the return from Karelia and more SPB

The return from Karelia and more of St. Petersburg:

Written July 29^th.

Our train arrived too late in the evening to do much other than get a quick bite to eat and re-check everyone into the hotel. The hotel changed the room/s from where the family stayed the first few nights and this caused a few problems. Not the changing of the room so much as the new room itself. What had been two full rooms connected with a door and sharing one bathroom (not exactly ideal for 4 adults to begin with, but the rooms were spacious and I think other than the shared bath, were nice), now became a “bedroom” with a “living room” which had a couch that unfolded into a not so comfortable bed (and both rooms much smaller than the previous set), another shared, smaller bathroom, and AC that didn’t work, but you couldn’t open the window either because it was located above the noisy street instead of the previous room’s “quiet street.” The family dealt with it for one night only because it was so late, but reasonably demanded a change for the last night in SPB. The room might have been acceptable for a single family of 4 with two parents and two small children who were only visiting SPB and therefore weren’t lugging around large suitcases from all over Europe. It was not acceptable, and reasonably so, for 4 fully grown adults, especially for a cross-continental trip. The last night, they had two completely separate rooms each with their own bathroom. I didn’t stay there, but overall I would like to say that I think the hotel was quite nice. It was easy to find, had a good café downstairs, good breakfasts according to the fam, and even though they shared the bathroom, it was quite a luxurious bathroom with a shower that has jets to propel water at you.

Sunday, July 14^th, we went to Alexander Nevsky Lavra and both experienced the Lavra in and of itself, but also we somewhat participated in the church service. We were late and we left early, but were there for most of it (and since we can’t take communion, we didn’t need to stay for that). Dad bought a couple CDs of the music, hopefully good stuff sung by the monks there, but I don’t know how the CDs turned out and since there weren’t great descriptions on the cases (at least that I could read) I don’t really know. The family decided to forego entering the “Artist’s Cemetery” located at the Lavra since it was 200 rubles a person (1,000 total for 5 people which would be about $30). I don’t know if it would have been worth their going in, but it is a fascinating cemetery with people like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and well, here, you can read about it. (tag link).

We left the Lavra and hopped on a bus to go from one end of Nevsky Prospekt to the other to actually see the Hermitage this time. Fortunately my Russian is good enough to pick up on the announcement of the conductor (the person who walks up and down the bus taking your money – a great way to expedite getting passengers on and off instead of forming a line so that everyone puts money into a machine). On account of construction – which I knew about and forgot – Nevsky was closed on the weekends (open for weekday work traffic). We quickly hopped off and took the metro, which also made us walk a little more (and although everyone survived the trip, we were trying to limit the walking – especially since we had museums to visit – since mom, dad, and Erik had been walking for nearly a month straight). This however, enabled us to stop and eat some pyshki – delicious fried dough/donut type things) and I showed them all a quick taste of mead. We also learned from the previous attempt at the Hermitage that one is able to skip a long line by purchasing tickets online. We got to the Hermitage and they all took their own paths around the museum while I went home (bus would have been great instead of me walking all the way back to the metro and then walking from our metro home too. Alas).

Daria and I met them outside, where each told stories of things they liked about the museum, such as the peacock clock, some of the Da Vinci stuff (Matt was sad he missed that section, but he also enjoyed what he saw). I honestly don’t remember what each said they liked best, so if they read, I welcome their comments below (ahem, you can write it as anonymous without making an account and just sign your name in the comment box – actually, dear family that visited, please feel free to write some of your own things in all the posts about the trip).

We went to Balitka Brewery for dinner (celebrating my birthday a few days early) and I made another poor decision (I was responsible for a few poor decisions throughout this trip, I’m telling you). While I wanted to go there, the food wasn’t bad, but wasn’t that great and they were missing quite a bit of what we wanted so we had to keep guessing on our orders. Also, half the beer selection was gone. I could have made the decision to leave and find someplace new, and probably should have, but I didn’t and so we stayed with a mediocre meal and mediocre beer. At least it was quiet and the company of family was good.

After dinner Erik, Matt, and I climbed up to the top of the dome of St. Isaac’s, while mom and Daria went into the museum of St. Isaac’s, and dad sat on the steps of St. Isaac’s to listen to the opera that was being played on a portable, special event stage in the middle of St. Isaac’s Square. We ended the evening with a relaxing canal tour.

Monday, July 15^th was a much slower day. We took our time getting things ready in the morning and then everyone came over for a quick visit of the apartment (yeah, the final day in SPB and I finally show them where we have lived the last year). There I showed them the самогон, samogon, better known as moonshine to you Americans that one of my students gave me for New Years. I had saved a little bit to share with my family. The mixed reactions were priceless. I think it was 2 and 2 of who liked it and who didn’t, but I don’t remember (Erik and dad yes, mom and Matt no????? Help! I don’t know). Although Daria had the best face, even though she’s tried it before, dad wishes he had a picture of it. And since I had never offered any to Daria’s grandpa before I offered him some. I thought he’d take a small sip out of the cup that everyone was sharing, but he gulped the whole thing down (probably less than a shot left in the cut or maybe about a shot, but still, I wasn’t expecting that) and said, mmmm.

We ate shwarma for lunch just outside of where we needed to board the bus out to Peterhof (Petergof), the Summer Palace. ACCIDENT we enjoyed a nice stroll through the gardens and the company of some beautiful golden fountains among other water spewing mechanisms also known as fountains but lack the modifier golden. I think one of the more memorable parts of this day was Matt finding a good souvenir for his brother Charles. Matt had been struggling finding presents for some people and while most of the souvenirs at the various stands were the same, one stand had a set of an SPB pint glass and 6 shot glasses. As soon as Matt saw it he bought it. We took the boat back on the return trip and I fell asleep and missed all of it. Back in the city, we did a little more souvenir shopping, ate one final dinner at the cafeteria place (I should just tell you the name Shelkunchik and that in Russian it’s called a stolovaya). This place was great and was good for us because we could each easily get what we want, no hassle with menus, and is cheap with its own delicious homebrew beer.

Daria remained in SPB, but Monday night the 5 of us caught an overnight train to Moscow. We stayed up a little late on the train playing some cards, enjoying some more Scotch (hey I had to finish off all the little bottles – side note about the Scotch in case you don’t remember from previous posts – I had two bottles that I brought with me. These I did not need to share because my family has had them and can easily be had again in the US. I had a bottle of Dewars 12 year blend that Daria’s dad gave me last year for my birthday and a bottle of Macallans 15 year single malt that my company students gave me for New Years. These latter two bottles are what I wanted to share with my family because they’re pricier than what we normally get and they’re new to us so of course I need to share the love. I packed the Balvenie 21 year and my Teacher’s Blend that students gave me at the end of the year and those will be tried here in the US). Dad also smuggled (ok it was legal, but smuggled sounds cooler) some Oban 14 in a small flask. We finished my Dewars and the Oban on the train. I then used the flask, after rinsing and drying, to send the moonshine back so that some people can try that in the States.

Since there were 5 of us and only 4 beds in a compartment, I had to wake up my compartment mates at about 1 or 1.30 am since they locked the door on me despite the fact that I told them I would be coming in late and was merely playing cards with my family. This train was the best train of the whole time with the family. Going to Karelia, we had 6 beds, but no doors on the “compartments” and 2 beds were against the aisle wall. Not bad and I’d happily do that type of train again, but not private either. Here the 6 of us were together in “one space.” We had the same type of train on the way back, but now all 6 of us were on the aisle wall so we didn’t share “one space.” Going to Moscow 4 shared one room and I was next door. Erik and I on the way back from Moscow had a similar compartment train, but it was about 30 years older than the one on the way to Moscow. More on that train later.

before the Karelia post, family still in SPB

Notice written on Oct. 28th: Oops I made a mistake in the order and put another one first. This looks like it should come before.

Old writing:

The following few blogs are written accounts of the time with the family. The pictures will come in a second series, and hopefully will add more details to the trip. They are also all quite lengthy and the style follows the log of events and has less colorful language than some previous posts. I hope that my pictures in the second series will add and make the tale more exciting.

Family arrived:

Written 13 July 2013 on the train from Belomorsk to SPB with some edits from Monday the 29th.

On Friday the 5^th my parents and my brother arrived in the evening on a bus from Tallinn. The first evening was basically getting them settled into the hotel and getting a bite to eat.

Saturday was the first real adventure as we went out to Lisiy Nos to visit Daria’s mom’s mom and we had a feast in her garden. We grilled some shashlik, had a salad made with a mix of vegetables from the store and the garden, and ate some fresh berries and cherries out of the garden. We were joined for the feast by Daria’s cousin Masha and her daughter Karina, as well as by Daria’s and Masha’s childhood friend Anna and her mom. Anna currently resides in Boston working at MIT on her post-doc, so she was a good companion with whom my family could speak English. Both families were glad to meet each other after so long, but the conversation largely took place through interpretation. However, it appeared as though it was a good conversation. After the meal we also ventured out to the Gulf thinking that we might get a little bit of wading done in the shallow waters, but a strong wind was blowing some sewage onto shore and deterred people from entering the water. We quickly returned to the pleasant atmosphere of the garden where we just relaxed talked some more and had some dessert. My mom tried to help clean things up, but grandma was quick to rebuke her and make her sit and relax, as the hosts would take care of the cleaning up. When we returned to the city in the evening, we walked through Lenin Square with the musical fountains, across the Neva, past the church Daria where was baptized and through the neighborhood home.

Sunday was another adventure to the dacha, but this time to Gorkovskoe to Daria’s dad’s parents. Here there was more conversation since Daria’s grandpa speaks English quite well, and I must say I learned that her grandma speaks English much better than I had known/thought as evidenced by a good conversation between her and my mom. One of the most memorable moments was at our feast, Daria’s grandma said that Karma was her best friend and that she was going to miss her when we return to LA. They apparently get on quite well together when the rest of us are out of the apartment. Our feast here included the famed kvas (Nikola, who has the best ad/slogan I can think of – Nikola the brand is “not cola” when you change the stress and make it two words). In Gorkovskoe we ventured into the forest and my parents were able to see the abundance of blueberries and at least where mushroom picking happens even if we didn’t pick any. We also took a longer trek than we thought to the lake (we didn’t know how long the walk was since we always bike) to go swimming, but it was raining the whole time. Mom decided to stay ashore even though she put her suit on at the house. Grandpa decided he was too lazy to change in the rain, but Erik, Daria, and I all went for a swim in the rain while the “adults” stayed ashore and chatted. Once again, while the water didn’t “cooperate” with our plans, but a good time was had by all, and my family got to see the idyllic summer houses that I love so much.

Monday, we actually ventured into the city after my parents and brother joined me for Karma’s morning walk. I took my parents on a tour of a couple churches in the morning starting with the restoration of St. Fyodor’s (Theodore), which is almost complete, but is quite different from other churches because of its lack of dome and low ceilings which appear more western/gothic with the crossed-ribbed arches. We also saw St. Vladimir’s near the home of Dostoevsky (and at both churches I taught my family how to properly enter and cross themselves) before we took a stroll down Nevskiy Prospekt. They saw many famous sights including Anichkov Bridge with the four statues of the taming of a horse, the square and statue of Catherine the Great, Gostiniy Dvor, and Kazanskiy Cathedral. Daria met up with us for lunch at the pie place and took my parents and brother to the Russian Museum where they could see many works of art from Russian artists. I, on the other hand, went to the airport to meet my cousin Matt arriving from Colorado. Upon his arrival I hastily took him back to the hotel to get checked-in whereupon I quickly left to administer the final test of my intermediate class (and my final workday) as everyone else got ready and went to the ballet of Anna Karenina at the Marinskiy. They apparently thoroughly enjoyed both the museum and the ballet as their experience of the “Royal Theatre” while I was busy earning my last rubles. I had a quick drink with two of my students who could do a drink upon short notice as I waited for the ballet to end so that I could meet up with the family. I also made the poor decision this night to be the night to enjoy a quick nip of Scotch since we hadn’t done so up to that point. We were all really exhausted, but I wanted a nip so I pulled out the Macallan 15 year. It was delicious and of course it was nice to have some Scotch with the family after so long, but I could have chosen a better timing than midnight or so on Monday night when everyone was already crashing for the night.

Tuesday morning we went out to Savior on Spilled Blood. I had forgotten the awe-inspiring mosaics inside the museum. The museum has never actually been a functioning church although it was built in the style of classical Russian churches (as part of Alexander III’s attempt to restore a conservative faith instead of the 19^th century modern faith). It is so named because it is the site of the assassination of Alexander II, although it also has the name of The Church of the Resurrection of Christ. It miraculously survived the Siege during WWII with only taking a small bombing, although many of the mosaics did have to be restored after the war.

Our lunch was a little less exciting since what was supposed to be a quick lunch turned into a long sit down. This drastically changed plans of an afternoon at the Hermitage, which is now scheduled for tomorrow (Sunday) and Sunday’s plans are bumped to Monday and Monday’s plans happened last Tuesday. While we visited a little of Palace Square, we crossed Palace bridge to Vasilovskiy Island, and a couple sights on the Strelka (the arrowhead shaped point on the island), such as the pillars representing the 4 rivers of Russia. This was followed by heading to Peter and Paul Fortress, visiting Peter and Paul Cathedral where all the tombs of the Tsars are located, including Peter the Great. Peter had chose that site for his burial, but since he died before they really broke ground to build the cathedral, they had to quickly built a wooden chapel, bless it, bury him, and then construct the cathedral around this chapel before disassembling the wooden chapel.

Since Daria and I had planned on packing for our excursion to Karelia while they visited the Hermitage, Daria returned home while I continued the tour of places like Mars Field and the Eternal Flame Memorial, seeing the outside of the Summer Gardens, and the outside of Michael’s Castle, where a member of the royal family (Alexander III I think??) who was paranoid of being assassinated in the Winter Palace so he built himself his own castle, but was assassinated anyway. We went to dinner at the cafeteria-styled restaurant that we ate at on Friday, before quickly returning to gather our things (and for me to pack) so that we could head to the train station and start the Karelian excursion.

Random fun facts of the city tour/ the past few days so far include using the deepest metro system in the world as it has to go under all the marsh land; going into the deepest station in this system; seeing other neat stations in the system, such as the golden chainmail links of Alexander Nevskiy station (fitting of the man himself). Well, ok, that’s really just about the metro, but I wanted to share with you what they got. Daria and I also burnt the midnight oil, or better yet, the candle at both ends during these few days as we routinely did a little bit of laundry for the family almost every night (different items put in a shift). Because of this we got to bed late and then of course got up early every morning to go meet them.

Pictures are forth

Карелии (De Karelia)

Карелии  (De Karelia)

Written 13 July 2013 on the train from Belomorsk back to SPB about our excursion of Karelia, also with some edits from the 29th.

Day 0 and 1:

On Tuesday July 9^th we took an overnight train from SPB to Petrozavodsk, the capital city of Karelia. SPB is not technically in Karelia, but rather is nestled just to the south/southwest of this state-like region. SPB is in what is called the Leningrad Oblast, next to the Republic of Karelia. It’s been difficult to try and explain the difference to my family between Oblast and Republics as they are both part of Russia, but do not equally translate to state, province, or anything we know. It doesn’t help that I don’t entirely know the difference either, although I have enough of an understanding. American readers: Just know they are geo-political regions within the country of Russia.

Petrozavodsk was established by Peter the Great in 1703, the same year as SPB, as a mining city to help him get the iron he needed. It is located on the shores of Lake Onega, which is dwarfed by Lake Ladoga, but is still immensely vast and many still refer to it as “like a sea.” We arrived relatively early, but had to wait for the group from Moscow to arrive to start our excursion. While we waited, Daria, Erik, and I wandered the city looking for coffee/snacks/looking at places near the train station not finding much since things didn’t open until 10am. However, we found some Mountain Dew in a grocery store and thus surprised Matt with his favorite soda. The excursion began with a quick breakfast at our hotel (but did not check in), and then was followed by a tour of the city seeing the main square (Lenin’s Square), the ruins of the old manufacturing plant from the Soviet Era, some art along the shoreline, and other main monuments of the city. We also saw the old gubernatorial gardens, which suffered greatly a few decades back to the point where they were not used and then they had to work hard to restore them so that people could enjoy the park as it neared the 300^th anniversary. Since then the gardens have been much more accommodating. The city itself is named as “Peter’s manufacturing plant” Zavod, being like a plant or factory.

Our check-in around lunchtime had a few hang-ups, mostly on my end where I didn’t have my family give the migration cards, only their passports, to the receptionist. I also didn’t give my visa and so in the evening I had to finish my own registration by supplying all the proper documents. Oops.

In the afternoon we took a boat 68km out to the famous island Kizhi where although there are still residents, there is also a famous open-air museum where we could see wooden churches and other structures from the 15^th-early 20^th centuries. All the structures were originally built without nails and while many came from the surrounding countryside and rebuilt on the island for the museum, the main church was not was originally built on that island. Actually it consists of two main churches, a winter and a summer, along with the belfry and they are intentionally built so that from various angles they sometimes look like one structure. There we also had the pleasure of seeing a man use an ax to chisel the wooden tiles used to make the onion domes (no saws were used either, only axes – quite impressive). We bought some souvenir tiles with paintings on them. My mom also bought a necklace made from beads where a couple thousand beads are used on a single string and then the single string is crocheted to make a patterned necklace. It was almost lost art, but a few people rediscovered the craft and now 4 people know how to make it, and they are teaching others to help revive the craft.

My cousin Matt and I stayed up quite late that evening having a couple beers and watching the sky become darker, but never quite dark, and just catching up after a few years of not seeing each other. It was a good conversation, but quite late.

Day 2:

They told us the water from Lake Onega was very soft. Our showers proved this to be quite true and our hair felt great. J

We merged with another group for day 2 and took a bus to some protected forest, where our new guide was quite garrulous and while she gave lots of information, it might have been nice to give us more time seeing the forest and waterfalls at Kivach. Kivach, a local Karelian word not of Russian origins, is the second largest “plain waterfall” in Europe. It was truly beautiful to behold.

Some of the more interesting information that was passed along, although the manner could have been better, is that the Karelian birch is extremely valuable. It differs from other Russian birch with a thicker bark and a harder, sturdier wood. This birch was preferred by the Russian court and aristocracy for making furniture and floors in the palaces among other things and could be found in the Winter and Summer palaces of SPB. The pines in the area are also harder, compared to the softwood that most pines are, and therefore it was also considered more valuable thus why Russia struggled so hard to keep Karelia rather than let the Finns or the Swedes have it.

We also visited a museum in Medvezhegorsk, or “Bear Mountain” where we learned about the Great Terror of Stalin, the gulags, and the building of the Baltiskiy-Belomorsk Canal. It took only 19 months to build the Canal, but there was an average of about 800 deaths per day (from starvation, exhaustion, disease, and other reasons) of the prisoners and they would just ship in more people to continue the construction. The Great Terror is an example to me of why this was not really an example of socialism or communism despite the name, and truly just an example of tyranny. Socialism is the government controlling commerce and production, but it does so in the name of supporting the people like what can be found in many European countries today, or at least partial socialism is found. Communism is meant to equalize the people and everyone works together toward the betterment of the community. The Great Terror was Stalin killing off the community instead of working to help the people. Wasn’t part of the whole revolution to liberate the peasants from the oppression of the ruling class? Someone forgot to mention that to Stalin.

Later in the afternoon/evening we saw some petroglyphs about 20km from Belomorsk (city on the White Sea) that date back about 6000 years. We were eaten alive by mosquitos, but it was worth it to see such beautiful carvings in the granite and learn about the people from that time. When we were walking, I told Matt that the mosquitos weren’t as bad as what we had a few weeks ago. Then we crossed a small river and the pests increased 100 fold. Yeah, they were definitely as bad if not a little worse. Another tally on my mistakes list. The petroglyphs had actually been covered by forest and sandy soil and were discovered in the 1920s when they started to do some construction in the area. There was one from a different location that some locals knew about, but they were afraid of it thinking it was an evil omen (although now scientists believe it to be something like a “king of the forest”), but most were hidden away. They don’t really know what they mean, perhaps teaching the next generation how to hunt/live, but they did some really incredible work and many scientists from different places around the world are still there trying to decipher the pictographs. Daria did most of the translating throughout this whole trip, but I have been helping where I can and the petroglyph site was where my role stepped up a little bit. There was one petroglyph that I listened to that Daria didn’t and I felt good for getting most of the info on that one and passing it along to my family.

We ended the day checking into the only hotel in Belomorsk (pop. About 11,000 drastically down from about 30k in the 1980s). Before dinner a girl probably about 15-17 years old came up to us on her bike and spoke to Daria (after first calling her out on being the translator of the group). She told us how glad she was that we were visiting her city since so few people visit it, especially foreigners. Her smile and thumbs up beamed with a happiness that is rarely seen among locals to visitors that she put “Southron Hospitality” to shame. The city itself is definitely half abandoned and in disrepair. Daria, Erik, and I went on an after dinner stroll on which we got a good glimpse of what the house life was like. I honestly have no words to describe this, only that this city showed me a completely different side of Russia than I knew, and probably one more accurate to the rest of the country once you leave the major cities. I do have to point out that while the days are getting shorter in St. Petersburg, sunset in Belomorsk was at 11.58pm and sunrise was roughly 3.30am (I didn’t look up the official sunrise so I can’t say the exact minute) and that is about 3 weeks after the solstice.

Day 3:

A little panic in the morning since our bus driver didn’t wake up and we had a boat to catch caused our guide to order taxis. My family therefore learned the joke about how in Russia a sober driver is weaving (to avoid the potholes) while a drunk driver drives straight. We caught our boat and went off to the large island of Solovyetsky where we visited the monastery and museum. The monastery is located 100km south of the Arctic Circle and is the farthest north any of us have been.

The monastery itself was established around 1500 by a monk who was banished from the monastery on Valaam on an island in Lake Ladoga. The walls surrounding the monastery look more like a medieval kremlin than a regular monastery and were made in a pentagon rather than a quadrangle because of the shape of the island and the need to defend itself. Some walls of the buildings inside (not the protection) are up to 4 meters thick and the heating system of building ventilation in the bricks reminds me of what I learned about classical Roman architecture and heating where holes are intentionally made in the brickwork so that heat from fires below the building rise into the walls to help heat the building. They also had an underground stream between Holy Lake and Good Landing Bay (seriously the translations of the names), which they connected to the mill and laundry system. Unfortunately the monastery also became the “religious” gulag during Stalin’s Great Terror, and it’s where they placed many religious prisoners from other monasteries and churches before slaughtering most of them in 1937 (some were fortunate – or unfortunate- to live a few years longer and one until the 1960s). Other fascinating facts include a holy saint from there who refused to absolve Ivan the Terrible who was later transferred to a Siberian prison before his own execution (Ivan clearly hadn’t repented and therefore didn’t deserve absolution). The monastery is both a museum and functioning monastery and is undergoing a lot of repairs. A short distance away is a labyrinth, which if we understood correctly is about 6000 years old, but is clearly upkept and I doubt has any of the original rocks. Unlike other religious places that were converted into museums or preserved for various reasons, Solovetsky Monastery suffered a lot of damage at the hands of the Soviets and is now being re-birthed (as the sign says –more loosely translated as Ressurected). It also suffered from attacks from the British during the Crimean War despite being so far away from Crimea or anywhere else the British might have attacked at that point.

One of the things we learned at the petroglyphs is that the White Sea is far more rough than it looks. The waves appear small, and the black water (probably the same color as the Black Sea and the BS gets its name from the color of the water, whereas the WS gets its same because it’s frozen most the year and thus appears white) looks calm. Despite this appearance, the water was rough and I could easily see how smaller vessels would capsize quickly. I wonder, but do not have an answer, of whether more goods were taken to the island during the summer with vessels that probably made it there in a day, or during winter with sleighs and skis over a couple days (although I have no idea how rough the winter weather is there either). Also speaking of weather, according to our guide the monastery sees about 22 good sunny days a year. The rest of the summer is rainy and damp, fall and spring are short and wet, and the winter long, dark, and cold. We got one of those days I guess.

As for the train today, it’s a 15-hour journey, and at one of the stops we bought some berries from a local person, including cloud berries/mulberries, which none of us had tried. They are definitely different and we don’t know how to describe them. Because of their strangeness, none of us are diving into the cup, but we’re not rejecting them either. However, the blueberries and raspberries were devoured quickly. They were a little pricey and although we could have haggled down the price, we decided it was better to help stimulate the local economy.

I would like to say this journey has been good for my Russian practice as I’ve had to use it a lot more than I normally do. Much of it has been the same of asking how much something costs, or how much time we have for this or that, but sometimes it has varied. However, it has still been really good for my speaking and my listening to be on this trip as I have had a lot more opportunities to use my Russian outside of the classroom and more into real-world experiences, including buying the berries and ice-cream from peddlers on the train platform.

Pictures will be forthcoming and there will be many more descriptions of the journey along with the pictures.

the so tardy that it's beyond late wrap up

Prologue/warning:  So, I actually wrote a couple blog posts in microsoft word when I did not have internet access and or, well I don't know. I can make excuses for a lot of stuff, but I won't. I know that some of the things that I wrote I wanted to edit, and other things I was waiting to go through my pictures so that I could make more clear statements. However, that has not really happened and I still haven't gone through my pictures, but you know, it's the end of October and some of this stuff was written the end of July. Therefore, I will post whatever it is that I wrote without even re-reading it yet so you'll have to read my words from what they were at that time. I also hope that now that I have the a stronger motivation to posting (the comparative can be noticed in that I'm actually doing it, not that I wasn't motivated before), I hope that I will continue to look through things and add photos later (b/c really the photos were a large part of the hold up and still are). That said, enjoy the following few posts as they will be all the posts after this one.