One day we went to
the cemetery to clean the grave sites of our family members. The
girls went to work alongside and were a great help. My mom and
aunt were telling stories about each relative, so the kids got a
chance to get to know my side of the family better.
Here are Nika and Sophie are hard at work weeding the grave site of their great-grandfather.
Lexa, Nika, and Babushka weeding another grave site.
Some of the things
that were part of our everyday life while in Solonyeshnoye:
Tried to catch at least one of the two farm cats.
They don't have an indoor plumbing, so every day we needed to pump water from the well for drinking, cooking, and washing.
Did laundry the old style
And we had to do laundry almost every day because of this! Lexa could find mud almost anywhere!
Washed dishes by hand
Prepared for winter by stacking the firewood.
Went on walks to the river and looked for mushrooms in the forest.
The greatest thing
about our trip to Solonyeshnoye was that the kids got reacquainted
and became great friends with their second cousins Varvara and Katya,
and later with another cousin Roman. There are just not that many
cousins on my side of the family, and the last time we went to
Solonyeshnoye everybody was still too little to play together. This
time kids had a blast!
Having a picnic with Varvara just on the other side of the stream right outside of the house.
They dug up some earth worms, made their own fishing poles and went fishing to the river.
Of course, they couldn't catch anything until Varvara;s Dad came to the rescue with a real fishing pole.
And within the first minute a fish was cut!
Our crew and Varvara
Then we went to Mirny, another village where one of my cousins lives. We stayed there for a couple of days, and the kids spent the entire time riding bikes. I think it is because we do not have bikes in Kazakhstan, and they are really missing them.
Dancing party with my cousin Irina and her son Roman
And then it was time to say our goodbyes.
Before our bus ride back to Biysk, with Baba Lida, Glaya and Babushka
Baba Lida (my mom's oldest sister), my cousin Tanya, my mom, and Nastya (my second cousin and Varvara's mom)
At the bus station with Aunt Tanya and Uncle Kolya
At our train in Biysk with my cousin's Ira's family
The kids couldn't pass an opportunity to climb this train engine
Best friends forever now! It is great especially because we are a family!
It was a great visit and we hope to see you guys more often in the future! But after three weeks of adventure it was nice to get back home to Papa.
We did lots of
fun things while we were in Solonyeshnoye. One of those things was
riding horses. My second cousin Anya works at a horse farm. They
raise and train mostly Orlov trotters but also have a couple of work
horses and one of some American breed. Anya rides Orlov trotters
during races but she also takes care of them all. She invited us to
come over and tour the stables. Those were some nicest stables I
have ever seen. Anya showed us around and told a story of each horse
that was in the stable (a few of them were out at a Federal
championship race in another city), and then gave girls a ride. The
only horse we could ride that day was the work horse (other good
mannered horses were at the race), and they didn’t have a saddle
for him, so Anya just led him with the girls on top. They had fun
nonetheless. And since I mostly rode bareback when I was a kid, she
trusted me to ride him on my own. :)
In the stable
The girls are in love with horses
Yep, totally in love!
Almost ready to be mounted
Lina is in heaven!
Sophie
Lexa
Nika
And me!
This is the cart that Anya rides in during the races
A mother horse with her baby in the pasture
And while we are on the horse subject, every day we would have this little herd of horses walk by our house. I just love horses!
One of the days my
cousin Galya, Nika, and I went up in the mountains to gather some tea called
badan. This is a famous herbal tea from Altai and it grows up in the
mountains around the village. Our family loves this tea, and Nika was
very excited to gather her own. My cousin also taught her which wild
mushrooms are good, and Nika was very good at finding them. It was a
great day!
Solonyeshnoye in a beautiful valley
Badan leaves. These are new leaves. The ones that are gathered for tea are 2nd or 3rd year leaves (they are dark brown)
Nika gathering tea.
Sharik (translated as "balloon") was our loyal companion
Nika
After the tea is gathered, it needs to be washed and then dried. Here is my mom washing badan leaves.
We went down to the
mountain river Anui a couple of times while we were there. The kids
wanted to swim in it, but because it has rained for three weeks
straight, the water was very cold and somewhat muddy. They were
disappointed that they didn't get to swim but were happy to at least
wade in it and skip rocks. Summer is fun!
We spent two weeks
in Krasnoyarsk and then took a trip to Altai region to see my
extended family that we haven't seen for 4 years. Spencer had to go
back to work, so he took a train with us to Novosibirsk and then flew
to Astana. My mom, the girls and I got on another train to Biysk
where we took a 3 hour bus ride to Soloneshnoye, our final
destination.
On the train traveling from Krasnoyarsk to Novosibirsk. It was an overnight ride, and Spencer was still with us.
Babushka with the girls
We had to wait for about 10 hours at the train station to catch our next train to Biysk. We did go out and walked around the city a bit but then a few hours were spent playing and reading!
While we were at the train station, this couple came and performed some beautiful music for an hour. The husband (Michael Blam) played the violin and the wife played the piano (the piano is behind the poster). It was amazing, and we were truly impressed. Later we found out that the director of the train station decided that music helps people relieve stress from travel, so there are concerts like this one a couple of times a week.
Here is the video of Michael Blam playing (well, mostly it is a video of Babushka and Lexa listening...:)
On the train again. Another overnighter.
Soloneshnoye is a
village of about 2000 people located in a beautiful valley of Altai
mountains. When we got there, they said it had been raining for 2-3
weeks non-stop. It was still raining for another 10 days after our
arrival. However when the sun finally came out, it was beautiful. We
stayed with my aunt (my mom's oldest living sister) and my cousin.
They live just by themselves, so when the six of us arrived, their
peace ended! :)
They live in a log house with no indoor plumbing, an outhouse, a bath house called banya (a steam room), and a well – a dream come true for any adventurous kids. They also had chickens, a hen with chicks, a dog and a couple of cats. When I was a kid, I used to spent all of my summers there. Then they also had a cow with calves, some sheep and pigs, and horses. They don't have those anymore since my uncle died but even with just a dog, cats, and chickens our girls were in heaven!
The fog after the rain
Our happy crew
Hunting for worms to feed them to the chicks
They would look for worms under the logs and wooden boards
And by the dog house...
And then feed them to these happy chicks.
Some neighbor's calves playing on the other side of the creek
There is a little
creek that goes by the house, and the girls spent most of their time
there just playing in the water and trying to catch some fish. They
made fishing poles out of hoe sticks, and tied metal paper clips to
them, dug up some earth worms and went fishing full of enthusiasm! Of
course they didn’t catch anything but the final result wasn't that
important after all. They were just happy to have freedom to do
something on their own, even if it was fishing with metal paper
clips! :)
In front of my aunt's house. The creek is right behind the girls.
