I came across a flyer advertising a Russian Festival while killing time during Alex's guitar lesson a few weeks ago. I told Nadya about it and told her we would try and go. She never stopped asking me about it.
When is it?
What will we do?
What time is it?
Where is it?
I knew she was excited, so I made sure we went. I was a little afraid she would be disappointed. I was pretty sure she was expecting carnival type entertainment. She kept referring to the festival as The Russian Feast. (She will quite often use the wrong words for words she doesn't use on a regular basis)
I checked out the festivities online and noticed they had children's doll-making at 2:30 so I thought we would give that a whirl.
We arrived a little bit early and were greeted with familiarity. The language, the foods, the people. It was amazing to have a little piece of Russia in a small building in downtown Salt Lake. We really haven't been in a situation where everyone speaks Russian since adopting Nadya. A few people spoke to us in Russian, and I had to explain we didn't speak Russian. I asked Nadya if she could understand anything and she said a little. But, I'm not too sure. She seemed very timid, quiet and rather out of place. We walked around and bought some Russian candy, sampled the food, perused the jewelry and Russian items for sale. We headed over to the food stands. Nadya really didn't recognize any of the food. When we adopted her, we were told the kids ate a fair amount of Borscht (A Russian Soup) at the orphanage. We sampled a variety of perogies.They were delicious!!!!! Nadya and Hallie liked pretty much everything we tried. (Perogies can have different ingredients inside- we had two varieties of meat, one cheese, one potato, and one egg)
(Picture from polishforum.com)
After snacking we found our way over to make our dolls, which were actually birds. The woman directing spoke mostly in Russian and the majority of the kids were speaking a mixture of Russian and English. Hallie found it hilarious that they would change languages mid-sentence. Luckily, we were sitting next to a Russian woman who was happy to help us in English. The girls made fun little birds.
Before we left we picked up a few Kinder Eggs as a treat for the boys. Usually the ones we get are a hollow milk chocolate egg with a surprise in the middle. These ones were different. They were shaped like an egg but one side of the egg had a treat, and the other side had a white chocolate sauce with two chocolate balls in the center. Nadya loved them, but Hallie, Alex and Carter prefer the original Kinder Eggs.
Oh, and in case you didn't notice, Hallie got a hair cut. Isn't it adorable? She loves it!
Perogie are the best! My Grandmother made the best!
ReplyDeleteBTW, I did buy a Canon Rebel!