The people that got us through

Rhonda has a way of getting me hooked on stuff. She sucked me into her little LOST world, she has convinced me I need a Roomba (she still needs to work on D now) and she introduced me to this nifty little website. Of course she found it through Zoot. To be honest I saw Zoot mention it too, but didn't have the time that day to check it out. I finally got curious enough to see what the YouTube hubub was all about. It is just about the coolest thing ever.

There are all kinds of videos I have from Khabarovsk that I would love to share with people that I just don't have the capacity to. But now with the magic of YouTube I can!

So here is this little story from Khabarovsk.

We traveled to Russia with a couple from Texas (Doug & Candy.) While we were there we met another couple from Seattle. They happened to be there for their court trip. The 6 of us went to dinner one night and then Ciarai and Jose invited us out to the MarKuel so we could see what it looked like (as an aside, AIA families usually stay at the hotel Amethyst on the first trip and the MarKuel Apartments the second trip.) To get to the MarKuel from town you have to take the Trolley Bus. In Russia there are 3 kinds of buses. There are the state run buses, the commercial buses and trolley buses. Trolley buses are essentially cable cars. Khab has one that runs the opposite direction as the state and commercial buses. It costs all of 9 rubles to ride the bus. So Ciarai and Jose say we are going to get on the trolley bus to get out to the MarKuel. We stand in what feels like a cattle herd at the trolley stop. The trolley stops and ALL the people standing there get on. The trolley is so crammed that you become very intimate acquaintances with many Russians. Doug of course is the last one on the trolley. Lucky for him. Of course he nearly lost an arm getting on. Lets just say the doors don't have an anti-pinch device. So here all 6 of us are on this thing with, oh say, 120 other people. This is nooooo exaggeration. Somehow through this gulag style train ride the little money taking babushka finds her way through the people to take our money. She didn't miss a single person.

The next day D decided that he needed to take a video of the trolley bus to show our friends back home. So here for your viewing pleasure is a Russian Trolley Bus. Please note we rode this thing with over 100 people. Also note that deodorant is not that prolific in Russia.