Happy New Year, dear all!

Z Novym Rokom/S Novym Godom from the three of us here in Moscow!

Both Mishah and I managed to catch a cold last week, so it was a rather sneezy celebration, but we still loved it. Watched Ironiya Sud'by, ili S Legkim Parom - ha-ha, if you skip it for a couple of New Years, you'd feel like you're seeing it for the first time, almost (for more on the film and other New Year's traditions in Russia, please see this entry at Snowsquare). We also watched Moskva Slezam Ne Verit yesterday; it won an Oscar in 1980 - has anyone else felt what I feel about it: that this film is so like a Soviet version of Sex and the City?..

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Marta stayed up till around 1 am and ate as much of that sweet Tatar thing - cham-cham? - as she wanted. In general now, she acts as if she's jetlagged - goes to bed and wakes up really late. But Mishah's vacation is over, so we'll all have to switch back to a less relaxed schedule beginning tomorrow... I think Marta's overexcited from all the things she's got to explore here (just like I am) and from her new ability to crawl anywhere she wants (in Kyiv, mainly because of the cats and the mess they cause, we didn't allow her to get out of our room).

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Here's our picture from yesterday:



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And here's a New Year's video that Mishah insisted on making: Putin's address was on nearly every Russian channel, and we kept clicking until we reached the new favorite of mine, Nostalgia, and they had Brezhnev there, greeting the Soviet citizens with a really strong Ukrainian accent that I had no idea he had - and such a transition, from multi-Putin to Brezhnev, was funny as hell...