Anyone for a little Uzbeck???

Saturday night a group of us checked out a restaurant called Chaikhana. If you like the idea of lying in a comfortable couches, being entertained by belly dancers while smoking a hookah, this is your place! The food is authentic Uzbeckistan fare - Apparently on the menu they serve horse meat! Don't worry we didn't order the horse meat -we managed to find the grilled veggies, white rice, and chicken on a stick! It was also Cameron's birthday - and birthday's here in Moscow call for VODKA!!! It was a great night!

Cameron & Megan

Meghna & Rahul
(Meghna is also involved with AWO)

The group...and of course our hookahs

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US

Typical Day in Moscow for Jim & Carrie

Thought we'd fill you all in on our typical days here in Moscow.....

For Jim - since we are here for his job - that is what occupies the majority of his time during the week. He leaves for the office around 7:30ish in the morning and takes the Metro to his office - he usually gets to the office 20 to 25 minutes later. He leaves work around 6:30ish and also gets home 20 - 25 minutes later....(where dinner is steaming hot waiting for him on the table)

For me - Everyday is different and something new. Since arriving here in Moscow I have joined two Expat Women's organizations - one is the AWO (American Women's Organization) and the other IWC (International Women's Club) both clubs offer numerous activities to keep the "housewives" busy while living in Moscow. It is truly amazing to meet these women and talk to them about where they have lived and how many different countries they have moved to and lived...Pittsburgh just can't compete with Cairo, Nigeria, & Hong Kong just to name a few!!!

Since joining, I have taken on a couple of leadership roles since joining both clubs - for the AWO I am the Interest Group leader for a group entitled GO MOSCOW - where I organize day trips to visit something interesting and off the beaten path here in Moscow - my first tour will be of the Red October Chocolate Factory.....so stay tuned...

The IWC has asked me to help out on the Steering Committee as the PR Coordinator - they meet monthly and their meetings are made up of women from all over the world. In fact - last week when I joined the IWC, I was the only American in the group and the meeting was held in the Japanese Embassy - VERY COOL!

Victory Park

Saturday was a gorgeous day here in Moscow and Jim, Bean and I set off to explore a little of Moscow. We took the metro out to Victory Park which is the Russian park commemorating World War II. However, Russians do not refer to it as World War II - they refer to the war as the Great Patriotic War. The park was huge and absolutely gorgeous!

Bean & I in front of the Triumphal Arch.
It is decorated with the coats of arms of the 48 Russian provinces.


This is the base of a 460 foot statue called the Angel of Victory

This is the statue looking up - you can see the angels at the top.

A Russian Bride and Groom posing for photos.

We think this was her Maid of Honor...
Now you can all imagine what the women wear out on a Saturday night -
it can be quite a sight?!?!

Another wedding posing - check out the guy at about 12 o'clock
- yep - he's drinking VODKA in the wedding photo and the
Maid of Honor is wearing a sash....interesting....did someone say TIR?

Me standing in Victory Park - off in the distance you can see the city of Moscow

A church in the park - the park also has a synagogue and a mosque.

Bean & I in Victory Park

Turkish Luau

On the last night of our trip in Turkey, PwC threw a great party for it's employees. It was comparable to a Hawaiian Luau - Turkish style. Everyone was seated on the ground on huge pillows that circled a round silver dish that was used to hold a hookah or a pipe that you smoke flavored herbs. Dinner was Turkish food - such as kabobs and again lots and lots of cucumbers. After dinner we were first entertained by a fire dancer....then came the belly dancers. (I was told that Jim was serenaded by one of the dancers - too bad I didn't have my camera.) After the belly dancers the DISCO started. A Disco is what Russian's call a "Dance Party" - where we all danced and have a great time!

The sunset over the mountains and Mediterranean

Belly dancers

Belly dancers
Fire Dancer

DISCO

Belek, Turkey

Us standing in front of these waterfalls in the middle of the town of Belek.

Jim in front of a Mermaid Statue
(we don't know why a mermaid statue is in the middle of city...
but we thought it was photo worthy)


Spices they sell in the stores - it smelled wonderful in this store!


The Mosque in the middle of the city

I wanted to post some photos of the town of Belek - which is the town located closest to our resort. Unfortunately, I don't much information to say about Belek - I even tried to Google Belek to add a few things so I'd sound smart...but couldn't find a thing - Belek really does exist!!! I will have to point out again that Belek did have a ton of Knock-Off Purse stores - you just can't own enough purses...Jim has yet to understand this?!?

Turkey Accomodations

Views of the Mediterranean from our hotel

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One of the Jacuzzi pools
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I wanted to share a few photos of our hotel and the pool - everyday at 11 in the morning the pool "Animation" team would wake us all up with a pool dance called "Sun Dance" I've grown to love this song - and even asked the Animation team to make me a CD. The hotel had pools everywhere - I've never seen so many pools and of course the Mediterranean was only feet away....the water in the Mediterranean was warm (similar to the water in Myrtle Beach.) Our hotel was your typical all-inclusive hotel similar to what you would find in Cancun. Jim and I have never stayed all-inclusive so it was new for us to stay and eat at the hotel every night - we ventured out one evening to the town of Belek which is only a 10 minute cab ride for dinner and shopping (of course!?!)

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Pool Games - This game was played with those huge banana boats
(if your wondering...I didn't play this game.)

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Stacey & I also ventured to the spa located in the hotel - Since we were in Turkey we thought it made perfect sense to experience an authentic Turkish Massage....All I will say on this is that it was definitely an experience that I will never forget....Whats that saying??

"What happens at the spa...stays at the spa."

(Sorry NO pics of this!!!)

See those people....in particular the guy in the tight white shorts?
Yeah - he works for PwC and was supposed to be in class with Jim.... BUSTED Blowing off class!!

Antalya Turkey

Sooooo I'm sure you are all asking yourselves....why did Jim & Carrie go to Turkey????

PwC has an annual training for their employees once a year and this year it was at the resort Atlantis located on the Turkish Riviera which is located on the Mediterranean Sea. Russian's need a visa to go pretty much anywhere except a few countries and one of those countries is Turkey...hence why we ended up in Turkey. While the guys are at class all day I hung out with another wife along for the trip, Stacey. On our first full day in Turkey she and I set off to explore the town of Antalya.

They city of Antalya is about 45 minute cab ride from our hotel. We arranged a cab to pick us up at the hotel - the cab (total cost of $67.00) took us to Antalya said he would wait up to 5 hours and then took us back to the hotel. We asked our cab driver to take us to the center of the town where all the shops are located and we expressed that we would like to purchase a Turkish Rug....He dropped us off at a store and as you can see from our pictures the shopping began!!!

A few things to point out about the Turkish Riviera - the only currency they accept in any of the stores are Euros, Dollars, or Turkish Lyra. Rubles are NOT accepted.... kind of ironic since 75% of the tourists are Russians. I thought it was funny that they accept the American dollar since no one we met had ever even met an American. We told people that we were from America and they were surprised and shook our hands - amazed to meet someone from so far away. However, some shop vendors had other things to say about Americans... in particular George W. Bush - they aren't fans of Bush...... but they said they still liked Americans (and probably our dollars) .... just not our President!

Turkish people are made up primarily of Muslims and in the center of most of the cities is the Mosque - and if you are like me and have never heard the chanting coming from the loud speakers of the Mosque - it is quite an experience and an earful. Apparently the chanting happens 7 times through-out the day - EVERY DAY. Jim said that the chanting he heard sounded pretty much like the sounds coming from the Mosques in Guinea, just a little louder.

So I'm sure your all asking yourselves what about the food? Turkish food is made up of a lot of lamb, fish, yogurt, honey, and cucumbers. I don't think I have ever eaten as many cucumbers as I have this week. They also put honey on their pancakes - I didn't try it - Jim did though.

Stacey picking out her rugs....Look at all those RUGS!

I think Stacey made the Rug guy open almost every rug rolled up....

just kidding Stace!

Here we are with our Rug Salesman.
The rugs that we purchased are in those bowling bags near our feet...

they are folded up in those bags so we can take them back to Moscow on the airplane.

Here are some Ruins called Hadrianus Gate built to honor Hadrianus, the Roman Emperor at 130 AD. They are located in the City Center of Antalya called Kaleici.

This is the clock tower in Antalya
(we were told it is the ONLY clock tower in the city)
We took a picture of this but the Knock-Off purse vendors were
much more interesting....

A street of vendors selling anything you can think of - the most popular items we saw were the Knock-Off Purses, Turkish spices, Jewelery, and Rugs.

Ahhhh......Lunch! Except we thought we ordered chicken gyros - you know the ones you get from the street vendors with the cucumber sauce??? Yep...that's not what we got. To be honest we aren't sure what we got - but we tried it...definitely a TIR moment - or should I say a TIT moment (since we are in Turkey)

Friday Night Elevator Ride

Friday night after work we planned to go to happy hour with our friends Tom & Sarah (who live in the same apartment building but on the other side) and Megan. They all decided to stop by to check out our new digs...after a little critiquing of our place - we locked our double doors and the 5 of us boarded the elevator....

The elevator began to go down and then dropped about 5 feet and just stopped....NOW what do we do?!?! We began pressing all of the buttons - thinking it may trigger the door open or something - but nothing happened....and as I'm sure you can all imagine - panic began to set in. The elevator has dimensions about that of a porta-john - and we were five squeezed in shoulder to shoulder...and it began to get hot - VERY Hot and fast.

Luckily Sarah had the name of the building superintendent programmed into her cell phone and gave him a call. He was not in the building but he sent the old ladies who manage the building to check it out. Within a few minutes we had voice contact via the speaker in the elevator from the ladies downstairs...Unfortunately the communication was in Russian and the 5 of us can only understand our few key words and phrases in Russian - nothing this woman was saying was making any sense to any of us.....

After a few more calls to the superintendent and a very hot 45 minutes later a mechanic showed up and manually opened the doors for us and we were able to climb out of the elevator since we were stuck between the 8th and 7th floors! You should have seen us - virtually all covered in sweat as it was soooooo hot in the elevator. Needless to say - we took the 8 flights of stairs down that night. Apparently we exceeded the weight limit of the elevator....I guess now we know - the weight limit for our elevator is about 3 Americans.

Thank goodness that Sarah had the number of the superintendent in her phone - you better believe that his number is programmed into our phones as well!!!

We are off to Turkey for the week of the 10th of September - we will be going to Antalya Turkey - which is located on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey - we are staying at the Atlantis hotel in Belek, Turkey - check out the website http://www.atlantishotel.info/ - Jim will be going for a few work seminars and I will be going to check out Antalya and look for an authentic Turkish Rug for our apartment.....wish me luck.

Sunday Boat Ride!!

Sunday afternoon we took a Boat Cruise along the Moscow River with the American Women's Organization or AWO - which by the way I just joined yesterday. I signed up for half a dozen interest groups - including bowling, Gourmet Nooners, Indian Cooking, Understanding Russia, Game Night for Couples, and Cultural Art around Moscow. Oh yeah and Belly Danicing - oops almost forgot that one. That should be interesting!?!

Anyways, back to the Boat Cruise....It was a beautiful day - not too hot and not too cold - perfect. About 100 or so people were aboard the boat - which is comparable to the Gateway Clipper in Pittsburgh....it was amazing to hear the places these couples have been and they have lived as expats for the past 20 plus years - most people work for the big oil companies so they have lived in Nigeria, Dubai, various places in Asia and South America - very impressive!

Check out our pics....

Outside the Kremlin

Another boat along the water

Christ the Savior Cathedral

Gorky Park (Moscow's Cedar Point)

The river

Another 7 Sisters Building
(remember our apartment is also in one of these buildings)

Another shot of the river

Breaking Starbucks News!!

Well, we told you it was coming soon - but this was really fast!!! This is great news for American coffee drinkers in this Russian nation of tea drinkers. Look at the following breaking news - and even better - the next branch to open as reported in this article will be within walking distance from our apartment!!

KHIMKI, Russia (Reuters) - Starbucks opened its first coffee shop in Russia on Thursday, two years after it won a legal battle to protect the right to its brand in the fast-growing Russian market.

"This is an important step for the company, and we are looking forward to being a part of every day life for Russians," said Cliff Burrows, president of Starbucks Europe, Middle East and Africa, as he opened the cafe.

The newest Starbucks in the worldwide chain of around 10,000 outlets is in the Mega shopping mall in Khimki, just north of Moscow. (this is the mall where the IKEA we go to all the time is located - only a short metro/bus ride from our apartment)

In 2005 the company won a trademark fight over the Starbucks name. A "squatter" had registered to himself the right to use the name in Russia, and was asking $600,000 from Starbucks to relinquish it.

The company successfully proved in Russia courts that it was the rightful owner of the name.
Alyona Mikhailova, 34, placed Russia's first official Starbucks order, for a venti, or medium, cappuccino.

"In all of the countries I've been to I always definitely go to Starbucks, so I was really waiting for this opening," she said.

Burrows told Reuters this week the company plans to open a second store on Moscow's historic Stary Arbat street before the end of the year, but on Thursday would not answer questions on further expansion plans in Russia.

Laundry & Shopping

A few of you keep asking about shopping and things like that - so I thought I'd fill you all in...

Laundry: For those of you who have lived or been to Europe - you feel my pain. Doing the laundry here is a JOKE - the machine is about 1/4 of the size of an average washing machine in the states and can fit a 1/4 of an average load you'd wash in the states. So about 5 of Jim's tee-shirts fit at a time. So once you've loaded the washer - it washes and rinses the clothes for one hour and a half. Then it does a crazy spin cycle for approximately 3 minutes and then its DONE - Yep that's it - nothing left for the machine to do - so then I had to air dry every tee-shirt, every sock, EVERYTHING. It's a little like stepping back in time.

So if any of you have any tips on increasing the drying time - please send them my way. I have attempted to download the directions for the machine online - but have had no luck....

Here she is!

Shopping: Once I get the hang of things I'm sure it will be a piece of cake - this city has grocery stores galore - the only catch - they are all in Russian except Stockman's (which by the way I found today!!! YAY - Jim and I can eat frozen pizza for dinner!!!)

They also have huge open aired markets where you can get food and pretty much anything you want - the prices are super cheap - I bought a loaf of bread at the market the other day and it was only 15 Rubles!!! About 30 cents.

Here I am at one of the flower markets - look at these roses
Absolutely beautiful!

Moscow's Birthday Bash

As if we didn't do enough on Saturday with the move and Ikea excursion we didn't want to miss the big Moscow Birthday Party!! The above poster is everywhere in Moscow - you'd think they would print up tee-shirt or hats or something? Nope Russian's aren't interested in that type of thing.....

Behind me is a stage with a woman singing -
you can see her on the huge plasma TV left of my head. I am standing on a street called Tverskaya - one of the busiest roads in Moscow - closed for the weekend festivities!

This is the army guards they brought in to keep the peace - they were everywhere.

After grabbing a quick dinner we walked down to the Kremlin via the main shopping street (Tverskaya) which was also closed off to traffic. It was a good thing they closed all the streets for this party - the streets were shoulder to shoulder with people celebrating the big day. After making our way down to the Kremlin we watched the fireworks over the Red Square and then headed back for the night.

I must admit that fireworks over the Red Square was quite a site and quite impressive - but only because of the location - Zambelli fireworks and the Fourth of July in Pittsburgh is actually MUCH more impressive - no question!

Check out all of these people!! As far as the eyes can see - wall to wall people. And yes those men in the front are from the Russian Army....Just in case the scene was to get out of hand.

Moving Day

Yes...I realize you are all anxiously awaiting what we did last weekend - sorry it took so long to update the blog but here you go....This weekend was another Moscow adventure for sure. We had the perfectly planned moving scenario........ Minivan comes to the hotel - takes us to our new apartment - drop off all of our over-sized bags - go to Ikea (YAY) - buy lots of stuff for the new apartment (YAY) - then settle in.

Like everything in Russia - nothing seems to go as planned.

After an excellent dinner at Goodman's Steakhouse http://www.goodman-steak.ru/ on Friday night we were up at the crack of dawn on Saturday, finished packing the bags and got everything down to the lobby of the hotel at the assigned time. 10, 15, 20 minutes later - and NO sign of our minivan - our cell phone starts ringing but the guy on the other end of the line clearly understood no English - and our Russian isn't good either. We thought it was the wrong number and continued to wait....did I mention that it was around 50 degrees out and raining?

Just a few minutes later the cell phone started ringing again - this time it was the PwC security department who explained that our taxi (minivan driver) could not get to our hotel as the entire center of the city was shut down and no cars were being permitted within the city for the big Moscow birthday bash. We were having trouble believing that they would shut the entire city down, but this is Russia and they did exactly that. We'll get to the Birthday Bash in a bit....

So in a flash of brilliance we found the hotel bellman, asked him to translate and talk to the taxi driver and to park the car as close as he could to the city. The bellman said it would be a 7 minute walk....7 minutes? TIR. So we load up the hotel carts and begin our trek in search of our minivan. Below are some pictures of the experience.

The police, our taxi driver, the bellman, Jim, & and all of our stuff being
wheeled through the intersection....can you say Dumb Americans????

In the distance you can see Jim and our stuff being wheeled
to the intersection that is open to cars.

On the corner of a VERY busy intersection...have we mentioned that cars in Moscow do not care if you are a pedestrian - the cars rule the roads and there is not a doubt in my mind that they wouldn't think twice before hitting someone if they had the right of way and you decided to walk out in front on them.

Who moves on Moscow's Birthday?!? The Will's - that's who.

After trekking our stuff across town we made it safely to our new apartment. After quickly dropping our stuff off at the apartment we then headed out to Ikea as our apartment, although furnished, did not contain stuff such as plates, silverware, sheets, towels, etc, etc.

Ikea, although similar to the store in Pittsburgh is quite an experience. The entire shopping trip took about five hours (the store is probably 15 times larger than the one in Pittsburgh and the entire population of Moscow seems to shop there.) Most of the stuff is the same and only a little bit more expensive than what it would cost in the states....So we show up at the check out line (which there are probably 40 check out lines all at least 10 people deep at each line) and the Ikea plastic bags are located at the beginning of the line - so I immediately grab 20 bags since we have now filled up 2 carts of things - I am immediately stopped and told that I have to pay for the bags - 13 rubles a bag (50 cents.) WHAT?!? You have to pay for the bags??!?! So I put them back and only bought 8 bags and stuffed everything in the two carts in the 8 bags. Unbelievable.

Ikea is also attached to the Mega Mall - and guess what is coming soon!!!!!

STARBUCKS!!!!