The 50 Ruble Coin...Oh Russia! TGIF!

I am not really a coin collector. I do love a good pressed penny machine where I get to manually press the penny by twisting the crank. OK, I also confess to having a little pressed penny coin book from Sea World from back in the day. I remember dragging my brother all around Sea World to help me find every one of those darn pennies with Shamu on them.

Instead of the old fashioned, do-it-yourself type machine, lately I have noticed a lot of new souvenir coin machines where you just put your money in and get a shiny new coin out of it. I have to admit, I have a couple of those too. I don't know what my deal is with souvenir coins but my slight obsession with silly coins is not really what I wanted to write about.

I was walking the girls the other day and I stumbled upon a really dingy coin on the ground. Now, typically, I don't pick these up. I honestly leave them lying on the ground for someone who is really in need of finding that last ruble they need to buy some food, or let's be realistic, vodka. However, when my parents were here, my dad picked up a few coins that I had not seen before. So, now I take a closer look at the coins I come across. I picked this one up, as I thought it looked unique. And, it was. I found a 50 Ruble coin! I had never seen one of these before. They have a 50 Ruble note, but I didn't know that a coin even existed. Mark did some digging online and, according to the little information he could find, the only year that these coins were made was in 1993, two years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Or, they could have been made in 1995 but have the year 1993 printed on them. Oh Russia... :)  50 Rubles is roughly worth $1.50 USD. I was really excited to find something so unique just lying on the ground. I attribute the fact that this coin was recently unearthed to all of the beautification they are doing around Adler for the Games. They have been doing a lot of digging lately as they are resurface walkways, add benches and garbage cans, replace the curbing along our little main road, and add new grass along the sidewalks. I think my little area of Adler will look quite nice come Games time.

While I am talking about cool coins we have collected while in Russia, I need to mention a couple more.

We had a friend in Moscow that called himself a "communist". Oleg  was a middle aged guy who lived in our neighborhood and was in love with our girls, Suay in particular. We would always meet each other in the park behind our flat and we do our best to chat with him. His English was about the same as our Russian...nearly non-existent at that time. Sometimes, we would exchange little gifts and one day he gave us this coin with Lenin on it. It's a 1 Ruble (3 cents) coin that is commemorating 100 years of Lenin's birth...1870-1970. Yes, the coin was minted in the Soviet Union in 1970! This coin is not rare, but it is special to us and we treasure it even more because of where it came from and who gave it to us.

While on our road trip this summer, we got a souvenir coin from an automated machine at Peter and Paul's Fortress in St. Petersburg. There were four coins to choose from or you could select the fifth option which would randomly choose one of the four coins for you. We couldn't decide which coin we liked more, so we decided to let the machine pick for us. For fun, before looking at the coin, we held the coin, together, in our hands trying to -feel- which coin we received. We both agreed and guessed  we would get the coin with the griffin on it...and we were right! Now it is our lucky St. Petersburg coin.

I also picked up a coin at Gorky Park while I was in Moscow last month with my parents. I chose the table tennis one because Mark likes to play table tennis.

Nothing too exciting about these souvenir coins except that they came from places that we like and they all hold certain memories in them. For not being coin collectors, we sure have some pretty awesome coins.

Matryoshka Bottle Cap Crafts

I love to craft and be creative. I haven't had many chances to craft while being here in Russia. Plus, it is very hard to find the supplies that I need. They do have things like fabric, knitting supplies and cross stitch. But those don't warm my heart as much as making a good paper craft or gift. It just so happens that I brought the supplies from home to make one of my favorites...bottle caps. I had purchased some matryoshka doll stickers while I was in Moscow and was just dying to try them in the bottle caps. I think they turned out pretty well. See for yourself...

Gathering my supplies.

Before I added the resin.

Letting the resin harden. I use toothpicks to poke out all of the bubbles in the resin.

The finished products!

Necklace for my padruga.

Frame for another padruga. Lyrics by Fun.

Sochi Storm Watch...Oh Russia! TGI...Sunday? :)

So, a couple of weeks ago I wrote about the storms and the flooding we had here in Sochi. Well, I wrote about it a bit too soon. My parents came to visit last week and, wouldn't you know, we had the craziest weather I have ever seen in my life. Let me preface this by saying that I am from California. I lived in Idaho for a while and weather there was a little wacky, but not like this. I have never been in tornado or hurricane country. So, this may not seem as crazy to some of you who have endured that before. But, as I said,it was crazy!

It started on Monday. We went to the airport to pick up our rental car and the rain started as we were sitting in traffic. Someone important was on their way into town so the authorities closed all of the roads in the vicinity. We sat in traffic for an hour and a half and went about 50 meters. Luckily we were in a nice warm car while the rain poured buckets and buckets from the heavens above. Once traffic let up, we were able to get in some sightseeing with my parents before heading to the flat. Later that night, we made our list of sights we wanted to see for the rest of the week. We decided that Tuesday would be our relax day and we would stay home. And, it is a good thing we did.

It seemed as though the sky poured buckets down all day Tuesday with very little let up. The building that we live in has a sister building across the parking lot. Between the two buildings are garages that are below ground level.  When it rains, it usually fills up these garage areas pretty good. By mid-day, the garages were full to the top. We hadn't seen it like that before. My dad kept asking if this heavy weather was normal. Finally, we had to tell him that it was definitely not normal. 

This is only the beginning. The silver Hyundai on the left is our rental car. 

We moved it shortly after this picture was taken. 

Between our two building - photo taken from our window.

This is the main street that leads to our buildings.

By that evening, we were wading up to our KNEES in water to take the girls and Roket out for a pee. The water rose even higher when we came back in with the dogs and the water was so high that it started filling my rain boots. Crash was actually swimming at this point. Swimming - on flat ground! Ridiculous! We called it a night and hoped that the flooding would subside in the morning so we could at least get to the car to drive to Sochi.

We resorted to wearing shorts and water shoes.

The aftermath the next morning.

The next morning, the water had gone out, except for the garages. They were still filled to the top. We were able to get to the car without any troubles and headed to Sochi for a day of sightseeing, shopping  and, of course, to eat at Hatchipuri! After spending some time in center Sochi, we had planned to go to the Sea Port to see the countdown clock and the marina. As Mark went to get the car, my parents and I waited in a new, cute little coffee shop. On a side note, the coffee was meh, just as every other coffee we've had in Sochi. Mark called as he got close. I remember walking outside to meet him and not believing my eyes. The wind was so bad that it was knocking down trees. That's right, multiple trees, one right after another, were being uprooted or snapped in half. I will never forget the sound of the deafening wind roaring up the river bed and the snapping and cracking as the trees broke and fell. The wind was so fierce that it was pushing the water from the river up and over the sea wall. It looked to me what I picture a hurricane looking like. And, I kind of panicked...unfortunately. I yelled for Mark and my mom to get out of the car because I was so afraid that a tree was going to fall on top of them or the water was going to wash them away. It was that bad. It only lasted for a few minutes and then it was calm. After seeing this link, I am convinced that the water spouts pictured came onto the land just like a tornado and we were right in the middle of it.

Note: The link in the above paragraph is a Russian website that has many pictures from this same storm. Exact location and photographers are unknown. We do not take credit for these photos.

After collecting myself, we all got back into the car and drove towards our destination of the sea port. After traveling only a few hundred meters we were stopped by traffic, of course. There were people turning around driving the opposite direction on a one way road. We finally deciphered, through bits of Russian and charade-like hand motions, that a tree had fallen and was blocking the road. The traffic was still moving forward so we continued on. Then we came to the tree. Everyone was actually going up and over the curb and through the park to avoid the tree. We discussed that our car was too small to handle that and then Mark said, "Why don't we just move the tree. How hard can it be?" So, we parked our car in front of the tree, and Mark, my dad and I got out to move the tree. I asked my mom to stay behind to take pictures. :) Once we had the tree mostly moved, a guy comes blazing past our car and tries to drive right through where we were still working. The guy almost hit my dad with his car. As this was happening, Mark may or may not have dropped a branch on the guy's windshield and it may or may not have been on purpose ;)  The guy then stopped his car to get out and yell at Mark. At this point, we had moved enough of the tree to get through so we just walked away from the angry guy. As we were walking back to our car, more and more people were swerving around us, on both sides, to drive through the pathway we had just created. This was the most telling moment that we have experienced yet in Russia. Usually, in situations like this, people come together and help each other get through these types of hardships. This was completely the opposite of that and everyone was looking out for themselves only.

Mark heading over to move the tree that was blocking the road.

Trees were down all over the city. This one had snapped in half at the sea port.

Just a few minutes after the tree incident, we were able to joke about it while walking along the sea port.

I was shocked by everything that happened these couple of days. The amount of water that filled the streets, the water spouts on the sea, and the total disregard of others displayed during the tree incident. Like I said, this was the craziest weather I have ever seen in my life and I hope this is not what is in store for the rest of winter. This storm seemed to be very unusual for this time of year. Last year, it was still hot at this time. This particular storm actually brought a lot of snow to the mountains already. It has been unseasonably cold. Hopefully it keeps up so there is a lot of snow for the Games! But I could do without the flooding and soggy boots!

The mountains in Krasnaya Polyana the following day covered in snow.