Purring through life: birthday

My birthday run was super. Shorts and t-shirt—small amount of sweat. I guess I didn’t start out fast enough on the sprint because I was sure that I ran faster—not the case.

One of my students, a 15-year-old young man, wants to be a chef.
He helps out at a restaurant downtown. I invited several people to this restaurant to help me celebrate my birthday. Over the course of 3 or 4 hours people came and went. We didn’t drink much. Sasha, the Square Dance caller from Petrozavodsk, was drinking a beer when I arrived. When the restaurant owner, Vadim, brought me some apple-butter on bread appetizers, I ordered a beer myself. Vadim was very happy. When I told him I would probably be drinking only water, he answered, “In Russia, we have a word for such water. It’s called vodka.” Rostislav, another square dancer, brought me a bottle of wine that we drank at the table. If I’d have brought it home, it might still be around next November.

Here is the first group picture. From the left are Lena, Misha, and Sasha, me, Sasha, Olga and Zoia my student. Olga is a fellow English teacher—she is actually helping me learn English grammar. When I was a kid, there were only three verb tenses—past, present and future. I have learned recently that there are at least 16!!! So complicated.

Here is the second group picture: Rostislav, Sasha, Irina, me, Alsu (5 square dancers), and Olga.

I started to give a toast with a glass that contained only a couple lemon seeds. Of course a toast with an empty glass is completely inappropriate so I added some water from my neighbor’s glass. Here is the last part of the toast—the only part that I successfully recorded:

My student Zoia has just returned from China. She brought me some tea, and some other stuff in this bag down here on the floor. (She was using my camera to film so I had to clink her glass with mine). And Misha and Lena, my favorite friend in Moscow…we met maaaaannnnnny years ago. We will enjoy our time together. Thank you, thank you. (Then I raised my glass, looked at the camera and said, “Bye.”) I sat down and Zoia panned over to Sasha, a square dancer, and then to Misha and Lena of Peace Walk fame.

This is a picture with Misha, a man I met 24 years ago on a Peace Walk in Ukraine. Here are some more pictures of us. The Way We Were

With the Al Franken book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

When I visited them in 2008, they didn't know that Al Franken was running for the Senate from Minnesota. He said it's not so absurd to have a comedian in the Senate. "We have plenty of our own," he said. He saw my Obama t-shirt and said, "I hope you aren't voting for that guy." I already had done, several weeks ago. He said that he thought that the challenger would do more to oppose human rights abuses in Russia. I said, "Well, that seems like it would be Obama's deal, doesn't it?" That's right, it seems like it should be, but in Misha's words, "He hasn't done anything." Too true. I came back with the tired old line, "Well maybe now he (Obama) will realize that the Republicans are never going to compromise, talk sensibly, or give him a break so he will do what he wants." Writing this now, on November 7, I guess we will see.