Living In Community...Part II

So, we learned to share our food. It was a frustrating five weeks of sitting around. We were expected to help out in the family but we didn't realize those expectations. Our expectations were to live there and study language. So, when our plans day after day were changed on us because we were asked to do something, I began to get frustrated. We eventually set up a schedule for ourselves to hit the library for 2-3 hours every morning so that we could study the language. That worked out a lot better since we could then help out in the afternoon. I won't say there wasn't frustrations between ourselves and this family we lived with!
Eventually, we got to attend their family vacation with them. Wow. After five weeks of living together, we all piled in a small (small) car with all our things and then some and headed out into the villages. We stopped all along the way, visiting their family and friends and looking for a place for us to live also. We got a good taste of the different areas and what we did and didn't want. We enjoyed being much more immersed in the language and feeling like we were making some progress toward moving into a village.
We spent about a month in a far, far out village with the wife's parents. Wow. We went to do a lot of work and work we did! Curt dug an outhouse almost by himself. Two days of digging 10 ft. into rocky soil by hand. I helped paint all the ceilings and walls in the large, 4 room house. The hardest part? No food. That's right. These people learn to live on what there is. When there is food, you eat. When there isn't, you drink lots of tea. We worked everyday from 9-9 and would have tea and maybe bread for breakfast. Bread was made by hand and cooked in a wood stove (no electricity). So, baking was a hard and long task. There were 10-15 of us together eating and working together everyday. So, when the bread was baked, it was eaten quickly. Sometimes breakfast was just tea. Lunch was the big meal, which was usually a pasta soup with a bit of meat in it. And some bread, if there was any. And tea. Always tea, which is pretty weak to stretch the tea leaves.. Dinner was on your own, since it isn't the main meal. Bread and tea usually. When there wasn't bread, just tea. Some days the men went fishing and we got to eat fish. But that was the extent. Curt and I sometimes were found wandering in the room that stored the food, picking up anything we could find to get more calories in ourselves.
Siberians, as a whole, were created for the area. They tend to be stocky people who can live on low calories but maintain a higher body weight. Created exactly for those conditions. Curt and I? Not created for those conditions.
The day came for us to have the wedding anniversary celebration that we really came there for. The food was abundant! Sheep were killed, cakes were made, vegetables cut up. What's ironic is by the time the celebration came around, our stomachs had shrunk so much that we couldn't eat much!