of standing there and pointing for what I wanted. The first time I went to the baklava place, I specifically said "No no no walnuts!" (I'm allergic) but he loaded my box with like five pieces of walnut baklava. Good thing I'm the only one in the family with walnut issues. I let Parry duke it out with the baklava people. The things we do for our children on the last day of vacation. Allyson wants evil eye tea cups, Abby wants chocolate baklava, I want there to be no stress on the way home. Everything went as might be expected for the next few hours, except the rain which was persistent and annoying, until it came time for our taxi to show. The day we arrived, Mehmet, our host's representative, stood in our flat and wrote out all the information for ordering our transfer to the airport. He said to me, "Wednesday, 11:30, right?" "Right," I said. Something about Mehmet worried me. People on Trip Advisor were all, "Mehmet was soooo great." I wasn't so sure. Guess what. No taxi. We waited. No taxi. At 11:45, knowing that old city Sultanhamet traffic is a nightmare, I dispatched Parry to the craft shop owned by our apartment owner's cousin/brother/relative. We sat for awhile. Watched the rain. Watched the weathered geezer across the street drink Turkish coffee and smoke. Noon passed by. No Parry. No taxi. At this point I am having flashbacks to every travel nightmare I have had in my life. I am plotting on how I can get my hands on anti-anxiety medication and wondering if I still am in the dream with the Russian woman and this is her revenge. About 10 minutes later Parry showed up with a handsome older Turkish man in smart clothing. They were engaged in deep conversation. The older man owned the craft shop. No clue where our apartment owner was, brother of craft shop owner. He wanted to make sure that we weren't stranded so he walked with Parry from his store to our building. The jist? Mehmet, bless his pointed head, scheduled our taxi for Thursday. Which makes so much sense considering that we only paid to stay at the apartments through Tuesday night! I thought about writing something mean on Trip Advisor but didn't want to send that bad karma out into the world. Our taxi showed up. We drove to the airport behind water trucks, garbage trucks and hundreds of Turkish laborers pushing their wares in carts and carrying big baggage on their backs. When we escaped Sultanhamet, traffic was at a standstill. And it was raining. And my head hurt. Yes. We arrived at the airport. We were probably among the last people to check in. I was in the last seat, on the last row of an Aeroflot flight. Behind 40 Japanese tourists coming to Moscow. In almost any country in the world, being behind Asian tourists is not a big deal. In Moscow, when you see Asians heading for the passport line, you RUN to beat them there. Russian immigration authorities are bigots and ethnically profile all Asians. Never mind that these are all seasoned, elite travelers coming to spend big money and tour their country. All Asian looking people are potential illegal immigrants stealing jobs from honest Russians. The harrassment is legendary. I've heard horror stories from parents chaperoning school trips--my husband's Chinese-American colleagues from the Intel-US offices have been threatened by the police. And here I am, the only American in the last 15 rows of the plane (all my family were in the front part) behind a herd of Asians. I hope when Russians go to places like China, Japan, and Korea that the immigration people in those countries torment the Russians and make them twist in the wind. I know the British always mess with the Russians at Heathrow passport control. They have a wary look in their eye until we approach, show them our US passports and then we're all best buddies. But the Russians? Russians deserve this after what they do to people at passport control. The flight was bumpy. The food was terrible. My seatmates were nice. The first nice, pleasant Russians I've sat next to--usually I get ornery babushkas or stinky men who haven't washed their clothing in months. There are plenty of nice Russians--they don't sit next to me on Aeroflot flights. They sit next to other people. I'm sure they thought I was rude, but my head still hurt and my only prayer of surviving was to read. I finished a book on my Kindle. C.S. Harris Sebastian St. Cyr mystery. Was ticked by the ending but will march right up and buy the next book the minute it comes out. We landed at Sheremetevo and didn't pull up to a gate. On one hand, this is nice because we all have a fair shot at getting to passport control. On the other hand, only in Moscow do you descend from an airplane in the pitch black, ice covering the runway in 18 degree weather without the wind chill figured in. People biffed it at the bottom of the stairs. We played an odd game of twisty turny follow the leader around the airport runways. I hoped we might get lucky and pull into the new terminal that allegedly has civilized passport lines. Not lucky. The passport control race began. My line was short. But guess what? Japanese tourists were in front of us. In every line. How they beat us, I have no clue. Maybe these were not our Japanese tourist and these tourists were on a different flight. We sat and sat and sat. We watched the cranky passport people growl at the Asians. We listened to the Russians talk about us--in Russian--without realizing that all three of my daughters can translate Russian. Abby is quite good at eavesdropping on Russians and explaining to us what they are saying. They were being rude and saying derrogatory things about us. So what? Their airport stinks, their passport people are bigots and their national airline serves terrible food. We make it out. We get our bags. We meet our driver. For the first time in almost 2 1/2 years, a very rude taxi driver follows us, nay, CHASES us, to the door, doing everything short of giving us the finger because I told him that we didn't need a taxi and to leave us alone. He scared Abby. The weather is nasty. Everything smells like cigarettes and pollution. Of course the traffic is nasty--it is the end of a Russian national holiday. Welcome to Moscow. On the way home to Rosinka, I called property management to ask them to turn our water on. This is a quirk of living in Rosinka. When you leave town, they turn your water off. In the winter this makes sense because you don't want your pipes to freeze. No clue why they do this in the summer. The temperatures have been low enough that property management told me to call on the way home from the airport to minimize the amount of time the water would be on. I called. No answer. I called again. No answer. I called a third time and after about 10 rings, an answer. I explained who I was. Clearly I didn't get one of their better English speakers. It took three or four times explaining who I was and what I needed for her to get that I was a resident who needed my water turned on. No water, no toilets, no dishwasher, no laundry etc. She said, "I cannot help you. You will need to call back in the morning." I lost it. I started to yell. "I did what YOU TOLD ME TO DO! You will TURN ON THE WATER! I will be home from the airport in 30 minutes. There will be WATER! Do you UNDERSTAND ME?!" First the dream about the mean Russian lady in the sauna, then the rain, then the taxi, then the flight, then passport control and now this. I think she got the message. When we pulled into the parking lot next to our garage, the plumbers were pulling out. Mission accomplished. Water on. When we were in Istanbul, Allyson observed that even the stray dogs in Istanbul seemed happier than the stray dogs in Moscow. What she concluded is that Russia is like Narnia while it was under the spell of the White Witch. People's hearts are frozen and it is always winter. Sometimes I forget that I live in the land of the White Witch. Then I go someplace like Istanbul where the fruit and vegetables are fresh, delicious and wholesome, where the people smile and are hospitable, where the city is surprisingly clean and the environment fun and fascinating. I'm then reminded about all the things that make me nuts in Moscow. I'm not going to be one of those expats who disses on the country she lives in because it isn't the country she comes from. However, there are moments when Russia invades my dreams and tests my sanity that I wonder what I did to have such bad karma. Allyson seems to be born under my bad karma star. She has trained for two months to run in a cross-country competition in Kiev, Ukraine. Monday, while Ally was out at the Gallipoli battlefields, I received an email that the Ukrainian government had closed all the schools in their country for the next three weeks to prevent the spread of H1N1. This applied to international schools too. CEESA (our sports and activities organization) had to cancel the meet. The White Witch has cast a spell, I swear. Or the mean Russian lady from the Rosinka sauna who tripped me and sent me to the hospital--in my dreams. I think Russia hates me. I think Russia hates itself. I think someone needs to come and overthrow the White Witch.