Quietness turned to compassion and finally a birthday

A quiet family lunch of microwave warmed Russian hot dogs and fanta, in the town centre.

It's been a quiet day today. Our trip here has been very worth while. Both Melody and I are feeling very "spent" though. Our brains are completely empty, and we are exhausted by the extra constant attention that PJ has demanded.

I sat down this morning to work on Evenki language. Honestly I didnt know what to do next. We have collected quite a bit of data, and translations, but it is hard to keep building on that with out a chance to assimilate and analyse that data, in our heads as much as on paper.

I was expecting that Babushka would want to do some more Evenki this morning. I sat down and racked my brain with Melody for ideas. There was an unfinished lesson that we had with Katya last year. We talked about colours, but made a fatal flaw in not recording the colours that day. Melody printed off a colour spectrum, and Katya delineated five colours for us, plus black and white. (Incidentally white and clear are the same thing, i.e water and milk are the same colour in Evenki.) But we have no record of those colours, apart from a silly little rhyme that we made up on the spot /murin churin achen/, "there are no blue horses", /churin/ being blue. So the plan was to start on that topic with Babushka.

Babushka did not offer to sit down to work on Evenki. So instead I sat down to phonetically transcribe an oral text that Tatiana gave us last week. I got a third of the way through and just hit the wall.

Last week we tried to go into town by ourselves when we were visiting Marina, but Yura insisted on driving us. We had been hoping for some independence. Today, when I hit the wall, we decided to get out of the house and go into the town centre. We caught a taxi there and back for $3.30 each way. (Which is expensive for a small town.)

We wanted to look for some more gifts for Yura and Alona and Babushka. We had brought honey (very, very expensive up here), chocolates, and a toy for their little girl (six years old like Abigail, named Katya.) But we wanted to get them something extra. We wanted to find them mugs, but could not find anything decent. Really there is very little choice for shopping up here. (Again, Turukhansk is at least ten times better.) In the end we bought a jug and glasses for Yura and Alona, and a decorative storage jar for Babushka. This really was the best we could do here from the very limited choices.

*** A note here, we would LOVE to have a supply of Australian and Canadian gifts to give to people on occasions like our visit to Evenkiya. If you are so inclined you could go down to the dollar store and pick up a bunch of little gifts, and send us a parcel. (Gosh if anyone is even reading this, my 30th post for the trip. By the way, if you are reading this let me know, and I will send you a little something Russian as a prize!)***

We came home from our little excursion down town, which also included Russian hot dogs in an outdoor tent, and giving the kids a play in the park (really the only one in town).

Sadly, Yura was asleep. This was his second day in a row of not being functional. His third time for our trip. I have a lot of compassion and love for Yura. I actually sat down with him this afternoon, and told him so. He knows I don't judge. I know it is not easy to have victory over addiction. I hope and pray that he will come to the place of asking for help.

I feel actually very unqualified to help people with addiction. But I will say, that when I sat down with Yura that my heart was filled with compassion, and that I was able to show this. I also left the ball completely in his court. (Conrad I think you would have been proud.)

We discovered late in the day that it was Yura's birthday. It was the perfect way to follow up the necessary conversation we had earlier. I wanted to let Yura know that I held nothing over him, so celebrating his birthday and giving him gifts was a great way to do this.