Bella - a - Russian

Just a little while longer and off to the next adventure. At the end of July through the beginning of August, Igor and I are heading out to his homeland to visit his family and meet his new niecey girl (as my uncle David always calls us) Rita, short of Margarita, so you know she is going to be fun! :) This will be his first time home in 4 years! As many of you know I lived across an ocean from my home and I only lasted about 6 months without my family, and that was pushing it, if you asked me. Anyways, I sent away for my visa, since visa's are a requirement to enter Belarus, and I will be patiently awaiting it in about 3 weeks time, sooner with any luck.

Igor is from a small town outside a city called Lepel, in North Eastern Belarus.

Just in case you needed some barrings on where Belarus is and where he is from (see map above). His grandmother, who we are to visit, and at whose house Igor and his brother spent almost every summer from their childhood helping to tend to the animals and take care of the small farm, is in a very tiny little village about 6 - 8 miles from his parents. Here there are approximately 60 residence (so more than some towns in Wyoming mind, resident population of 1 - 2, but still very small), and it is in the middle of the woods, or so he tells me.

I am so looking forward to getting to see all the places where he grew up, from the way that he describes them, they sounds almost fairy tale like in their serenity, although I doubt that he appreciated it as a kid as he does now. As we have no firm plans on what we will do while visiting, (of course I always a have a few ideas, so that statement isn't entirely accurate but let's let it slide for now) we will be spending some time in Minsk, in his home town near Lepel and at both his grandmothers houses, though I don't know where the second grandmother lives, but apparently it will be a long train ride and if you happen to have to pee you get to use one of these.... : O ! (black parts on the seat are for your feet). He tells me that when you press the button your "deposit" goes "directly to mother nature," aka the rails below. Oh hygiene. lol

Other than that, I imagine that it will be much like my experiences in Hungary as none of Igor's family, with the exception of his brother and sister in law, speak English. I remember those trips well and thanks very much to Emery for his extraordinary translation skills, especially around the card table! Anyway, as I was saying, I guess that this will be very similar to that, in so much as I will say little and learn some about the Russian / Belarusian language. I know only a few words, mostly revolving around food, to which Igor proclaimed the other night that at least he doesn't have to worry about me every going hungry ahahaha. I have been working on a couple of phrases such as: thank you, please, "I don't speak Russian," "I speak English," hello, and some others (don't ask me how to spell them because all you will get is the phonetic spelling since the letter system is entirely different, and yes Kristin that is all you get when I spell in English too, yad yad yad, sheesh.). That is one other thing that I have to admit, at least in Hungarian the lettering system was the same, albeit there were more of them...Russian, mmm not so much. Oh well, more bella - russian things to experiences! (for those who are curious, the literal translation of Belarus (when I am not being cheeking and spelling it correctly) is "White Russia," fitting then that Igor's drink of choice is a "White Russian." Emery feel free to insert comedy here. 

End of the World

If you haven't seen this video before you should go check it out. It is pretty amusing, the language is a bit roug but if you can get past that I think that you wil enjoy its comedic value.

http://www.endofworld.net/

Climbing

As most of you know, over the last 2 years I have become and avid rock climber. Let's be a bit more realistic and say and avid "indoor" rock climber, as I really haven't done much of the outdoor stuff up to this point. Anyway, I was reading one of my very old blogs from 2008, shortly after I graduated from undergrad, and the thought in that particular blog really stuck a cord with me.

In essence the message was this: that internal battles, those fought within yourself, are the most difficult and take the longest to win. In our daily lives we usually only get one chance to face our fear or to make the "right decision," if there is such a thing, but in climbing you get to make those choices every time you lay hand on to wall (or rock). Some days you may feel as if everything just works, just jives. Other days, not so much. You can do the exact same route 20 times get to the exact same point in the route and WHAMM! you are right back going toe to toe with that fear, faced with the same choice: go, fall, take. You can try the route 20, 30, 100 times and eventually that move that scared you or that clip that seems impossible, isn't any more.

So what changes? How does the fear lessen? I can't speak for every climber, or maybe even most. I can only speak for myself and to be honest the fear doesn't lessen or get defeated. The change is in you. You choose to see it differently, you choose to believe that this time you can make it. And when it does happen, you realize something on your way down...."I just did it! I didn't even have to think about it!" That's right, your emotional brain was put on pause and your analytical brain took over. No more can I, am I too tierd, whats the fall going to be like. No, none of that, just hold, foot, move, clip; hand, grab, toe hook, jump, grab, clip....

So what does this have to do with anything. If you look at climbing as a physical expression of everyday decisions then you can apply it to your life as a whole. Your analytical mind knows what has to be done and just does it when you can figure out where you left the remote so you can shut your emotional side up for a bit, just until you can get the task at hand done, with out all the that annoying background music. That isn't too say that emotional side is bad, it just means that sometimes we let our emotions get in the way and then we get in our own way. In the case of climbing (and other decisions for that matter), the emotional side is like that roommate or friend that , deep down inside you really love and are glad you have, but sometimes you wish you could just pretend they didn't existing. Climbing is a physical expression and mental challenge of facing tough decisions and learning to navigate through them. Learning how to take that emotional side and clam it down in the bathroom so that you can go back to the party and have some more fun.

And with all that said here are some, long over due, photos of my friends and I climbing outdoors. :)

Yosemite

So to back up even a little further than the weddings. I took two rather newbies backpacking in Yosemite last May. We had quite the adventure and a fantastic time. We drove into Yosemite late one Thursday night put our tent together as quietly as we could manage and went to sleep. Friday morning we all got up packed our stuff had a quickly little breakfast and made sure to make it to the ranger station in the village by door opening to get out wilderness passes. (FYI this is a must because if you don't get there earlier enough there is a very good possibility that you would get to go where you wanted to). In our case not only did we get our wilderness pass we also were able to secure the last three (anytime) passes for Half-Dome that they we giving out that day. SCORE! Once we knocked out all that annoying but necessary stuff we jumped in the car and made the hour drive up to our trail head near Touloumne Meadows.

Once all settled and and paced out we started walking. First hurtle....fording a river! OOOO. 5 minutes into our journey we had to roll up our trousers, take off our shoes and socks tie them to our bags and balance across a, all be it small river but still a river, and man was that water cold. Toweled off, shoes back on and off we went to find our next challenge not too far ahead.

We had been told at the ranger station before heading out that there was still snow on the trail that we were going on but that it was only a maximum of 3 feet and that was spars. I don't know what there idea of spars is, but let me tell you it is certainly much different than mine. It took us the better part of that day to get where we were going. We lost the trail a few times especially through the thick snowed in areas. My uncle would be proud and probably a bit surprise how much of what he taught to me all those years ago when we went backpacking together I still remember, but I got the opportunity to teach the guys about how to read trail markers and where to look for them as well as how to read and figure our direction/elevation/distance from the trail map, and how to use a compass (among other things that I was able to teach them that trip).

In the interest of saving some page space and some of your very valuable time I will make the rest of this quite quick: We didn't quite make it all the way to our first stopping point the First day. Trek member M got altitude sickness, which was not so much fun for him and no party for us either. We made it to the top of a place called "Clouds Rest" and to the top of Half-Dome in the same day! Found that the bus from the valley floor up to Touloumne Meadows doesn't start running until June1st, bad news for us as it was still about a week away. Turns out that hitchhiking is the recommended method by park rangers to get back to your vehicle if it is located up that way.

Anyway it was quite the adventure and we got some great pictures out of it! enjoy!

The Other One with the Frenchies

There are some great pictures from the rest of the Norway portion of the vacation but it's late and I'm tired and so you get the French wedding pictures and maybe later...on the weekend...if I remember, you might get the other pictures from Toulouse and Norway.

Back Date the Norwegian's Wedding

So I have also heard that I owe you people some pictures..... yeah, so about that...not sure where to start with those...maybe Lisa's wedding since that was were we left off at? sound good? Sure why not.

No Excuses....for now anyway.

Well, I am not be the most faithful of writers or have cute pictures of little kids to post as my sister does (her blog is pretty great by the way, but I am a bit biased because I love getting to see all the pictures of my nephews that she regularly posts). However, I can try to be a bit more consistent in my writing, which I have failed so miserably at since I got home from my great adventures in England 4 years ago.

All I can say for most of that 4 years is, "my how time flies." You never realize how quickly it all goes until you turn and looks back and think, "I swear it wasn't that long ago. Really, we were just down by the river last year weren't we?" Nope, not even close.

Anyhow, enough sappy reminiscing. I have been horrible at posting, end of story. If I picked up where I left off this would take more than ages to finish. So we'll do the really quick cliff notes version.

Norway and Lisa's wedding were wonderful. She looked fantastic, the food and music were awesome. She let me drive a manual transmission car in a foreign country (always dangerous even in my own country ...right Jamie - you remember Chicago don't you??). Hated to go, but left for the airport. Got there had to call Lisa to come and rescue me because I pulled a classic Maloney-Baloney move and went to the wrong airport. Nearly missed my flight, only made it because Lisa is a race car driver by night. Oh and when i say nearly I mean had to be escorted through the airport by security and walked out to the plane that was shutting it's doors.

Made it the correct airport and met Leanne in Toulouse. We jumped on a a bus and then a train to Rodez. Oh by the way did I mention that no one in the south of France speaks English? Yeah only minorly problematic, as we sneaked by with my barely passable French. Had a great time at Josh and Vio's wedding. Lots of great people. We made some very lovely friends, especially Marie and Jeremie who were nice enough to drive us back to Toulouse with them.

We had a cute flat in Toulouse. Too bad there was no air conditioning and we had wasp friends who decided our balcony was a lovely place for a home. (We thought so too but would have rather not had to share). Lea and I had a great time exploring Toulouse, but I think next time we will opt for somewhere closer to a large body of water, if we are going to play in France in the middle of summer.

Had a long flight home and then got back to the grind of work.

Rest of the summer, and fall for that matter, was spent doing lots of climbing (rock gym climbing, not quite ready for the big kid, outdoories, rock stuff just yet), hiking and tennis-ing.

Visited my mom and step dad at thanksgiving, spent Christmas with my dad, my sister Kristin, her husband Aaron and their little goober-y baby boys (Elijah and Lucas).

Now it is mid march. Sadly spent St. Patrick's day in Barkersfield, for work (if you know where it is you know why that's garbage, if you don't...be glad. I kid you not, armpit of California, might as well be in Mississippi).

There was a lot more too it than that but as I said condensed sparks/clif notes version, so that you don't fall asleep on me.