My name is Yura Andreev, I’m 35 and I work in a scientific institute. My wife, Rimma, is a graduate of the Tomsk State University Psychological Department. Our son, Daniel, is 5 years old. We live together with my father, Anatoly. He is seventy, but he still gives economics lectures at Tomsk Politechnical University. My niece, Vera, began living with us recently as well. She is 18 and she is from Stregzevoy city. Stregzevoy city is 700 km to north-north-west from Tomsk She is a student at Tomsk pedagogical University.

We attended a New Year celebration at Daniel’s kindergarten on December 29. All the kids received gifts from Santa Claus. All the children wore special holiday costumes. They had a good time and were very happy. The parents didn’t get presents from Santa or wear festive clothing, but we were happy too.

New Years Day is a big holiday in Russia and January seventh is the day the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas. So we have almost a week of holiday. But we had very cold January this year. For the entire first week of the year the temperature remained below minus forty degrees Fahrenheit. Terribly cold even by Siberian standards! It is not so cold on the day I write this, only about minus twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. But it is still cold enough for us to go and enjoy sledding on a local ice-hill. Our ice-hills are nothing special. They are generally made of wood with several layers of ice on the top. I’m not very interested in sledding myself, but I find it fascinating how many times the children will slide down. They can keep sliding long after their parents are totally frozen!

When most Russians want to have a party, they have it at home. We have a lot of restaurants and cafes here, but its too expensive to have parties there very often. But for Daniel’s fifth birthday we celebrated at a place called the Hobby Center. It is the biggest children’s club in Tomsk. It’s a great place for children, and especially good for celebrations. There are trampolines, plastic hills, jumping balls, LEGO construction blocks and so on. There are many games for the children to play. We gave Daniel a birthday cake with five candles on top. I especially enjoyed the puppet show that Rimma and the other mothers prepared for the children.

Daniel received a gift from station KNLS in Alaska today. This gift is an eagle patch and you can see it in the picture on Daniel’s coat. Daniel loved his eagle patch. While we were out walking today, Daniel found a lump of snow and he named it his snow eagle. He even made up a story about the snow eagle. He told me, "Father, the snow eagle will live here in this nest I’ve made in the snow. He will stay with us until spring. When the snow melts, the snow eagle will thaw, turn to mist, and become a little white cloud. The white cloud eagle will fly back to Alaska and fall to the ground as rain." Children have such wonderful imaginations!

There is a famous Russian man named Parphiry Ivanov who lived back in the 20^th century. He and his disciples promoted a very Russian system for becoming fit and healthy. Ivanov’s disciples believed that a person should take a sponge bath every day, using cold water, while standing outside. They thought you should sponge down even on the coldest day of the year! Many people in Russia know about this system. Some people try to do it from time to time, but only a few are brave enough to do it every day. Rimma tried the Ivanov system a few years back. She sponged down every day from July to February. She said washing in cold water outside was very energizing even when it got below minus twenty degrees. But when the wind started blowing the cold was unbearable. I was proud of her!

Russian people came to Siberia about 400 years ago. From the very beginning of life in this new land Russian people built log houses. The native people of Siberia, the Sel’kup people, lived in wooden houses or in chums. A chum is like the American Indian wigwam. No one in Siberia ever lived in an igloo! But that doesn’t keep us from having an igloo building contest each year. Amazing, isn’t it! This championship is a contest between several tourist clubs and takes place very near our house. Ten, four person teams entered this year’s competition and so you would expect that there would be ten igloos when they got finished. But not all the teams were skilled at igloo building and so only three teams actually completed an igloo. Daniel, Rimma and I tried to build an igloo too, but our igloo was more like a snow fortress. After the championship most people went back home. But the bravest will stay in their igloos all night long. Maybe this means that Siberian people are distant relatives of Alaskan Aleut people.

Let me tell you about the kinds of food that we eat here. It is very difficult to feed my son Daniel. Like many children, he won’t always eat! But when he does eat he likes to have macaroni or an omelet. Rimma likes chicken soup with noodles. She also likes coffee, tea and chocolate. My father often fasts for a few days at a time. He eats only healthy food. He doesn’t drink or smoke. He has eaten porridge every morning for nearly 30 years. As for myself, I thought I could eat almost anything until I visited China recently. Sichuan cuisine uses too much pepper for my taste. I have a sweet tooth and so can’t resist special treats.

Today was a beautiful sunny day in Tomsk. You realize on such days that spring is not far off. The people, houses, and trees all seem brighter and sharper. There is some sweet poison in the air that makes people take deep breaths and then smile. I have nothing against winter, but the sunshine makes me smile also. I know spring is still far off and that snow will fall in April and possibly even in May. Still, we all relish these first sunny days of spring.

There is a shop for hunters and fisherman not more then ten minutes walk from our house. There are guns and fishing rods and so on. And there are toy soldiers. Yes, the owner of the shop has a big collection of toy soldiers, and one separate room of his shop has shelves with soldiers along all the walls. These toy soldiers are not for sale, but just for people to see and enjoy. Daniel fell in love with this collection from the first sight. He wants to have the same big collection. So, for about the last half a year he has been exchanging his toy car collection for toy soldiers. He told us to buy only toy soldiers for his birthday and other gift days. Daniel recently saw the American movie "Toy Story Two" and he loved this show. Now he thinks, that moving and talking toys are real, but they are very expensive and you can find them only in America.

I have read in KNLS web journal for the Alaska family about the season of mud (April 25). Here it is very much the same. Tomsk is big city with more than half a million people and most of our streets are paved with asphalt. More are being paved all the time, but we still have two seasons of mud every year. April is always muddy and we have mud again in September and October. We live in a block of five story apartments, but we still have to cope with the mud. Construction crews have been digging up the ground all around our complex. Sometimes the mud gets so deep the excavating equipment gets lost in the mud! Of course, the crews never seem to put the asphalt back once they’ve finished. They just leave muddy holes behind everywhere they go. Sometimes we joke that the work crews are not really trying to build or repair anything. They’re just looking for lost treasure!

Tomsk is city of students and teachers. About twenty percent of all citizens are students and teachers. We have five Universities! I like Tomsk State University most of all. My father graduated from TSU. My mother also graduated from this same school. My wife has received two degrees from TSU. I graduated from the Radio Physics Department of TSU. So, I can’t help loving my University. My University is very beautiful, is not it?

We had great fireworks on the twentieth of May last year. To be honest, I’d never seen real fireworks before. The firm that organized these fireworks, one of Russia’s big gas companies, decided to put this show on every year on the same date. So we enjoyed the fireworks again this spring also. Thousands of citizens, I think more than ten thousand, gathered around our White House and Dramatic theatre on the big square very near the Tom River. There was a big barge on the river made into a stage. Pop performers sang and danced on the barge. They had to keep performing until after midnight. The nights are short here and so it doesn’t get dark until very late. When it finally got dark, the fireworks were set off over water to the accompaniment of special music. We enjoyed the show, but Daniel was so tired that he fell asleep immediately after the last firework flare. Rivers of people and cars started flowing out of the square in all directions when the show was over.

Our short summer growing season has started here in Tomsk. There are thousands of private gardens on the outskirts of the city. Our family’s plot of land is more than forty kilometers away, so we have to ride the train to plant and tend our garden. We grow vegetables, including potatoes, carrots, beets and so on. We also grow strawberries and currants here. I’m not a good gardener. My father is the real gardener in our family, so I just help him the best I can. This photo shows our family’s log house. Our log home stands in the edge of the trees and so it seems like our house is located in the deep forest.

You can find a lot of summer cafes on Tomsk’ streets now. It is just a few plastic tables plus plastic chairs under an awning. And there is an American style pool table here for people to play at. I can not understand how it is possible to sit down here and drink beer for hours as some people do. And I must confess that I don’t like to play pool. I prefer to play soccer. But we gather with friends in cafes like this one from time to time.

We have a motocross competition here a few times each summer. Daniel and I like to go and watch. The racecourse is on the left bank of the Tom River (Tomsk is on the right). It is about 4 or 5 km from our house by the route we take to get there. It was interesting to walk with Daniel along the big bridge and watch the brave competitors. But it got really interesting as we were coming back home from the race. It grew very dark and started to rain. So I flagged down a car and got us a ride across town to our neighborhood. The car dropped us off about 300 meters from our home. We had beaten the rain across town and so it was clear when we stepped out of the car. But as we were walking the last few steps to the house it started to rain very hard. I had a small umbrella, but it did us little good. We got completely soaked in just a few seconds. By the time we reached our house, the water standing on the pavement was already over our shoes. I was angry with myself for letting us get caught in the rain like that. But then I noticed that Daniel was enjoying the rain. He was stomping his feet in the water with each step just to watch it splash. So we stopped trying to hurry and walked slowly in the rain the rest of the way to our door, stomping our feet to make the water splash.

July is a hot month in Tomsk. The temperature can get as high as eighty six degrees Fahrenheit. People go to the Tom river. This is an ordinary river with an ordinary shoreline. But when you look at the photos you’ve taken you notice how beautiful the river is, how beautiful the whole area is.

Tomsk is known throughout Russia for its great wooden buildings. There are a lot of wooden houses in Tomsk. They are very old. The newer homes are made of brick. Some of the old wooden houses are so beautiful. They’re an important part of our city’s history and culture. But there are two big problems with wooden houses. First, they burn so easily. Second, they are often in poor repair. That is very sad because the old wooden houses are so much prettier than the new brick houses. These new bricks houses may be more comfortable inside, but they are not so beautiful from the outside.

My father and Daniel and me are in Narym village now. Narym is situated 550 km north of Tomsk. Narym was established 402 years ago. Narym is my father’s hometown and he comes back to visit every summer. Daniel likes to visit here because of all the motorized vehicles our host has: two jeeps, a motor boat, tractor, and a snowmobile. My father likes fishing with a fishing rod and a big net. I really enjoy spending time in an oblasok, a little boat kind of like canoe. You can see Daniel and my father sitting in the Oblasok in this photo.

Time for us to harvest our garden produce. What do we do with our harvest? Potatoes, carrots and beets are kept fresh in a cellar. Cucumbers and tomatoes we pickle in jars. We make jam from berries. What else? I do homemade wine every September. Raspberry wine is very good. Wine currant and bilberries are also pretty good. I like to add a little black ash berry to my wine. My friends like my wine and it is usually all gone before the end of the year.

Today is Beer Day in Tomsk. It’s something like fireworks day (May 20). The people of Tomsk are very proud of their local beer. Lots of people gather around the Dramatic Theatre. They drink together and listen to pop music groups and talk about how good Tomsk beer is. It may seem silly to other people, but the people of Tomsk really enjoy this holiday.

There are a lot of squirrels in Tomsk just now. They started to appear here in great numbers in September. Scientists explain the squirrels are moving into the city because there are few pinecones in the surrounding forests this year. Everyone loves to see them around town. Today we watched as a squirrel played with a magpie just outside our window. We watched as they took turns chasing each other. It was very funny. They played about one hour like that. At the end the squirrel was chasing, not one, but three magpies. I wish I had a video camera so that I could capture this scene.

Russian people usually repair their flats themselves and we are no exception. It tends to take me a long to time make these repairs. Rimma gets frustrated with me sometimes and says "Do it now! Do it quickly!" But I do pretty good work even if it does take me a long time. This is our anteroom. Rimma and I put up the wallpaper together. All of the woodwork I did myself.

I was in China at this time one year ago on business. We had to install one of my company’s our ultra wide band generators there. This generator radiates short electromagnetic pulses. I like China. I liked the people I met in China. I enjoyed seeing all the new construction in China in contrast with Russia where little building is taking place. Of course I like Chinese history: the Great Wall, the Temple of Heaven, the Emperor Palace in Beijing, the Lee Bo Memorial. Of course, the best place for me was near Leshan city in Sichuan Province where I saw the seventy one meter tall Great Buddha. My thanks to my Chinese colleagues for giving me the chance to visit these beautiful places.

We have a lot of public transport here in Tomsk. We have trams, trolley buses, and municipal buses. We also have private buses. Private buses came to Tomsk about 5 years ago, and there are more than 20 routes now. You can go to almost every place in Tomsk by private bus now. You just have to make sure you know the right route. The fare is about seventeen cents USD for one trip no matter how far you ride. So I get to my work and back home again by private buses. It takes about 30-40 minutes and I often sleep on my way home. I even miss my bus stop from time to time!

We have a lot of grocery stores here. We shop for some things just about every day. We buy bread, cottage cheese, and sour cream most days. I like to shop at the Yukon grocery store. In addition to the grocery stores, there are also many open-air bazaars in our city. These bazaars stay open even in the coldest weather.

December 2

One of my good friends, Oleg, bought a new flat. We moved his things in yesterday, and today we had a house warming party. There were about 40 guests and I’m not sure that even the host knew all of them! Everyone who came to the door was welcome to join us. It was difficult finding a place for everyone to sit. The hosts only have five chairs in their home. But it worked out OK. We borrowed chairs, plates, and glasses and so on from the neighbors. We danced and ate and sang until early the next morning. It was great fun!

Tomsk is crazy about soccer. We have a soccer team in the second league of the Russian Soccer Cup. Our stadium is always full, when our team plays soccer. But there is something different about Tomsk soccer. It is very popular to play snow soccer here. We have winter Tomsk Soccer Cup, and there are about 100 teams in the competition! The teams will continue to play until the temperature falls below –22 degrees Fahrenheit. My team won the first two tournament games, but we lost the next two.

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