Getting Started

For a few weeks now I have been toying with idea of starting a blog. Of course after researching and reading the works of others, I immediately got discouraged. Face it, English isn’t my native language and I never will be able to express myself with such clarity and wit. Then an odd thing happened – I got upset with myself for giving up, yet again, without even trying, and, as a gift to myself for my birthday ,I decided to take this challenge. If to view it as a bridge between writing in privacy, security of one's own diary and an ambition of being published someday, it isn’t so scary. And, what the worse can happen? If nobody ever read it, it would be exactly the same – keeping thoughts to myself - and if somebody would find, read it and dislike it, he/she doesn’t have to return to it. After getting this out of the way, I can get started.

What I can say about myself? Born and raised in Moscow, Russia; fall in love and married American. Since then I travel the world with my husband and two kids. Once I was a teacher and now I am a master of all trades. My husband is with Foreign Service, my kids are at school and I work, if jobs are available, and don’t ,if there aren’t any jobs.

Two next years we will be spending in Iceland. It is very different from anywhere I’ve lived before. My biggest challenge isn’t an adjustment to different weather, language, or the way things work, but an adjustment to living in a small town. Our house is in Hafnarfordur, a small town just south of Reykjavik. Never in my life have I lived in a place, which has just a bit over 22,000 residents. On the bright side, it does have the largest population of elves, gnomes and other hidden people. I can easily see it: there so many interesting rocks, lava formations, you almost expect them to peek out from somewhere.

When I was small and still had a father (my parent went through a nasty divorce) we used to spent summers in a tiny village, Karabut. There was a mountain close to our house, filled with small caves, odd-shaped stones. Every day we went there for a stroll, and every day I found some sweets hidden in different places. My father told me that those were the presents from gnomes because I visited them so often. Perhaps, I should continue this tradition with my boys: they are at that tender age now (seven and nine) when they still want to believe in wonders, but already getting skeptical.

So far one of my favourite things in Iceland is an everyday day opportunity to encounter some unexpected surprise in the most ordinary places, like this shoe tree in somebody's backyard.