Last year, winter didn’t seem to be all that big a deal. We had braced ourselves for the cold, investing in many layers of warmth and even schlepping heavy sheepskin coats that Simon’s family had given us. Though we had a few cold days and much more snow than we are used to, the winter didn’t live up to all the hype. This year, we finally got to experience a real Russian winter.

After our return from Baikal, we were excited to have a week left of our vacation to explore Kazan. In Russia, the main winter festivities happen in the first week of January so our timing was perfect to enjoy the decorations including luminous trees and other light displays. Unfortunately, the kids were ready to just chill and resisted our attempts to lure them outside. “Come on! It’s warm! It’s only 11° F (-12° C)!” They weren’t convinced. Fortunately, our trusty babysitter Maeve was happy to come over, so Simon and I went out on a date night to explore the city in all it’s lit-up winter glory. We headed across the Kazanka River to the Kazan Palace of Marriage- known locally as “the Cup” to check out the main New Year tree, a 34-meter tall tree with over 1,280 lights that are synchronized with music and is supposedly visible from space. For us though, the highlight was seeing the zilant dragon statues, dusted in snow and covered with snowfiti. After checking out the tree and the cup, we walked back over the river, watching hovercrafts and snowmobiles fly over the ice, and then strolled through the city.

On our last weekend of break, we ventured to the forest park near our school and went ice skating. They freeze a trail through the forest so that you can skate among the trees. Both kids are now comfortable on skates, though Simon is still not a fan. Next to the skating area, there was a grand piano with a crew of musicians and dancers rocking out to a mix of Russian and American tunes. At one point they were doing the chicken dance!

Though we have lots of snow here, usually in Kazan the snow comes in a steady light fall. The maintenance team is out each morning shoveling whatever snow came in the night. One day in January, we got a rare dumping of snow. Mila, her friend Kate, and I decided to take on the challenge of trying to ski. Alden skipped the skiing but tried to sled down the small hill on campus. As you can see in the photo, it was quite challenging to tread through the deep snow.

January, February, and March were quite cold. At our school, recess is canceled if it is below -10° C (14° F) and we had many days of indoor recess. The kids would sometimes brave the cold after school, but sometimes it was even too cold for them. When it “warmed” up, we would go for walks in our neighborhood. Here are some pictures of Alden and the many snowmen that we found in our neighborhood park.

Alden’s friend from school invited him to spend the weekend at his family’s Dacha. While he was gone, we took Mila to another city park to see if we could find any ice sculptures. Our search for ice sculptures was not successful, but we did manage to find a fun sledding site. We rented an inner tube for 30 minutes (that was about as long as it was comfortable to stay outside) and Mila built up her courage to go down the middle ramp.

The rest of the winter has been filled with indoor play- lots of virtual gaming with friends for Alden and all kinds of crafty imaginative play for Mila and her friend Kate, and of course board gaming for the adults.

This week was Maslenitsa (butter week) in Russia. It is a week-long celebration that heralds the coming of spring and dates back to pagan times. As with most pagan celebrations, it was appropriated by the church and has, in modern times, been celebrated the last week leading up to Great Lent (this is the Russian Orthodox version). One of the primary activities of the celebration is eating lots of blini (crepes) and on the final day, burning a straw scarecrow in effigy. We didn’t make it to the main celebration where the effigy was burned, but we went and checked out the festivities at our neighborhood park. It was a bit too crowded for our tastes and the lines for blini were too long, so we headed home and Simon made us some tasty blini for dinner.

Though we are happy to welcome the Spring, we know that this will likely be the last snow we see for quite some time. We have accepted jobs in Abu Dhabi for next year, trading one extreme for the next. It has been stressful to make such a big decision during such uncertain times, but we decided that we want to continue the experience of teaching overseas, at least for a couple more years. Mila is excited, though she will miss family, friends, and EZ Freezy (our neighborhood frozen yogurt shop in Portland). Alden, is probably the least happy with the decision, as he would much prefer to go home. We hope that the kids feel more integrated into their new school, which will have many more expat kids than our school here in Kazan. In the meantime, we have lots to do to wrap up our time here and prepare for our next adventure.