Outpost Open Evening

Last Friday evening was our first Outpost Open Evening.  Our office is only officially open on Wednesday, 10:30 to 12:00.  There are many expats who've never been in the office.  We have lots of travel books and offer a lot of services that people don't know about it.  We enticed them to come by having a wine and cheese open evening.  It worked.  We had a great turnout.  Catalina, one of our Outpost team members used to have a wine business, so she knows her wines and was able to pick out some really nice ones.  She also knows her cheeses and other things to have with them.  She even had all the dishes, wine tasting glasses, etc.  The great thing is that we were approved to do this by HR from our budget.  We decided to do this instead of a team dinner at the end of the year.  Our office is small and it was crowded, but I think everyone had a good time. 

Love to you all!
Karen

Fall Drive to Kholmsk

As I've said before, fall on Sakhalin Island is just beautiful.  Being from Houston, we don't get the lovely colors of the changing leaves.  Last year, the first weekend after I arrived in October, Max took me on a drive to Kholmsk to see the fall colors.  I had such a great time, I wanted to make it an annual tradition.  A couple of weeks ago, even though it was an overcast and rainy day, we decided we'd better go on our drive as it might be our last chance before either the leaves were gone, or it snowed.  Last year, it snowed about this time.

We started by driving south west across the island to a little coastal town called Nevelsk. I thought it was beautiful even if it was cloudy.

Part of the drive across the middle of the island was on a dirt road, with very little traffic and very little signs of life.

 

The scenery was beautiful along the way.

As we got closer to town, we saw a lot of little Russian dachas.

Nevelsk is a small fishing town with not much going on.   A pretty strong earthquake happened there a few years ago and a lot of the apartment buildings were destroyed.  It's a stark contrast to see the old apartments next to some of the newer, modern ones.  

We did see this random tribute to Yuri Gagarin.  A few four legged friends ran out to greet us...I think they thought we might feed them.

 Once we got to Nevelsk, we turned north and drove along the coast towards Kholmsk.

We saw this map in Kholmsk.  I can't really read it, but it does say something about May, 1870.  If you look on the left of the map right above the stone with the writing, you can see Kholmsk.  Nevelsk is hidden behind the stone. You can see Yuzhno (our city) to the right and down and a little off center of the island.

 

Once in Kholmsk we wanted to find a place to eat a little lunch.  Even though this is one of the bigger towns on Sakhalin, there are not many restaurants here, that we know.  There probably are, but they are tucked away in little basements and on side roads and we don't know where to look.  We just wanted something small and found the perfect place - a little shashlik stand.  Shashlik is yummy grilled pork or beef, like our shish kabobs.  By this time it was pouring down rain, so we stood under a table umbrella while the lady fixed our plates.  We ate on the drive back to Yuzhno.  We took the more direct route home.  It was a fun day and I look forward to doing it again next year.

Love to you all!

Karen

Playback and Lady Gaga

Playback is an annual tradition here in our Sakhalin expat community. Even though I'd never seen it before, I agreed to be in it with a couple of other girls.  Playback is basically lip syncing with funny acts and costumes.  It's advertized as sort of an R rated evening, so kids are not allowed.  It took us a while to come up with our act and we actually evolved the act up to the very last day. 

We were the fighting Lady Gaga's.  Each of the three of us had a Lady Gaga song.  Julie was first and started out with Alejandro.  Her song was sort of slow and she had a dance routine worked out to it.

I had already gone onstage and hidden under a sheet off to the side.  The first two songs were not the entire song but about 2 minutes of each song.  My Lady Gaga song was Bad Romance and as soon as my music came on I came out from under the sheet and during the intro, Julie and I started fighting.

I then did a dance routine to my song while Julie stood back and watched.

 

Towards the end of my song, after the first chorus, I go back after Julie and we do a little more fighting.  The third Lady Gaga, Nomi, comes on when the song Poker Face starts. 

She fights a little with each one of us and then we all three do a dance routine together. 

Towards the end of Poker Face each one of us came up to the front and dance by ourselves and then were pulled back by the other two.  At the end we all three stop at the same time.

At the end of each act, the judges give you comments and ask you questions.  Of course they asked us who was the real Lady Gaga and we all say that we were the real Lady Gaga.

Below are a few pictures of some of the other acts.
The guys and gal in this act are the teachers from the International School, so good thing kids aren't allowed.

This is the same girl who was the first Lady Gaga in our act.  She was Janis Joplin and had a helper holding up props to her song.  She was great!

 

These 3 guys did a tiddy bum bum song.  It was funny.  Max was originally going to be in this act, but they changed the dates of his trip out of town so he had to back out.  Then they changed the dates again, and he ended up being in town, but it was too late to get back into the act.  I know he was secretly relieved.

Here's Tina Turner.  Her husband is the guy with her.

This was a parody of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody AKA Mom's Rhapsody that was really good. 

 

There were a few others, some acts that I didn't see because we had to get dressed.  There were 9 acts in all.

Imagine our surprise when we were asked to come back on stage as part of the final 3.  

The audience then cheered for their favorite.

In the end, the Mom's Rhapsody won and we came in second.

It was a lot of fun but a lot of work, too.  We still can't believe that we did as well as we did.  Many thanks to Cinty for all the great pictures she took of the entire evening.  I also have a dvd now and will bring it home with me at Christmas for anyone who is interested in watching it.

Love to you all,
Karen

In print

Every three months Global Outpost, which is the central Outpost office in The Hague, Netherlands, publishes a magazine called Destinations.  It is written for and by Shell expats and focuses on one of the areas in the world where there is an expat community.  This upcoming issue is focused on Nigeria.  There are other expat related articles, too.

 

Destinations has a new magazine editor and she is starting a new series that spotlights one Outpost office in each issue.  For her first spotlight, she chose Sakhalin!  She asked me to write something up (yikes!), which I did.  She fixed it up, of course, and the result is a two page article:

Fall in Zima

The weather was great this entire weekend.  It's hard to believe that it was snowing a week ago.  Yesterday we had Max's entire department and their families over for a BBQ.  He's been wanting to do it for a long time.  In fact, I brought stuff from Houston this summer for the BBQ.  Velveeta and Rotel for Queso and Texas sausages.  Everything turned out great.  Most of the guys in his department are Russian, so of course they brought vodka for a toast. 

Max grilled burgers.  The Russians don't really eat hamburgers so we had to tell them how to fix it with the lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, etc.  You can buy hamburger buns here, but only one place in town sells them and you have to slice the buns open yourself.

Today we went for a walk on the trail around the perimeter of the housing complex.  I snapped a few pictures of the changing leaves.

 

There's a big neighborhood next to our complex where they are building some really nice and big houses.  

Who is this crazy guy?

Love to you all,

Karen

Fun Run and Crazy Weather

This past Saturday I ran in the annual Zima Fun Run.  There is a Half Marathon, a 10k and a 6k run.  I ran the 10k.  I can run a long way, and even ran in a half marathon in 2010.  But it was on nice, flat Houston roads.  Here in Zima there are a lot of hills.  Ever since I came here it has been a goal of mine to be able to run the hills.  When I first started running here, I had to walk a lot of them.  Okay, most all of them.  I can't run them all, but at least now I am now able to run the hills that were on the race route.  My other goal for the fun run was to just run the entire way.  I did it!  My time was 1 hour, 2 minutes and 53 seconds.  I beat the time I ran my practice run in, so that was a bonus.

We got sponsors and the money we raised goes to the House of Grace and Hope, a house for older orphans on Sakhalin.  I raised 8300 Rubles which is about 257 USD.

The weather was absolutely perfect for a run.  Cold, but not too cold.  The sun came out right when the race started.  It was a lot of fun.  Max was there to cheer me on and to snap a few photos.

 

We got a T-shirt and a medal.

Like I've said before, Sakhalin has crazy weather.  We woke up Sunday morning to gray, overcast skies and forecasts of snow.  I didn't think it could be possible this early.  It was October 2!!  To my surprise, it started snowing mid-morning!!  What to do as we were having a BBQ for the entire Outpost Team and their families that afternoon.  We decided to go for it.  Here are a few pics of the first snowfall of the season.  I heard it was the earliest snowfall in Sakhalin ever! 

Max is BBQing in the snow.  It had started to slow down a bit later in the afternoon. 

 

We had a cozy fire going on in the house though, and the BBQ turned out great!  We get to do it all over again next weekend as we are having Max's entire department over on Saturday.  

By late Monday afternoon almost all of the snow had melted!  I'm glad as I love fall and am not quite ready to give it up yet!  

Love to you all!

Karen

Busy Weekend

Hi!  It's already Thursday here, but I wanted to tell you about our busy last weekend and this is the first chance that I've had.  In the Expat community something is always going on.  This past weekend seemed extra busy.  Expats are usually assigned to a location for only 3 or 4 years, so people are always coming and going which means there are always going away parties.  Friday night one of the girls who used to be on our Outpost team had a going away party at our local Zima 3 bar so we went there for a bit.

Saturday morning Max and I ran a few errands including a quick trip to his office.  He took me to lunch at a newly renovated Korean restaurant that is across the street from his office.  See if you can spot the restaurant.

Here's a close up of the entrance.  This is very typical in Russia....nice restaurants are located in out of the way places, tucked away in basement's, etc. 

Saturday evening we got dressed up for a big fundraising Gala for the House of Grace and Hope.  The House of Grace and Hope was started by a couple who left Australia in 2005 with their 3 children, moved to Sakhalin and decided to care for older orphans.  They have a 5 room apartment and at any time have 16 to 20 kids living there.  They are trying to buy property to build a house or an older house.  The Gala was one way to raise money towards the house and towards their day to day expenses.  They are a lovely couple and have sacrificed so much to do what they do.  The Gala was a lot of fun.

Sunday afternoon we went to a reception for the American Consul General whose office is in Vladivostok.  All the Americans who are in Yuzhno were invited to attend.  It was interesting to meet the Consul General.  A representative from the Embassy in Moscow was there, too.  After the reception I went home and finally registered on their website so they we are in their district and to get their newsletter.

That evening Max's boss was having a buffet dinner so we went there for that.  Whew!  What a busy but fun weekend.

Love to you all!
Karen