Panto Pandemonium

Alyssa's school put on a great concert Friday night! Panto Pandemonium. It was a fun story about some fairy tales having chaos and the children fixing them. Alyssa's class danced for Cinderella's Ball. All the children did a wonderful job. Alyssa loved learning the songs and has been singing them non-stop for a month.

Busy month of November

We had a really busy November! Here are a few highlights....

Alyssa won 2nd place in back stroke at her school Swimming Gala. They swim every Monday during school as PE. She is in the top group in her grade.

The Annual Charity Bazaar was really neat. We got to try foods from around the world and Santa also made a visit.

The girls performed a ballet recital for the community before our Thanksgiving Feast.

And of course, she has been sledding everyday!!

Sinterklaas

The Dutch community in our school presented Sinterklaas on Saturday. Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas-actually from Spain) and his Black Peter helpers visited our school and gave out Pepernoten (molasses cookies) to the children. The Dutch children performed several songs and dances for us. It was fun! Alyssa learned one of the songs in Dutch at school. On Thursday, the kids left one shoe out for Black Peter. He filled the shoe with treats, but also made messes in all the classrooms.

Snow Shoeing

We've been snow shoeing around Olympia. Lots of fun and we can all go together, even Taylor! Alyssa's snow shoes make snowflake stamps with each step. Our temperatures have been below freezing the last couple weeks. We still get beautiful sun and blue skies! We're expecting a big snow storm tomorrow, so we'll see how many inches we get.....

Olympia Bonfire, October 22, 2011

I must say that it was quite a fire . . . . a bunch of trees, 10 gallons of
diesel and ENFUEGO . . . . we had to keep warding off the neighborhood fire
department, they kept wanting to try out their fire truck, but that would have
left us with one heck of a mess. It took less than 10 minutes for the outhouse walls to burn up to come down and about 3 1/2 hours for the center pole to fall, but the main fire burned for about 22 hours.

This was a month long effort for the entire Olympia Community (our ExxonMobil compound in Yuzhno). Every Saturday in October, the men cut and cleared dead trees on our 200 acre property and then constructed the Bonfire. The outhouse on top has university representation from everyone who lives here. We had a fun chilli cook-off and pot-luck dinner before the burning on October 22. It was lots of fun!

Sight Seeing Tokyo

We spent two days sight seeing around Tokyo. We figured out the subway/train system and explored some neat places. The SensoJi Temple and surrounding markets were first. Then onto to Ginza and Imperial Palace. We explored a science museum which had Asimo, the robot. Then finished with Cirque Du Soleil's magnificent ZED performance. We still have more to explore on a future trip to Tokyo. We also had a day in Sapporo, Japan and shopped at their CostCo and loaded up on familiar food items and necessities we can't find in Russia.

Tokyo Disney

Our trip to Tokyo was fabulous! We spent three days at Tokyo Disney and the others sight-seeing Tokyo. Here are some photos from Disney. They have two parks: DisneyLand which is like Magic Kingdom and DisneySea which is like EpCot but major ports around the world instead of just countries. Some rides were the same or with different twists and some were brand new for us! The shows and parades were in Japanese, so we had fun laughing at Mickey and friends speaking Japanese! All the Japanese would pose for pictures with the "peace sign", so Alyssa started doing the same. The parks were extremely busy and crowded with long wait times. The Japanese really love Disney! The people also loved Alyssa. They would stop and talk to her or touch her and take pictures of her with and without asking me.

The parade floats were very impressive! I think they were more spectacular than the ones I've seen in the US. The food in the parks catered towards the Japanese folks, so all the snack vendors and most restaurants were Japanese cuisine. Space Mountain only contained one track, so the ride was way better and longer! Alyssa loved it!