Frequent Flurries and Dreams of Drumsticks

"Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans" ~John Lennon

My dad has said this sage quote for many years (I think since LP's were a new fad and groovy was the hip saying) and it makes sense to me now. As we have been engrossed with our "new life" we have been struggling with the balance of being present here and learning of news from home.

Liv's (I guess I should say "Our") Grandma, Patsy, recently suffered an aneurysm consequently hospitalizing her and placing her in a challenge of recovery. Family has gathered around in support and started making adjustments. We are so thankful for the technology that has allowed us to stay in contact, and in a lot of ways increased communication! Although selfishly we wish we could be their to give hugs of support and be physically present, we realize our constraints. I think the silver lining of this situation is that our family has become closer and reconnected. I give thanks for being part of a family and having a wife that has strength to persevere through challenging times and create a stronger life as from before.

I share this because I need to say the things we think everyday but have been struggling putting into words! We live in a world that meets no restrictions of time; I mean hear I am typing this as most of you that will read this, are falling into slumber. Our daily tasks focus on what and how can we make things better and how we can make or spend more money! Yes philosophical and yes a bit anarchist. But living a world away from what has happened back home allows you to question what is important. A Blessing that Liv and I have had many conversations about. Priorities lie in family and friends and maintaining those relationships where ever we may be in the world.

Well the happenings of anew reside in highlights of Lucy getting to meet her boyfriend, Kili (Spelling undetermined, but short for Kilimanjaro in Africa a favorite trip of Rob and Jill's). They can't get enough of each other and will play endlessly for hours. Although Kili is a puppy he is












bigger than Lucy now and she is quite the surrogate mother. These photos are of a trip to Pushkin where Catherine the Great Summer palace resides. We had a great walk chatting and throwing snowballs for the dogs!

We relish the white blanket over the city as it creates a facade of Christmas and the holidays reminding us of home. The canals that meander through the hustle and bustle of this megalopolis are all frozen and an eerie silence blankets our street as the bullhorns of floating tours and mufflers of madness have seemingly hibernated! The Neva River is a site to see as the blocks of ice with occasional bird passenger float by foreshadowing the impending winter.

Liv and I have invited our staff over for a Thanksgiving feast to attempt some normalcy in our absentia of family dinners back home. We have ordered two birds and will prepare a potful of mashed potatoes. Some of our fellow staff members are going to bring some traditional Russian fare, you can probably guess which one of us is excited about this news. We hope that everyone back home has a wonderful holiday and we will be thinking of you on this day while we are in school... Regardless of where we all are we will raise a toast to all of you on Thanksgiving!

Two weeks past and where have we been

Making friends in Russia!
Remember how I was saying Russians have many weddings all of the time, well this was a dude that was part of one of those weddings! He was kind enough to let me get a picture with him. (if you click on the photos you get great details, BE PREPARED)

Below the responses to the recent blog from Tumalo are a few other pictures of places we have been so far, a little misaligned but should make sense.



This post goes to all of the students and alumni of Tumalo Community School...

Hi Friends,

I was so excited to see that you have blogged me. It was great to hear from you all and your comments made me smile. So...responses...and make sure to tell Mrs. Riehle that she is right for not getting to this sooner and I am holding my hand in the shape of an 'L' on my forehead.

Caity,
that's so great to hear that you are helping out the animals of our world.

Lyndsay,
Excellent work on improving your math skills! How's the year going?

Brianna,
Russia is amazing! I am sorry to hear Utah was sad. I hope your year is going well!

Bolli,
How's Volleyball going? Say hi to Em!

Marshall, Marshall,
Nice work on your plant! Have you identified it yet?

OH JEREMY!
Nice work at the "football" tournament with your score! I have been playing with the students at our school it is fun being goalie!

Jose,
Sweet Disneyland! That will be a fun time with your family! We play soccer here but they call it football! No grass though we play on gravel!!!

Sarah,
Eurasia is very big! How is school going? I hope all is well!

Sam I am!
I am envious of your road trip and flight to the islands! The plant is... oh I can't tell you it's magic! Let me know when you figure it out! I miss you guys too!

Kaytlin,
I am glad to hear your summer was fun! Which part of the coast did you go to? Teaching here is fun!

Cody,
Nice to meet you, I think I remember you from several years ago! Glad to hear you are part of Tumalo now!

Olivia,
So did you cut it off? How short? Miss you too! How did you do at fair?

Mr. Prince,
How's your drain bramage? J/K! Have you been riding? Thanks for the luck! Luck to you too!

Tay Tay,
I am glad your summer was good! Yeah my students are cool and they all have great accents! There is even a first grader from Perth, Austrailia he has an awesome accent! Miss you too!

Amanda,
Nice to meet you, I am glad to hear that you like animals. My wife loves horses too! Welcome to Tumalo!

Ariel and Family,
I am glad to here school is going well! I am jealous of not being able to go to the Beavers game. Looks like they toasted the Bengals and that Canfeild had an amazing game! What did mom think of the game? Hi Dave I hope all is well!

Grace and Colin,
Are you still in Central Oregon? I hope all is well and that school is going smoothly

Bescetti,
How's school going? I missed you at the movie, I know if you could have you would have! Russia is awesome!

Labowski,
How's high school? Hey thanks for setting up that movie before we left it meant a lot to me to see you guys! I hope all is well!

Tori,
You keeping up your grades? I knew you would! How's school going? Take it easy!

To the many other students and friends of Tumalo,
I miss you guys and hope to hear from you soon! Please give all of your teachers a big hug from me and tell your friends hi!

P.s. Next time Mr. Variel senior guest teaches give him a hug too!



The church on spilled blood two blocks from our house.

















The exposed ground at the location of where Peter the Great was assassinated.





















Liv and Kat, our new friend from New Jersey and a teacher at our school, posing in the church!
















The mosaic tiling of the amazingly detailed art work in the church! Hundreds no hundreds of thousands tiles covering the majority of the walls!


















































Peterhof fountain grounds; an old palace with amazing statues and water features sprinkling the grounds.






























Sweet outfits...even the volleyball players get cheerleaders. We went to a volleyball tournament played on shipped sand in a blustery cold afternoon. Tropics in Russia, maybe...global warming.












Pictures in my classroom, Sasha is our tech dude we keep score on the technology issues that we solve, needless to say he is winning!







The tank is a highlight with the students they love taking care of the fish, reminds me of being at Tumalo :)









P.s. Lucy wanted me to relay a message, "Hi guys, I miss you and I want you to know that I have finally made a friend, his name is Oousha. He's spastic but fun to run around with. So I was wrong, there are friendly dogs here in Russia. Last the week the babushka gave a me a lemon drop candy, a little weird but I ate it. Also I think Beau and Olivia are visiting another dog when they leave our house, will you try to find out who he is?"

P.s.s. Our Friends Rob and Jill just got a new Chocolate Lab pup, he's six weeks old and he can't wait to meet Lucy once he has his immune system updates downloaded and running. We think he will be a special friend of Lucy!

Good bye for now and take it easy!
~Mr. V

Attempted Descriptions of St. Petersburg From a New Langauge Arts Teacher

The Culture here is crazy; cars going 130 km/h (yeah the conversions are a change for us backward American science folks) not stopping for any pedestrian, even "feeble" babushkas. Special booths at each intersection occupied by Militia (police) left to "play" with the lights for both Drivers and Pedestrians. Broken glass, empty champagne bottles left over from the myriad weddings that occur on everyday of the week; not uncommon to have 6-8 brides walking down the streets with their entourage closely behind with their "paparazzi" as they visit every local monument. Breath...run on sentence man the kids are doomed with my grammar, I think that would even be considered conventions.

Dog poop everywhere but no friendly dogs, apparently a grudge transfered from owners to their human counterpart, Russian dog culture is left to be figured out eventually. Urine infused alleyways deposited from the previous nights imbibers, oh and it is common place to walk around with a beer in hand at all hours of the day even on the way to work, and probably intravenously while they sleep, wait!!! they don't sleep, silly me. Starting about midnight, every night, they drive up and down our road that boarders the Moika canal with their scooters gone wrong at the muffler shop, more like amplifier shop. Party/tour boats with bullhorn descriptions blaring the play by play as they meander through the canals. Don't get me wrong we absolutely love it here!!!

It is a strange mix of beauty and rich culture infused with spoils of a newly industrialized nation. Every where you look old architecture, art, and history mildly diluted by "civilization". We live right next to the Hermitage (two blocks a away that contains two original Leonardo Di Vinci paintings, Matisse paintings, an unfinished Michaelangelo piece, Treasures collected by Catherine the Great from all over the world some even circa 600 b.c.,art from culture of past including objects dating from the Palaeolithic to the Iron Ages, just to name a few of this majestic Museum.

Many, many more museums and churches to behold the physical beauty like the Church of Our Saviour On Spilled Blood a gorgeous piece of architecture built on the site where Emperor Alexander II, a very prominent figure in revolutionizing Russia, was assassinated in March of 1881.

Liv and I encountered great food and drink, in fact last night we went to restaurant directly translated means The Cow, as you probably inferred, we had steak (Mom, two steaks of Fillet Mignon for 300 Roubles, or 12 dollars!!!, hopefully not mad-cow ridden). I have even found a fish store a 10 minute walk away after we get a little more established a small tank will probably sprout in our "house", surprising I'm sure to most of you! There is plenty of water to, if lucky, pull out a three eyed Chornobyl special while fishing. I look forward to trying ice fishing which I have never done even back home. There is even the possibility of going out on the Sea of Finland to catch a lunker of whatever specie I will soon find out.

Lucy still thinks we are crazy for coming to such a concrete jungle but has made friends with the babushkas and the guards who look after our place. She definitely gets lots of looks from the locals and even some pats on the head with words said that make us feel very similar to her in understanding what they mean. blah,blah,,blah,LUCY,blah,blah,blah,собака(dog)... We finally know what it is like to be a dog! Lots of sleeping, tug of war, eating, protecting Liv when I am not in the house, and looking for cats and pigeons pass her time.

We have one request from you all and that is to when you get a chance please send us photos so that we may see your smiling faces!
Love to you all!,
The Variels in Russia

Below are links to the Hermitage and Church on Spilled Blood, if you are interested!!

http://www.saint-petersburg.com/virtual-tour/church-of-savior.asp

http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/index.html

Well here we are finally!

To all our Family and Friends,

Yes we know it is due time for us to update our blog as we said we would do frequently. So here it goes...

We are almost done with our first week of being at our school, with our classrooms coming together and our heads swimming with details, as it did our first year of teaching. We absolutely love our "home" that we have made and can't wait to share photos and stories of the locale.

Although Lucy is adjusting to less running without the Variel dogs, she still loves a good game of tug and meeting the babushkas. There is a great field we take her to, it is across the street from The Church of Spilled Blood.

St. Petersburg is an amazing city, the colors and sights are breath taking. Our walk to school takes about 25 minutes, we cross a HUGE bridge over the river Neva. We walk by the Peter and Paul Fortress everyday. I don't think they sights will ever get old!

The weather has been extremely muggy and warm. We are getting use to taking ALOT of showers.

Our school is wonderful and the people are great. They have welcomed us into their community with open arms. Although things are very different the challenge of making things work in RUSSIA has been fun. We will soon put pictures of our school and classrooms on the blog.

Beau is adjusting to teaching Middle School Language Arts, he has a stack of books on the counter to read. He will be teaching 11 6/7th grade students and 8 8th graders. I will have 8 students in my 5th grade class. CRAZY. When I tell teachers at our school that last year I taught 34 students they gasp!! :) I think it is funny.

It is hard to believe that we have been here a week. St Petersburg is a great place- it is still a little weird to call RUSSIA home. I think that will take some getting use to!

We miss you all very much and we look forward to hearing from you!
Take Care

Liv, Beau and Lucy

WOW- A blog

Welcome to our first blog! Beau and I are so excited to have a way to connect with our friends and family. We have been rapidly completing our school year. Beau and I are tired and a little overwhelmed with everything we need to do before flying out on August 8th!! :) But with one step at a time we will get through the next couple of weeks.

Here are the basics about our upcoming move:

July 11th Pack everything we own up to be shipped to St. Petersburg- it will take it 8 weeks for our two crates to get to us!!

July 28th Abby and Zeke get married

August 8th Depart for St. Petersburg

August 9th Arrive in St. Petersburg and begin our adventure

Please continue to check in with our blog- we PROMISE to keep the site updated with current notes and pictures of our time in RUSSIA!!