Going Turuleca in Russia

Monday, July 6th

Another rest day and J is having enough of restive vacations.

NB is enjoying the yard, running around with the dog and fighting over sticks.

NS took him to the neighbor to see the 'turulecas' (i.e. the hens and cock for those of you who know nothing about turulecas). He got two eggs as a gift and had them at dinner.

Everyone paid a lot of attention to the baby and NB worked on finding is place around. In general he behaved amazingly with the baby, even if not very gently (mind you he is a very little boyish boy….)

In the late morning we went to the forest with NaB to pick mushrooms and wild berries (zemlyanika). We found little mushrooms as expected after Sunday (when everyone go out to pick'em), but it was enough for an amazing mushrooms with cream plate made by NaB.

The berries were the most amazing part for DUE (me…). They have by far the best smell I've ever smelled. Pretty amazing for such little fellows!

The woods were obviously plagued with mosquitoes and the terrible creatures bite through your shirt… in general, we survived them b/c of the tons of mosquito repellents J put on us all. I had to use a hat - the monsters tried to bite me in the head!

While you keep moving it isn't terrible (the girls said that it can be much worst in other areas) - however, when you stop for picking berries and stay in the same place for more than a few seconds you become a target.

Philosophical take outs:

1. When you enter the woods….mind the mosquitoes and not only the wolves
2. The problem in the summer isn't always the temperature - geography makes a difference
3. Always keep moving
4. It's better to be a moving target than a stationary one
5. If you are big you can still be bitten
6. If you don't want the mosquitoes to bite you, you must keep moving even if you are bigger than them
7. And so on….

Now, go tell that to big armies….

At the evening we took a stroll through  the nicer part of the village with NaB and baby, saw some old houses worth photographing and returned home, for chicken soup dinner and sleeping.

Btw, we are communicating with the world with modem netstick which is giving nice bandwidth (when there is no rain, b/c then the electricity immediately goes off in the whole village including cellular antennas).