Well, it’s been a month of Anderson family adventure!
If I had to sum things up so far in one sentence, it would be: I think I could have come up with a less expensive and much more convenient place to be mad at my kids.
Others days though are about as close to bliss as a family of five can have.
The hardest thing about travel with kids is….travel with kids. It takes forever to do anything. They generally don’t want to do the same things Ashley and I want to do. If we gave them the choice of seeing a gilded palace with marble walls, filled with jewels, or playing in the dirt outside our apartment building, we’d spend a lot of time in the dirt.
And homeschool is the worst. It does appear though that despite our inadequacies and their tears that they are learning something. For example, if you ask the aforementioned first grader how to spell “twenty”, he answers, “No! I don’t have to! I did that yesterday! Why do I have to?! Jane doesn’t have to do it! It’s too hard! I’m leaving! You’re the worst parents ever!” (This is the literal transcript). But, with some coaxing and the carefully sounding out of the word, he can pick out the letters that make up the word in just over a minute.
With the older student, school is a little easier. But with her we hear frequent disgruntled murmurings about how terrible her birthday is going to be because we’re going to be in Russia and she’s going to have to eat pickled meat and all of her friends get to have birthdays in America and this might be her worst birthday yet (she’s keeping a running tally of worst birthdays).
The two-and-a-half-year old is having a great time with no complaints. She’s not a bit picky about the food. She’s about 90% smiles. And since bathrooms are sometimes hard to come by, the fact that she’s still in diapers comes in handy.
And with all that said, I’d still say that it’s a dream come true to be able to do this. I think Ashley would say the same.
Moscow is a big and bustling city. It’s very beautiful. Lots of pre-Soviet architecture in the downtown areas. Good public transport infrastructure. Great little cafes. Huge open air markets. Beautiful parks. Friendly people. If it weren’t for the weather this time of year, I think we’d stay a while longer. As it is, we’re going to wrap up the next few days and move on.
