Some pictures of doors in Greece. Don't ask, I just like doors.

The beginning of my life in London

Maximovo



Ah, so I have a lot to write about, but not much to say.

After my month of vacation I went back to Maximovo in Russia to take care of the kids for a month before we all came to London. This was pretty traumatic for me. The summer nanny completely ruined 100% of the work I had done in disciplining the boys. Now even perfectly behaved little Danny was throwing tantrums for not getting his sugar-encrusted fruit for breakfast. Nika has several days spent totally in time out having tantrums. With a child like Nika, you need routine. He was used to our routine in New York, and he knew what was expected of him. All of a sudden he got this older Russian woman who gave him candy when he screamed for it, and couldn’t control him. (I told her when she started not to give them candy or chocolate or sweets. Apparently the boys’ mother also told her repeatedly not to give them sweets too.) I was appalled when I walked into the boys’ room when she was putting Danny down for a nap and she was sitting in a chair next to his bed while he was sitting in his bed and she was feeding him pieces of chocolate bar. I told their mother, but I should have gone and taken the chocolate away from her or something.


I forgot to mention, this Russian nanny doesn’t speak any English. She speaks Russian and German. I speak English, French, what little Spanish I remember that doesn’t come out in French, and only a few bad phrases in German. (Thanks A2!) Communicating with her was very difficult. I got Nika to stop misbehaving SO much, which ended up being only about a 10% improvement. At one point, Rita (Russian nanny) gave Nika some chocolate something-or-other, and I took it away, since it was almost lunch time, and I told him he could have some after lunch if he behaved. She gave him something else and he tried to run off with it and hide in the house he had made of blankets and pillows, and I took it away and told him he could have some after lunch again. Rita called him over, they went around the corner, and 5 seconds later they came back around. I knew what they were doing and I was immediately so angry I was really surprised. I wasn’t just angry, I was furious. It had been years since I was so angry, if I had ever even been that upset. I was so angry the rest of the day that I couldn’t even look at her. It took a really long time for that feeling to fade. It was terrible.

I reimplemented time out’s, and it was met with much hostility from more than just the boys. Rita thought I was torturing the boys: I was apparently teasing them with candy and then putting them in a chair away from everybody, then outside of they kept screaming for misbehaving. (I should mention, that in Russian culture, it’s an insult if someone says that your child behaves well, like an adult. Children are supposed to be wild and crazy and run around and do whatever they want.) Then, after a while, when Rita sleep in the bed she had made for herself, she switched to my method and put the boys in time out. But instead of doing it in stages and giving them a warning before they went to the time-out chair, then putting them outside if they kept on screaming, she just put them outside with no warning. They didn’t understand why they were getting in trouble. Ugh! Never again! I had to start from scratch, from before scratch! with the discipline for the boys.

It was good that I went to speak English with them because he started school only 3 days after we arrived in London. Nika remembered his English, but he took a while to formulate his answers when we would talk. Danny refused to talk to me in English in the beginning. Even a month later after we arrived in London he would speak to me in Russian first, then I’d have to say “what?” and he would repeat in English. He did the same at school. Now both of them are doing well with their English. Nika doesn’t work well in school though. He’s too easily distracted. All the boys know Nika, because he gets up and jumps around and runs around the classroom, and the teacher is always telling him to sit down. “Nika sit. Nika, stop that. Nika, Nika, Nika!” Nika doesn’t know the other boys, but everybody knows him, and he knows it.

Enough about kids. I had a birthday a week after we arrived. I was lucky only because the boys’ dad’s parents were here from California, and Viola made me some napoleon for my birthday, and insisted on buying me a birthday cake. Other than that, my birthday was terrible and I hope I never have another birthday like that. I had no friends or family there, just work, and the family had a housewarming party that day. So not only was I watching Nika and Danny, there were other kids there who were misbehaving, and everybody was speaking Russian. All I could do was to wait for time to pass and for bedtime for the boys. Boss-man, and woman, told me that I should go out and at least have a walk after the boys went to bed, so I did. It was nice to get out of the house, but it was even more depressing to me after I walked by all the bars and restaurants crowded with people who were friends. I didn’t feel right going into a bar by myself when it was so crowded and buying myself a drink. I was so depressed that I didn’t have any of my friends or family to celebrate with. One of my old friends in San Antonio sent me flowers, and that was nice. It’s not the same as having people to go out with.

I got to go back to New York in mid-October for a week to get my visa. This is after 2 months of non-stop working in Russia and London. The family hired another woman to take care of Danny and speak Russian with him, and her first week was with me and the boys' mom gone. Poor Olya! So I got a UK work visa and then flew from NYC to Dubai to meet the family there. It was really nice and warm. The beach was nice, the pool was nice, but as with every vacation that I go on with the family, it's not a vacation for me. It's work. I can't sit on the beach and soak up some sun with a margarita and a book or friends, I'm slathering sunscreen onto little boys and trying to keep them from drowning in the sea or pool. See, if I were on vacation, I would not have had to deal with the fact that Danny made a huge, messy poo in the pool. If I were on vacation, I would have had my name on the list several times a day for massage on the beach. If I were on vacation, I would go out to dinner with some cool person who I chose to go on vacation with. We did get to see the world's tallest building and go into the world's only 6 star hotel for afternoon tea. Anyway, the flight back to London was terrible, too. Of course, mom and dad were in first class as they tossed us back into economy. Mom got Nika a big-gulp-size juice before the flight, so he had to go to the toilet literally every 5 minutes before, during, and after take-off, and while the guys were coming with the drink carts. Danny on the other hand, made a poo in his pants. :) (Ilovemyjobilovemyjobilovemyjob.)

And so it went. It has been over 3 months and I still haven’t made many friends. When I went to open my bank account the person who works there gave me his phone number, and we actually got together one afternoon, but that was it. I made friends with a couple of girls, but they both went home for the holidays, back to France. (At least I will be able to practice my French... soon.)

The highlight of this post: I met the most gorgeous man on the underground. I was waiting around for the train to go to yoga after I dropped Nika at school and this man comes onto the platform and asks me if the next train was going all the way to the end of the line. I had no idea since there were delays on the train that day. We started chatting while waiting for the train and the platform soon filled up. We got on the crowded train and were smashed up against the masses of people who were already on the train and the people who were trying to get on. Since I was smashed between some tall man’s ribcage and a talking directly into an Asian lady’s ear, I felt a too shy to ask him for his number. Before I got off the train I shook his hand, smiled and edged my way out of the train. I couldn’t stop thinking of him the whole time. I ended up at yoga and kept thinking of him and hoping that he might try to figure out how to get in contact with me. All I got was his first name and where he was from. It’s impossible to Facebook stalk people based on this limited amount of information. It was pretty pathetic on my part for even trying. :P So I decided that I’d go back the next day. Unfortunately, Nika’s mom took him to school since there was a teacher conference that day. I told my friend back in San Antonio about this guy and she seemed to brush it off and said “that sort of thing only happens in movies”. I told my new French friend the story and she said the same thing.

I went back to the same station every day the next week at the same time, and waited until about the time that I saw him, then I went to another platform for a different train to either go home or go to the other yoga studio. Every day I felt more and more ridiculous. The platform monitor man who tells the trains when the doors are clear was always there and he’d see me watch train after train go by, waiting around for who knows what. I felt so silly every day and exponentially moreso as each day passed. One night I was talking to my mom and I told her about the guy and how I wish I could have gotten his number and I told her what I was doing about going to the station and waiting there. As she would say, she was pegate lele. She couldn’t stop laughing, and it was the laugh she has when she can’t breathe. Thanks for laughing at me Mom! It was funny though. She encouraged me to go do that and maybe I’d see him again. So the next day I headed over there and told myself that this was the last day I’d do that, and if I didn’t see him, it wasn’t meant to be. I felt like everybody knew that I was waiting around for this guy that would probably never end up going to work late again and like everybody was ridiculing me, especially the platform monitor man, and then as I stood by the wall, guess who walks onto the platform! The elusive Mystery Man himself! He sees me and says “Oh hey, Angela, right?” We talked and boarded the next train. I knew I would literally want to kick myself if I didn’t ask for his number, but silly, shy little ole me, what do I do? Instead of asking for his number and just asking him if we could get together sometime not involving public transit chance meetings, I ask him for his last name and if I could Facebook stalk him. (Smack myself on forehead with painful expression on face.) It would have been less humiliating if I had just asked him for his number. Then I sent him a message, once I found him, and asked if he wanted to go out before he left for Australia for the holidays. Strangely enough, or not, he agreed and we went out for dinner-ish on a weeknight before he flew to Australia on Saturday.

I was so nervous. He is amazingly good looking and I haven’t been on a first date in..... uhh.... basically since I lived in California. I feel like I didn’t talk much, or have anything useful to say. Anyway, it’s all ok. We will see if we go out again. (Fingers crossed, please!) He won’t be back until after the new year.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like this though. After my last boyfriend and I broke up, it hurt so much I just kept thinking that love wasn’t worth feeling as bad as I did. I distanced myself from having a relationship, especially when I lived in France because I knew that I wasn’t going to be there for very long and didn’t want to end up heartbroken at the end of the year. But maybe it’s like me and marathons. The day after I always tell myself that I’ll never do another one as I inch my way towards the edge of the bed to get up, in constant, full-body pain. Even my skin and organs seem to ache. Then a month later I’m looking for the next race I want to register for. But the thing is that marathons are nowhere near as much fun as being in a relationship with someone you love and who loves you.

In New York it was really hard to meet people, and here it is too. I am looking forward to meeting more people here, making some friends, and going out with Mr. Aussie again. :) I'm off to work on my personal statement for my university application here in London.

"The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily the views of the author." Also known as, my summer vacation.

My very generous month of vacation that I was required to take in the summer was nice. I decided to spend it in San Antonio, thinking that staying with my parents and seeing family and friends in SA would be a sound financial decision, that I might spend less money there, since I’m trying to save to travel for 2 months next summer. I was really wrong. And although seeing family was nice, staying with my parents for a month was a terrible, terrible decision that I will never make again. All of a sudden, it was like I was 15 years old again with the curfews and questions and “clean your room”. (I’d like to note that my room was indeed clean when I left.) I guess I thought that since I have been living on my own, working and paying bills, and most importantly, caring for children, driving with them, handling them in a big city alone, that I would have some brownie points marked under “responsible”, but no. In my dad’s eyes, I was still the bony, argumentative little girl who wanted her way or the highway, and he was still the man who wanted his way or the highway. My poor mother, as always, was stuck in the middle, and for that I am truly sorry. I love her so much, I just want her to be happy, but my visits home put so much stress on her that I’m surprised she doesn’t have a situational substance abuse problem.

On a lighter note, I had an amazing time seeing old friends, making new ones, and spending time with family. I arrived in Austin and my old friend Chris picked me up from the airport and let me crash on his couch. Only after I slept on it did he divulge that he and his roommate had actually picked it up from the side of the street. Luckily they did clean it up. I ended up sleeping on it a night more than I expected because my friend I know from San Francisco was driving from SF to NYC and was running a bit late on his schedule. Jose arrived on July 5th in the afternoon, and it was so nice to see him. I traveled with Jose in Greece and had a wonderful time. I was so happy he was finally in Texas! Chris and his roommate were so hospitable too. They welcomed not only me, but Jose to their place like an old friend. They took us to this local swimming hole to swim for the afternoon and we had a great time swinging from the rope swing and catching up over a couple of beers and flotation devices. When we got back to their house they cooked up this random and amazing dinner, complete with “darn-goods” for dessert. After letting our food settle and chilling out for a bit, Jose and I headed to San Antonio at around 12am. I misunderstood my mother when she said, “just stay there” and I said “we’re coming tonight”. She didn’t leave the door unlocked, like I assumed she would, so I unfortunately woke her up. Not a great introduction for Jose and my mom. Jose stayed a couple of nights in San Antonio. The FIFA world cup was in the finals so we watched a couple of times. I took Jose to downtown San Antonio and showed him the Alamo and the Riverwalk, and we ate at Casa Rio and just chilled out by the river after a walk around downtown. We arrived right at the right time, which meant that we didn’t have to wait for a table, and also that they had people waiting the whole time. The server came about 5 times to see if we had paid our bill = annoying as hell.

Jose eventually had to get a move on the next day to make his way to New York in time to catch his flight to Prague, and New Orleans was his next destination. I decided at the last minute that I would accompany him to New Orleans, then find a train/plane/bus to get back to San Antonio. It was nice to extend my visit with Jose, and as always, I had fun traveling with him. Due to the fact that we stopped to have dinner, and got lost in Houston in the rain, we ended up stopping for the night after the Louisiana border. It’s silly, but I even had fun watching late night trash TV (MTV of course) with him. We made it to New Orleans the next day and our first order of business was to get a drink. Hurricanes in hand, the second order of business was to find a place to sleep for the night that wasn’t super expensive. With the second order of business checked off the list the third order of business was to get another drink and walk around. This we did all afternoon. It was lots of fun, and we somewhat stumbled our way back to our hotel at night after some random corner concert.

You know you have a good friend when he wakes up early after a day of drinking to take you to the bus station. I sadly parted ways with Jose at the Greyhound station in New Orleans, and went to pick up my bus ticket back to San Antonio. I don’t think I will ever, EVER, voluntarily take a bus long-distance, through the South (yes capital S in South), again. Beyond the cramped quarters and nonsensical chatter I overheard was a smell that seemed to be exuding from my obese neighbor. I just tried to read a book and sleep as much as possible. I wonder what effect that awful smell has on dreams.

I went to Austin soon after that for Kellee’s birthday celebration. Again, I stayed with Chris, who came out to have a drink with us on 6th Street. I had never really done the whole partying on 6th Street thing (come to think of it, I did only once before I moved to France) and it was fun. Mostly hanging out with Kellee and Chris, since those were the only people I knew. Debi ended up coming with us really late, and had to leave early, so we didn’t see much of her. I drove back home the next day and got back to San Antonio with nothing planned, and nothing to do for the rest of the month. I got to go to a party with a bunch of people from Churchill attending and it was really nice to celebrate Kellee’s birthday (again) with them. After lots of beer pong, it turned out that I am SO GOOD at that game and played with a high school friend until very late. By the end of the night I was just catching up with an old friend of mine when some drunk idiot comes and starts yelling at me because I elaborated on his comments about Sarah Palin. Unfortunately for that guy, my comments were not in her favor and he didn’t like it. I successfully shut down every case he brought up and then he was literally in my face, about 2 inches away from my nose, standing over me while I sat in a lawn chair, yelling at me asking what I DO believe in, because it was clear I didn’t believe in what he did. Having recently returned from Russia, and wanting to see his reaction, I told him I believed that the United States should become Soviet, like the good ole USSR. He was irrate after this, and only after that was it brought to my attention that someone was behind me with a video camera. (This video hasn’t surfaced yet.) I didn’t get home until 5am after sitting and chatting with old friends, and my dad was thoroughly convinced that I drove home trashed. His evidence? The fact that I inadvertently rubbed the side of the tires on the curb and scrapped the tires, not the wheel, and marked the curb. I think he was mostly mad about the fact that his tire and curb were no longer in pristine condition. It didn’t matter that the party was just “down the road a piece”, as we say in the South. There’s that capital S again.

I was basically grounded after that, and ended up getting Elisa to come pick me up to go hang out at her house and help her move in. In reality, we just went shopping for a few things she needed and went to lunch. I take pride in the fact that I installed the remote control holder for her ceiling fan and made sure that her curtain rod was even. After that we just watched How I Met Your Mother.

Nobody gets my "I can see Russia from my house" reference.

I have quite a bit of news, kind of. :) I'm in San Antonio right now at my parent's house just hanging out for all of July. I went to Russia with the family and had an amazing time. I absolutely loved it! So when their mother asked me to go get a business, multiple-entry visa for a year for Russia, I said "OK!" We arrived in Moscow after an overnight flight and stayed for one night. The next day we went out to the country house that is SUPER old and in a tiny town, with maybe 10 houses in the whole village. There isn't even a grocery or a post office. There is a truck with a bunch of groceries in the back that drives slowly through the town pressing on the horn the whole time and if you want food you go out to the street. Or they just eat the food from their farms. It is really beautiful there and I'm happy I got to go. After the summer nanny got there and got used to the kids a bit, I got to go to St. Petersburg and Moscow. Unfortunately, I did not have a Lonely Planet, or anything in English except for a guide of the Kremlin in Moscow. My boss got me a flight to St. Petersburg, and a tour guide, and told the office manager at the office they have in St. Petersburg to give me whatever I wanted and pay for my train ticket to Moscow. I also got to stay in their apartment in St. Petersburg, that is in the best area, close to everything. I wandered around the canals and looked at all the old buildings and monuments. I went to this crazy museum (see Kunstcamera photo album) and to Peterhoff, these gardens and palace that make Versailles look like someone's small hobby garden, apparently. I've never been to Versailles though. I took an overnight train from St. Petersburg to Moscow and it was nice. What I really wanted to do was go to the dinner car and chat up some locals, but all the people in my cabin seemed set on going to sleep, and locked the door, so I figured I wouldn't disturb them by going in and out, especially since I was on the top bunk. There were 4 people in one cabin.

Moscow was much more of a "do-it-yourself" kind of adventure. I don't speak Russian, I don't read in Russian, and I didn't have internet at the apartment to look things up, since I also did not have a guide book. So I just lied when I said I don't speak Russian, because I learned to ask "where is Red Square" and "where is Tverskaya Street" and I know how to say things like "why are you crying", "what do you want", "do you want to eat". So I left the apartment one afternoon, after getting over my introverted nature and the fact that I most likely wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone over the age of 5, and walked to the big intersection looking for a taxi the whole way. I still had some money left over from what my boss had given me in roubles, but I wanted to conserve it. I went to the corner stand and asked the woman there if she spoke English. (So that's another thing that I learned to ask, if someone speaks English. Thanks Pimsleur.) She said no and I asked her for a map, in English, then in Spanish, and I couldn't remember in French. I pointed to one and she said "oh, cart", or something like that. I opened it up and it was written in Cyrillic, so I learned to read in Russian. I saw a woman who didn't look like she would be terribly burdened if I bothered her and asked her in my best Russian "Where is Red Square?" She replied correctly, as Pimsleur said, "Red Square is there" as she pointed to a point on my map. I took the bus to the metro station, bought 2 tickets at the metro station and went down the really long, D.C.-like escalator. I walked around following the signs with the red stripe on the train, since I needed the red line. I walked and walked and it seemed like a long time. I had no idea where I was going. There was a tunnel that split off into three tunnels like in the cartoons of things that get flushed down the toilet and have to decide which tunnel will lead them to the safety of the ocean, and NONE of these tunnels had signs. I went up the escalator thinking that my red-striped train might be in a different tunnel, but it turned out I just went up the exit, and despite my pleading looks and saying "pajalasta!" (please) repeatedly, the stone-looking guard woman made me pay again. So I just went down and sat on a bench at a platform having no clue where I was or where I was going. A train came and I tried to read what it said, and then read my map, and I stopped, thinking, "I don't know what train this is". I thought again and said to myself "What the hell, at least I'll be going somewhere and not just sitting here on this platform trying to read." So I ran on and it turned out that it was the right one.

Red Square was nice and big and... well... red! The bricks on the buildings were red and the ground was red. Lots of memorial stuff, most of which I could not read. I went to the Kremlin and got an audio guide in English which was really helpful. The churches and buildings there are all so old and big and beautiful. What makes them even more remarkable is that they survived WWII. Apparently 22 million Russians were killed by Nazi's. All of St. Petersburg was blocked and nobody could go in or out. For 2 years there was no food and many people died. There were people who would try to drive over the lakes and take people out in the winter when they were frozen, but the Nazi's started to bomb the lakes to break the ice. There is a special word in Russian for the people who survived those years with a small square of bread to eat that was given to them, but there is no translation to English.

Anyway, in the Kremlin I also went to the Diamond Fund, which is apparently the largest collection of diamonds in the world. There were definitely a lot of diamonds, but I was expecting to see big mountains that would require a dump truck to transport, but really, all you would need is a big bucket. They were indeed beautiful though. Some were rough, some were smoothed or cut, and some were placed in jewelry. Very beautiful stuff, but I couldn't even take my bag in, so no pictures.

This is where I met the Obnoxious American. I was waiting outside the metal detector to go into this big room with the diamonds and I see/hear this overweight woman coming up the stairs, so proud of herself and telling the guard "See! I did it! I don't have it anymore!" She comes to wait in line behind me and says the same thing to the female guard by the door, and opens her bag to show that she no longer has her camera or phone. The guard just nods her head and says something to me in English, "wait here" I think she said, and I replied "ok". The Obnoxious American says "you speak good English!" leaning forward with her hands in fists on her hips. I said "well I should!" She asked if I was American and I said yes, and automatically she goes to telling me her story as to why she is in Russia and her critiques of the Russian culture and people. She was there with a group of students she said, although I didn't see ANY students, or groups there, and she said she had bronchitis from the cigarette smoke and that the people were really sloppy. I tried to say in my skeptic voice, "not really", but she wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise. I tried to explain that it was probably the difference in vehicle emission standards that prompted her bronchitis, and to ask if she had ever been to Rome or to Greece, but clearly she hadn't, because Moscow is spic-n-span, especially compared to Athens. It's cleaner than New York! I think it would be safe to say that she had never left her home state of Ohio. Oh yea, and she had a ridiculous matching fanny pack and foam visor. Countries of the world, please don't think all American's are like this!