New Years Day
Midnight celebrations
| At midnight we emerged into the night, as seems to be the Russian tradition, to toast the new year (this picture taken at 00:03). |
| Same picture, with me in it this time. |
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| At 00:08 our neighbors obviously heard us and came to join us. These were two of the neighbors we had met when they came to our rescue on our arrival, when we discovered that our electricity supply was not working. |
| They had earlier invited us to join their party, but we had decided to stick with our original plans. It looks like Nastia (standing behind Lena) had been doing a lot of celebrating already.. |
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| There followed several pictures of the moon (this one taken at 00:30), which I suspect were Masha's handiwork. |
| At 00:56, another Russian new year tradition is apparently to sing the Russian national anthem (Hymn of the Russian Federation). |
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| fortunately for me Masha had come prepared with printed copies of the words. The tune was familiar, but apparently the words were changed after the fall of the Soviet Union. As you can see, this is an original copy, complete with food stain.. |
| a slightly clearer picture taken with the flash.. |
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Hiking along the bay
| New years day at 12:58, having just gotten up. As you can see, it is still quite dark inside without a flash. This was taken by Masha from the darkened bedroom, with (if you look carefully) Sasha in the kitchen on the right, and myself just on the other side of the table on the left. |
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At 14:08 I had ventured outside with Lena and Masha for our walk, and
hadn't gotten very far when Masha decided to take this panorama of
the view from the end of the road to our house.
This is the view looking to the left along the road leading back to the bus stop. |
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| And the view looking forward across the bay.. |
| And finally a little further to the left, which is the direction we were going. At this point she decided that this was not the best place for a panorama after all, as the hill behind us (leading up to our house) meant she couldn't get a 360 degree view. |
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| At 14:24 we had made our way through the bush to the shoreline beyond the inhabited part of the bay. From what I recall, bears and wolves featured a lot in Lena's conversation whenever we ventured into the wilderness. At this point I think Masha and Lena were deciding if this was a good place to take a picture. |
| They decided that it was. |
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| A forlorn looking Masha sitting on a large chunk of ice when we stopped for a rest half an hour later. |
| Looking back across the bay as we headed back at 15:11 with darkness rapidly approaching. |
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| At 15:23 Masha took a fancy to this derelict boat, but the camera battery gave out before she achieved a picture she was happy with... |
| Our makeshift power arrangements often involved unplanned power outages, so we were always prepared to bring out the candles. Sometimes we just used the candles for atmosphere. I don't recall if this one was planned or not, but we were obviously doing something by candle light here as new years day draws to a close at 23:45. |
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