>From baikaltour@gin.global-one.ru Sun Sep 28 07:43:43 1997 Subject: Sasha radist nasha Hi everyone. We'd like to begin today by wishing a very happy birthday to Kevin's mom! And as her birthday gift, we promise not to tell any stories about driving today. ;-) We hope we're forgiven for not calling this year... We have learned an important bit of Russian that we would like to teach all of you as well. First, though, we have to explain something about Benjamin's name. The name that was given to him in the orphanage was Aleksandr Dimitrovich Moiseyev. Following Russian custom, the middle name is derived from the name of the father. In this case, his middle name would mean that his father's name was Dimitri. Since his birth mother gave him this name, we have to assume that is the case. However, we know nothing at all about his birth father, including his name. In the orphanage he was known as "Sasha," which is the Russian nickname for Aleksandr. As one means of honoring his Russian heritage, we have decided to name him Benjamin Aleksandr Treu, maintaining the literal Russian spelling of his middle name. (Some of you have seen us spell this "Alexandr" in the past, but we learned today that this is not the true translation to English. We have decided to have his birth certificate reflect the accurate translation.) We will also adopt the nickname "Sasha" as one way of calling him. (Together with "Benjamin" and "Ben".) All of this is prelude to teaching you our new Russian phrase. It goes like this: "Sasha radist nasha." It translates to "Sasha, you are our joy." We learned that the other day, and enjoy not only it's meaning, but it's rhyming quality. We say it to Benjamin often, and imagine (?) that he responds to it as something he heard regularly in the orphanage. Well, it's about 7 p.m. here now. Just the time I should be lounging in my family room watching NFL Primetime on ESPN. It's funny to think that the games themselves won't actually begin for about 7 more hours! I'll try to catch the scores on CNN later but it won't be easy. Being very American-centrist, it is interesting to watch the international version of CNN. First of all, the sports don't come on very often, and when they do, American scores have very low priority. Some silly sport they call "football" but doesn't look anything like *real* football gets all the headlines! ;-) They also spend an inordinate amount of time on golf. All kidding aside (except for the remark about the inordinate amount of time spent on golf. *Any* time on that would be inordinate!), it's kind of interesting to hear reports on the cricket team from India which just won the championship, played in Canada, and returned to a hero's welcome back home. We don't see that kind of thing much on ESPN... Today we took our first tour of the city of Irkutsk itself. (With nine days left to spend here, we are going to try to budget our time as much as possible.) We visited the a memorial to the founding of the city, which features an eternal flame and four teenaged guards. We were there to witness a changing of the guard, which was pretty interesting. It is unusual that they use teenagers rather than military personnel for this task. They do a ceremonial, synchronized "goose-step" march as they change. It was fascinating to watch. There was also a "flag raising" ceremony today, as it turned out to be the actual anniversary of the founding of the city. For this, military personnel blocked traffic for several blocks in each direction, and were lined up shoulder-to-shoulder all around the area. It was kind of funny, though, because our guide Valentina just marched us up and through the line to take a picture of the memorial and the changing of the guard. We thought we were going to be shot at any moment! Instead, we actually got a panoramic picture of the soldiers themselves. We weren't entirely sure *what* they were supposed to be doing. If it was guarding the memorial, they weren't doing a very good job! We then visited two old Russian Orthodox churches, both while services were going on. In both cases, both Julie and Valentina had to cover their heads with scarves, for women are not permitted to enter without doing so. The services are nothing at all like we expect them to be in the U.S. First of all, there is no sitting at all (except for a few elderly people). Second, there is no central focus of attention. Several worship activities are going on all at once, including singing, prayer and reading. Also, in the back of the sanctuary religious icons are sold. Much of the ritual we were not able to understand, of course, but it was very interesting to witness. It did make us feel a little bit ill at ease, though, barging in on these folks as tourists while they were worshipping. For some reason they didn't seem to appreciate it when I walked around and took pictures. (I'm KIDDING!) The second church was actually a convent as well. Buried there is the Russian explorer who was the first to explore Alaska and write down his observations. Also buried there is a man who had 12 daughters in a vain attempt to father a son. His monument is a tree trunk with 12 limbs sawed off. (I am not making this up!) ;-) Inside the sanctuary were walls full of amazingly beautiful religious paintings and icons. All kidding aside, I do wish I could have taken pictures. (Perhaps I can find a postcard.) Also there -- just a few feet in front of us -- were the mummified remains of one of the first Russian saints. Valentina told us his whole story and then revealed that we were standing right by his corpse! Our next stop was one of the two museums devoted to the Decembrists. This was a fascinating visit, particularly due to Valentina's expertise on the subject. In brief, the Decembrists were the first group to plan a revolt on behalf of the working class against the Tsar and the monarchy, in the early 19th century. The revolt was planned for December 14 (thus the name). However, at the last moment one of the ringleaders backed out and the revolt never was attempted. At least five of the leaders were executed. Many more were exiled to Siberia to work in the mines. A number of these Decembrists were sent to Irkutsk, where they were regarded as heroes by most of the residents. Thus the museums, which have been made out of the homes of the Decembrists. It was later, in 1917, that Lenin led the successful Russian revolution against Tsar Nicholas II, drawing on the sentiments aroused by the Decembrists earlier. Just trying to make these messages a bit more educational... Incidentally, we asked Valentina what the Russians in general think about the mystery of Anastasia Romanov, the daughter of Nicholas II who has long been rumored to have escaped the execution of the rest of her family. We expected her to tell us that Russians think Americans are silly for dreaming up such things (see also, "Presley, Elvis"), but she surprised us by saying that it's about 50-50. She herself believes it is likely that Anastasia escaped. She was interested to learn that Julie lived right across the street from the most notorious "Anastasia," in Charlottesville, VA for a while. We had an interesting adventure last night after we sent our e-mail message. As we mentioned in an earlier note, our room is actually quite hot here at the hotel, because it faces the midday sun -- and the weather has been quite pleasant here so far. Well, this causes us to leave our windows open in order to get some circulation going. With no screens, though, we're at the mercy of bugs. Last night we returned to an infestation of gnats in our room. We (proudly) managed to communicate the problem to our "floor lady" (more on her in a later message) using our phrase book. In a few moments she brought us her solution to the problem -- a fan. A fan? What were we supposed to do? Blow them back out the window? :-) Well, we wound up catching them one at a time using tissues from the bathroom. An enchanting activity, to be sure. We would have appreciated the fan for the cooling effect, but naturally when we plugged it in, it didn't work! Back to open windows today... This evening we ventured out for restaurant food again. As a few of you know, we have a family tradition of a "pizza picnic" each Sunday night. Why should that change just because we're in Siberia? We went to the Italian restaurant/bar here in the hotel (more on that later, also), and asked for a plain cheese pizza. Nothing else. Just cheese. Once we finally communicated this, the woman in charge thought we were crazy, but we didn't want any more liver-type surprises! It was actually quite good, though in reality it was more like the cheese toast that our kids like to eat than pizza. Still, tonight was an important milestone -- Benjamin's first Treu family pizza picnic! Thank you all so much again for indulging us by reading these messages. We look forward every day to being able to share our experiences with you. Somehow that helps us to fend off the trememdous feelings of isolation. Enjoy your Sunday! Much love, Kevin & Julie