Winter Photo Album 2007-08 #2

I took my camera out of my pocket again to show you some more every day images. It is amazing how much of our lives we live in Akademgorodok now. My classes are close walking distance. The office and our team are also a short walk away. We host the student cultural club at our place. The dormitories and campuses are also very close. We now have house meetings on Sundays, with some Russians on our team. As a result we very rarely get into the centre or very far from Akademgorodok. On the one hand this makes for a more peaceful lifestyle. On the other hand, I do miss some of the city life. An acquaintance has offered to show me some cafes in the city centre where students hang out. So this could be an alternative contact point to the student club. I would like to keep the two separate as an experiment in the best methods of reaching people.

Anyway on to the photos.

Bread truck
The bread in the supermarket is hit and miss. Sometimes it is there and sometimes it isn't. Often it is not very fresh. This truck is delivering for the Kransoyarsk Bread company to a small grocery shop.


Krasnoyarsk Bread company shop
There is one exception in the hunt for good bread. There is a little shop in the market close to our place. The shop has the bread company sign on the front, so I guess this explains why their bread is always fresher and softer than the bread in the supermarket. It is not baked there though. But still, you can not always be guaranteed of scoring, about half the time there is a long queue in this shop and I give up/



Cranberries
Out the front of the bread shop there is a man who is always selling his cranberries. He took a little break yesterday, so I took the chance for this little snap.


Market place
Back in Novosibirsk we had a good market five minutes walk from our place.But then in August this year it closed down. This was a real disappointment to see, but then we moved shortly after that. So it is nice that we have a market place right next to us in Akademgorodok. It is not nearly as big as the one we used to live near, but handy to have. I sure hope it doesn't close down in the future. Here is another snap of the market by our place.



New supermarket?
Back in August I posted a shot of the Dikson supermarket. It is two minutes walk from our door, close to the marketplace. For some reason it closed down at the end of October. I find it strange that a supermarket failed to be successful in a community of 10 000 people. The new supermarker was supposed to open by the end of November (which I already thought to be slow). The Komandor supermarket is supposed to open on December 22nd. That would certainly be a nice Christmas present. Right now they are advertising for employees. (I wonder what happened to the employees from Dikson.)


In the mean time we walk ten minutes through the forest to shop at the Krasniy Yar supermarket.



Russian dishes
I have been asked to post some pictures of Russian food. Predictably we do not always eat Russian food. We often prepare food at home as we would in our own culture. But sometimes we buy pre-prepared Russian food. I will try to remember to take photos when ever we do. The most basic of these is a dish called "Pelmeni." It is descended from a Mongolian dish, and is uniquely Siberian in its creation, although it is now popular in European Russia too.


I am particularly fond of a Russian salad that is made from tomatoes, cucumbers, dill and sour cream. So we do make that often.



Stray dogs
The behaviour of dogs is surprising in Russia. As people live in apartments, a dog on the street is not scary 99% of the time. Their territory is somewhere on the seventh floor. Russians often keep expensive dogs. It is not uncommon to see stray dogs around. Recently I even saw a pack of seven dogs close to the market. Needless to say I gave them a wide berth, according to my own instinct. This stray did not bother me though. A stray dog is referred to affectionately as "Sharik", which can also be used to refer to a small ball or baloon.



Friends
Rustam and Lena are on our mini team that runs the student club. We see them 3 or 4 times a week. So we are beginning to make good friends with them. Rustam is Tartar is his ethnicity, so he brings a unique perspective to our team, he does not see things from the typical Russian perspective.