Skiing and a Birthday Party

We went skiing for the first time this past weekend.  There is a really nice ski slope just 15 minutes from our house. The lift tickets are really cheap, too.  On Saturday, our friend Robin, who used to be a ski instructor, gave us basic lessons to get us started.  We bought lift tickets for 10 times up the mountain.  The gondola stops halfway up, which is where we got off, and then goes on up to the top. Ten times was crazy thinking as it took us a couple of hours just to go down one time.  We spent most of the time on our behinds and trying to get up, which is quite difficult.  We went down only once and then called it a day.  We were a little discouraged with our skiing as we thought we would do a little better than we did.  We went home to rest as we had a birthday party to go to that evening.

A young engineer that Max works with, Slava, turned 30 the previous week.  As is the Russian custom, he threw himself a birthday party.  It was at a really nice Ukrainian restaurant.  When we first arrived, a lady in a traditional Ukrainian costume met us with a welcoming drink and an appetizer.  Then we went into the actual dining area.  The food was really interesting and quite good.

The dish towards the top of this picture is fish mixed with rice and other things and laid out behind a real fish head.  It was very good.  There is some kind of raw fish and/or cheese in the foreground and a pitcher of a fruit drink.  There was a ton more food that I don't have pictures of.  The tablecloth and napkins are traditional Ukrainian.

You can see Max and I in this picture along with some of the others who came to the party.  There is another whole table of people not in this picture.  One interesting thing they had was Ukrainian moonshine.  In this picture you can see two decanters.  The green one is mint moonshine.  The red one is cherry moonshine.  There was a third one:  spicy moonshine.  They were sort of liked flavored vodka.

There was the normal toasts and speeches and giving of birthday gifts and cards.  There was also live music so everyone danced a lot:

One of the highlights was a surprise for Slava.  His wife, Svetlana, hired this saxophone player to play a couple of songs.  We'd heard her play before, last year, at a Thanksgiving dinner that we went to at an Italian restaurant.  She was really good.  Svetlana showed me her business card.  It said "Sexshow".  Maybe that's how she describes her outfit?

 

Here is a photo of Slava (the birthday guy) and his wife Svetlana.  They are an extremly nice young couple and we've become friends with them.

Here is a photo of the beautiful birthday cake.  It was very good but by the time we ate it, I was so full, I could barely take a few bites. 

After dinner we walked upstairs to see the rest of the restaurant.  There was another private party going on there, but the folks were very nice to let us see the room which was decorated with animal skins and (real) stuffed animals.  (Seems to be a common decorating theme in restaurants.)   Here is Max trying to "scare" me with a stuffed wolf.  There were also a lot of murals on the walls as you can sort of see in the background  of this picture and one of the previous pictures.  It was a really nice evening.

On Sunday, we decided that we were not going to let our pitiful skiing on Saturday get us down.  We were going right back out there and were going to give it another go. We are determined to become skiers.  I was pretty nervous that second day starting out.  After falling about four times, I sort of got it and was able to stay up most of the way down the slope.  After my last fall, this one man stopped and gave me some pointers which really helped.  Max did really well, too, maybe falling only once.  We just went down the one time on Sunday.  We plan to go back each weekend and maybe even some during the week in the evening.  The ski slope is lit up at night and a lot of people go during the week.  I think I'll take some lessons after I feel a little more confident about not falling down every few minutes.  Hopefully, I'll get some pictures of the ski slope soon.

We were so proud of our skiing (or at least proud of our not falling down) on Sunday, that we decided we needed to reward ourselves.  That afternoon we went into town to this British pub that caters to expats and has the best good ole fashioned cheeseburger and french fries around.  The pub is decorated in a sports theme with lots of flags, jersey's, etc.  There were a few guys hanging out there playing guitar and singing songs from Led Zeplin, the Eagles, etc.

 Max is enjoying himself singing along with the guys, having a beer and a cigar.  It was a nice weekend.

Love to you all,
Karen