August Moscow Update

Take the fact that I haven't written on this in a while as a good sign...I have been BUSY!!! Yeah!!! Since London we have been getting settled in our apartment, which is still empty. We have been shopping for all our "plug in" items and been to IKEA too many times to count. Burke has gotten the easy end of this moving deal. I moved us into our apartment one day while he was at work (with some help of one of the drivers, poor guy got more than he bargained for that day), and I refuse to go to IKEA on the weekends because it is so busy. Therefore, again, the poor driver that gets stuck with me to IKEA gets to help me carry everything up a flight of stairs into the elevator. Then once I get the boxes into the apartment, I am usually too excited to get it all cleaned up and clutter free (it is amazing how messy an empty apartment can get) that I start putting the furniture together, and Merrick "helps" me...which is so much more of a burden than anything. Luckily I have not lost any pieces or parts to furniture yet!

Aside from putting together IKEA furniture (I have vowed to never go back to IKEA again once we leave Russia someday) I have been searching for a nanny, who started yesterday. Her name is Asya, and she is from Armenia. She is married to a Russian man who is retired from the military and she has two children in their 30s. She is very very nice, and I think we will be happy with her. She is a former Kindergarten teacher. She taught at some space institute some years ago, and taught cosmonauts children. Pretty neat. Since then she has been a nanny. It is amazing, but Merrick speaks Russian with her and English with me already. He has picked up so many words since having a Russian nanny (we had temporary part time help prior to her). He says most names of animals in Russian, numbers, and hello, good bye, foods, etc. Then when talking to me, he switched to English. It is great!

I have also joined two womens groups. The International Womens Club and the American Womens Org. I am now the proud communications chairperson of the American Womens Organization! I have met some great people already through it and some are already leaving the country. It will be a change meeting people here that you know will already be leaving in a couple years. Most people come here on a set time period. They know they will be leaving in exactly 23 months...not us.

We had friends visit us last weekend, and we finally had a weekend out on the town. Tiffany and Zach (from Dallas) flew in last Thursday and left on Sunday. We had a great time! We had some great meals, went to the banya, aka Russian Bath House and rented a private room (http://www.sanduny.ru/en/index.php), went out to a disco, went on a tour of the Kremlin, saw Red Square at night...something everyone that visits us needs to do, and went out to a craft market. Pictures to be posted soon...

Now we are looking forward to our next visitor...my mom, who is bringing Taylor to us!!! We have not seen Taylor since June 7th, and I am so excited for them to come! I am sure Taylor will be somewhat in awe of what else there is in this world. She starts school already on August 19th, is signed up for soccer on the weekends, and I have already met other kids her age for her to play with out of school, so she will be set! It will be just like America, right? :)

My favorite part of all this so far, aside from meeting all sorts of interesting and very nice people (people have to be interesting and nice, I have decided, in order to move here) is my new role as a vacation planner. We are going to Munich and Salzberg in October (with the help of our old neighbor from Frisco who is from Germany...let me know if you need a European vacation planner, I will give you her website), Vancouver over New Years for skiing at Whistler, somewhere warm in February (maybe the Maldeves if Burke can take time off work), back to the states in April, to Ireland possibly in May, and back to the states in June. It is going to be a busy year of traveling and I cant wait!! We will be back in Texas for Christmas on December 17th in case anyone wants to put that on their calendars. I will be at Target all DAY on the 18th (and Chick-Fil-A, and La Hacenda Ranch for some good Tex Mex, and Gap, Nordstrom, Neiman's, Barnes and Noble, Half Price Books, a movie theater, etc, etc.)

Hope everyone is doing well!!! I will add some more pics soon!

London July 2008

I was so excited to finally travel to London this month. Burke had to go for work (the majority of Russian funds lawyers are based in London) and we tagged along. It is so great to be able to get to another country in Europe in three hours. We arrived on the evening of Tuesday, July 15th.

Wednesday's Itinerary:

• Go to work with Burke and see the office. It had a great view of the city. We left him here to work for the day while we went off on our adventure.
  
• Get money, we had difficulty with this, of course.
• Go to the London Museum
• Visit the London Wall
• Go to St. Paul's Cathedral, WHERE WE SAW THE QUEEN!!! In the picture below, she is in white next to the black car.
  

• Cross Millennium Bridge
• Go to the Tate Modern
• Eat lunch at Founder's Arms

• Go on the London Eye and get pictures of Parliament from above.
  

• 

• See funny looking policeman who so kindly stopped a cab for us to get back to the apartment.
  

• Head back to the apartment we were in the for the we because we were tired.
  

Thursday's Itinerary

• Walk along the Thames to see the Tower Bridge

• Go to the Tower of London. I have recently developed a major obsession with the Tudor time period, so I was very excited to see all the history at the Tower. We also saw White Tower, the crown jewels, and the memorial for the general area where all the beheadings took place.
  

Traitor's Gate...

• After the Tower were hungry and tired, so we ate and went back to the apartment.

Friday's Itinerary:

• Go to the British Museum, see the Rosetta Stone and mummies.

• Go to the Science Museum
• Eat lunch in Kensington
• Walk to Hyde Park and find a play ground. Merrick needed to get out of the stroller!
• Go back the apartment, once again we were tired from all the walking. We walked most of the way around London, only taking a taxi a few times.
  

Saturday's Itinerary:

• Burke was finally with us on Saturday, so we followed much of the same itinerary as Wednesday so he could see some sights. From Parliament we continued on to St. James' garden and then on to Buckingham Palace.

And then to Trafalgar's Square and the National Museum

• We then walked to Covent Garden and then took a boat ride to Shakespeare's Globe. From there we walked to the Tower Bridge from the other side of the Thames and showed Burke the Tower of London.

WE LOVED LONDON!!!

Apartment Pictures

More pictures will come when we finally have furniture!

Our Dining Room:

The Living Room, empty enough to play soccer:

The other side of the Living Room:

The stairs:

Either Merrick's or Taylor's room:

Phillip's Room:

Master Bathroom:

View from Merrick or Taylor's room:

Burke's Press Release

Here is a link to the press release sent out for Burke's arrival in the Moscow office:

http://www.lawfuel.com/show-release.asp?ID=18684

NEW APARTMENT

Well, we are finally in our new apartment!!! So Exciting!!!! Our lease technically doesn't start until July 21st, but we were so miserable that our landlady let us move in early. It's the same apartment that we've been trying to get since April. I don't have any pictures today, but will put some up very soon. It is still very bare, since we still don't have our furniture. However, the furniture is finally on the ocean. It left Houston on July 9th and should get to Rotterdam on July 23. It could be anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks to get to us after that.

I have joined the International Women's Organization. It will be good to get involved with that. I have already met a few people (many people our out of the country for the summer holiday), and have mastered the metro with one friend. I was worried that it would be hard to get around and I would get lost, but it is really easy to get around. The hardest part is asking for tickets at the booth. I don't really know what to say yet.

My Russian is not progressing much yet at this point. I haven't started lessons yet, and haven't had much time to get going on Rosetta Stone. I will though once we are settled. We have a housekeeper that only speaks Russian though, so I will be forced to communicate with her in some way.

We do not have a nanny yet. We had one for a "trial period", and she didn't work out. So, back to square one. I just need to have one by the time Taylor gets here, so I can go to school with her once in a while and not bring Merrick. The trip to school is quick (about 20 minutes), but the trip back in traffic can be over an hour. At least she won't have to deal with the long part of it.

We leave for London this evening. We are there until the 20th. I am very excited to go, I have never been before, and I am very excited to be able to understand the language again. We are also looking at going on a trip in October. Any suggestions for where to go in Europe at the end of October/early November?

We will have plenty more pics after London!

4th of July Celebration

We went to the 4th of July celebration today (on the 5th), sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce. After we drove about 40 minutes to get there, AND Burke asked me two times if I had the tickets, of course we arrived, and I didn't have the tickets. GO FIGURE. Our driver had to drive us back to our apartment, another 40 minutes, so I could get them. We finally arrived, almost two hours after we were originally there, and were hungry. SO, we waited in line for a beer and food. ONE AND A HALF HOURS later we were finally eating our food and drinking our beer, just in time too, because I was past my tipping point. Here are some pictures of the event.

And best of all....

Things I miss already...

1. Not having to close my eyes every time I am in a car in fear of being hit. I have vowed to never drive here. It is insanely scary, and I think I would pull over and cry if I had to do it. I actually saw an ambulance hit a motorcycle today, it hit his back wheel, and they both just kept going. One of Burke's biggest pet peeves is when people speed up just to slow down a little bit ahead in traffic...that is all people do here!

2. A washer and dryer, but everyone has already heard about that.

3. Handicap/stroller accessibility. This is not the place to live if you are in a wheelchair, or have to transport a child in a stroller. You have to go underground to cross many streets, and only a few of the stairs have rails that strollers can go on. As everyone knows, Merrick has a bit of energy, so without the stroller, he tries to run everywhere. This is making it really hard to go places without Burke that we can walk to. Thank goodness I bought the monkey backpack child harness...aka Merrick's leash.

4. Not being exposed to EEMS. The new term of the day...Eastern European Man Smell.

There is much more that I will think of and write about another day. All and all things are going well, as well as they can in our stinky apartment. I am glad we will be out of here by the time Taylor and my mom get here, it would be too crowded! I have only thought about coming back to the US with Merrick for the month of July twice. I am sure it will happen again, but I won't act on it. We have a few things planned this weekend. We have two nanny interviews (YEAH!!!) the American Chamber of Commerce 4th of July celebration is on Saturday, and we go to London on July 15th to the 20th.