Moving Day!

Whew!  Yesterday was moving day, the first of 3 days.  The movers will be back on Monday and Tuesday....not because our house is ginormous but because shipping household goods overseas and/or storing them in a warehouse for years on end takes special packaging.  Who knew?  Shrink wrapping, thermal paper, special coddling and gentle handling - bring it on!   We want our stuff to look even better when we see it again years from now.  (We are only taking about 5% of what we own - and practically no furniture, although the wine fridge made the list!).  I’ve had a tear in my eye saying farewell to favorite books, memorabilia, etc. knowing that our paths won’t cross for a long time.  But...many more new things to take in overseas.  We’ve been told IKEA will become our best friend.  Moscow, by the way, is so large, it is home to 3 IKEAs!

The movers arrived right on time. I was hoping they would arrive a bit late to allow for the last minute once over, but not a chance.  Not only did they arrive on the dot, they were a team of SIX!!!  Now, I have moved 17 times in my life (that is the Army Brat truth).  Never have I seen movers show up with SIX people.  If you’ve ever moved, you know the success of moving day depends on your ability to stay 10 steps ahead of the movers....and in our case, this is particularly important as we had to constantly point out, “this goes by air”, “this goes into storage”, “no, wait, let’s throw that out”, “do we need 30 training towels or 40”, (we seriously had this discussion - five would probably suffice).  We are, after all, moving into a small, two bedroom, cozy apartment in downtown Moscow a third the size of our Atlanta home.  


The movers moved through our house like a tsunami and were done in what felt like 20 minutes.  At the onset of the morning I asked them to leave the kitchen for last as we were still picking out which “pot” (not “pots”) and which pan (not “pans”) to take with us.  Ten minutes after this discussion I walked into the kitchen to realize the pots and pans were all packed....then the “unpacking” began...

                                                           Our "pot" and "pan" were in this mix early in the day

The infamous COLD...

How do you prepare for the unknown?  

Steve and I, being big fans of mild winters, have always said we wouldn’t want to live north of the Carolinas.  Steve has gone so far as to say he wouldn’t want to live any where where he’d need to take a dog sled to work.  Well, you know the rest of that story...

                                          (Steve and I dogsledding in Colorado...an omen!)

It’s not that cold climates are foreign to us....we make an annual pilgrimage to Colorado to snowboard with the family and Steve lived in New Hampshire for 5 years.  No strangers to the cold - we just didn’t know we’d be relocating to the world’s frozen tundra!

Have you ever watched Dr. Zhivago?  Remember the scene where Omar Sharif is exiled to Siberia and is walking through the arctic wasteland with his eyes frozen shut and ice crystals in his beard?  Kind of makes a girl feel all warm and fuzzy inside...

I think this video just about sums it up...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyVknt1kuS8

So, we’re stocking up on silk underwear, fleece, down puffy coats, hand warmers, scarfs, mittens, bomber hats, etc.  Will it be enough??  More to come...

The Russian ABC's

                                  

                                 The first Russian language textbook

While crashing around preparing for our big move, I’ve spent some time working on my “survival Russian”. A girl can’t move to Moscow without the critical: “where’s the ladies room?”, “which way to the mall?”, and the ever popular “more root vegetables and potatoes, please”.  Learning to speak and read all over again has taken me back to my kindergarten days...a new alphabet, sounding out the words, flashcards - the whole bit!

We’re learning why Russian is one of the hardest languages to learn - it has 6 cases, (basically changes that occur to nouns and their endings).  For example, the word for “book” is one word if we’re talking about “my” book, a different word if we’re talking about “your” book and yet a completely different word if we’re talking about the book “over there”.  

Russian is written using the Cyrillic (кириллица) alphabet consisting of 33 letters.  We share thirteen of the letters in the English alphabet but more than half of these are pronounced differently.  For example, “C” is pronounced as “S” and “P” is pronounced as “R”...you get the picture - throw out everything we learned as youngsters, we’re not in Kansas any more.  

Here is the alphabet...note the number “3” is pronounced “z”...?

А /a/	Б /b/	В /v/	Г /ɡ/	Д /d/	Е /je/	Ё /jo/	Ж /ʐ/	З /z/	И /i/	Й /j/
К /k/	Л /l/	М /m/	Н /n/	О /o/	П /p/	Р /r/	С /s/	Т /t/	У /u/	Ф /f/
Х /x/	Ц /ts/	Ч /tɕ/	Ш /ʂ/	Щ /ɕɕ/	Ъ /-/	Ы [ɨ]	Ь /-/	Э /e/	Ю /ju/	Я /ja/

Russians are big into sayings and proverbs:

Когда рак (на горе) свистнет. (Kogdá rak (na goré) svístnet.)
"When a crayfish whistles (on the mountain)", English translation: "when pigs fly", meaning "never."

Делать из мухи слона. (Délat' iz múkhi sloná.)
"To make an elephant out of a fly.",  English translation: "to make a mountain out of a mole-hill."

Палить из пушки по воробьям. (Palít' iz púshki po vorob'yám.)
"To shoot sparrows with a cannon",  English translation: "crack a nut with a sledgehammer."

Ernst & Young will provide 50 hours of Russian lessons when we arrive. I recently read intermediate fluency takes about 780 hours of immersion lessons...so, Steve and I are planning to adopt what is officially called “Runglish” - a mixture of Russian and English.  Apparently this became popular aboard the NASA International Space Station in 2000 among the Russian and English cosmonauts.  Heck, we’ll throw in what little Spanish and French we know as well.  Gracias, Merci beau coup, das va dan ya...

The Beginning...

My inaugural blog posting!  So much to share as Steve and I prepare for our big move east…waaay east…to Moscow.  We're 3 weeks away from our official launch date (Nov. 27th) and preparation is in full swing.

First off, today is my last day with Deluxe.  After recently celebrating 20 years, putting down the check box and loyalty solutions wasn't as easy as I thought.  I've had to say farewell to incredible co-workers and clients - many of whom have become great friends.  On the horizon, I'm looking into a possible U.S. Olympic Committee position as Russia will host the 2014 winter Olympics, (a bit of a dream job).

Steve is in Moscow for the next 2.5 weeks launching into his new role and preparing our new apartment for our move-in, (we're across from the Kremlin and Red Square).   As I hold down the fort stateside, my list includes turning in company car, completing inventory of all our household goods, determining what will go into storage, what will ship via air and what will ship via sea, making the 99th trip to Goodwill, determining how we're going to pipe in U.S. television in Moscow, listening to Russian language tapes and buying fleece, Gortex, a big down puffy jacket and fur!!!!  It's already snowing in the motherland.

We keep pinching ourselves asking "is this really happening"? It is happening and we can't wait for what lies ahead. 

P.S.  Priority #1 when we land in Russia:  Buy big furry Russian hat!  More to come...

      (Photo above taken from our hotel room in Moscow several months ago.)