Day 5. Saturday Night's Lively

We're down in the hotel lobby again letting you know what we're up to. It's Saturday night and this place is busy. We went to bed early last night and slept in today. After breakfast we relaxed some more. Nina wanted to take us cross-country skiing today, but we declined her offer. Linda just isn't feeling the best- sore throat and a bit of congestion has her down a little. Instead we watched "Seabiscuit" and played some cards. Nina loaned us a few DVDs and the horse movie was one of them.

So that means we had all our wits about us when we visited Ben today and we needed them. He seems to be putting us to the test more and more as he gets to know us. There are many things that he likes to do, that we kindly ask him not to do, like rattling the parakeet cage, pulling the leaves on the many plants and throwing wooden blocks clear across the room. He also smiles more, giggles more and is just generally more engaged or "in the moment" with us.

He seems to know when it's time to say "goodbye" too. The last two nights as we packed up to leave he became very cuddly.

We were hoping to go to the ballet tonight at the local opera house. Novosibirsk actually has the biggest opera house in Russia. We got there too late however, because of the sucky traffic, so we're hoping to make it tomorrow night. Men in tights- can't wait.

I'll have to submit an entry about the traffic some day. It really is unbelievable. The trip to the baby home is at least a half hour each way and we can't wait to make the last trip. We may get to take Benjamin back to the hotel with us on Monday, so our last trip to the baby home might be soon.

Linda's Cutural Snapshot

Smoke, Rats and Fur – they are everywhere
Smoke: Many people in Novosibirsk smoke, and smoking is not banned from restaurants and other places like it is in the States. We are often in smoky rooms here.
Rats: Stuffed rats, glass rats, rubber rats – they are on sale everywhere! At first I thought it must be fascination with the movie Ratatouille, but then as a sales person tried to sell me very life-like rubber rat she explained that 2008 is the year of the rat, which is very important to many Russian people.
Fur fur everywhere. Ed already mentioned this. It is cold here and there are lots and lots of fur coats. If there is any ethical protest, we haven’t seen it. Nina says there isn’t. “Of course not. Fur is warm.” Fur is for everyone and for everyday.

Day 4

For those of you interested, we never posted our Day 4 activities.

Day 4 we spent walking around Novosibirsk. We visited a very small museum and a very small gallery. The first was a bark museum. Sounds weird, but bark art is very popular here. Many pictures, boxes and other art are made from birch bark. During our first trip I bought a little birch box for Ben that has the Novosibirsk coat of arms on it. After the bark museum we stopped at a gallery of local Novosibirsk artists. Even if we had found something we liked, it is very difficult to take art out of the country. You have to have a lot of special papers to do so.

Finally, we visited St. Nicolais chapel. Many of you saw a picture of this chapel from our first trip. It is set at the east-west center of Russia. If was erected to honor the Romonovs, who turned out to be the last Czars of Russia. Then, of course, we visited Ben. Ed wrote about that visit already.





We ended our day at a Georgian restaurant. We saw the place earlier in the day and it looked intriguing, so we planned on eating there later. The food was good, but we got smoked out. The hostess seated a couple of chain-smokers next to us. These two guys barely stopped smoking while they were eating. We really missed our smoke free state while we had dinner.

We have more pictures of this place and the food we ate. Remind us to show them to you when we get home.