First Week of January in the Russian Federation

We made it! We had a busy start to the year and I barely had time to breathe all during "vacation" week.

So, just what were we up to? In short, the first week of January is a week of "saying yes" to all social opportunities-usually, going to one another's house to visit and sit around the table with lots of food.

When else would we see our friends? Everyone works during the week, in the evenings we put kids to bed, and on weekends we have workshops and church.

It's intense, though! At one point all the dishes really piled up and I wasn't having time to wash them between guests. Or take a shower (sorry) or do laundry or check email.

Some of the cool things we did:

-met up with some American friends who just moved here and are expecting a baby
-had a visit from some church friends and discussed life and church stuff together
-had a late New Year's AND Christmas celebration with my in-laws since we had taken turns being sick on the actual holidays...
-visited the house that friends are building with their own hands. Inspiring! They are so grateful to have their own space, just on the outskirts of town, that is not an overpriced apartment.


It also happened that our church decided to organize a fairly last-minute outreach concert for January 7th, which is Orthodox Christmas (technically the night before). So I was involved in rehearsals for that. On the actual day, Andrei's parents babysat so that we could head off to the Christmas service by ourselves. That was nice since there was no Sunday school and we were already nervous enough being involved in the service.

Things we didn't get to do that were on our list:

-go on a date (got downgraded to a movie date but that didn't happen either because Sophia was up until around 2 a.m. each night)
-do a wintry outdoorsy activity (the snow melted anyway)
-tackle any house projects
-see the rest of our friends
-catch up on sleep

Russians officially went back to work January 9th. Monday was still off, and when Andrei told me at church that he'd invited more guests, I just about fell over! We ended up having a quick visit on Monday and Andrei's parents were over on Tuesday. And now we've got a cold going around.

We're almost 2 weeks into the new year now, so I'd better post!