Up, up and away

Weekends have been fairly boring for awhile. The days are getting a lot shorter, the sun goes missing, rain threatens and it’s normally bleak looking outside. Summer is definitely gone and the prelude to winter that’s fall is kind of depressing.

And then there are still protests, meaning I really can’t exit my apartment courtyard after, say 1 p.m. The protests are peaceful but I never know where they are going to be. Saturday’s protests are women’s marches, which means today I can peek out the window and see women wearing white-red-white scarves or carrying white-red-white umbrellas out for a walk. Occasionally, a driver will go by and lay on the horn, but for the most part, I see women carrying flowers, which are a symbol of protest.

There’s no telling when – or how – this is going to end, but it seems like it’s going to go on for awhile. The president here inaugurated himself a couple of weeks ago, prompting weekday protests in addition to the weekend ones, but nothing is resolved. Belarus un-invited several EU countries’ ambassadors, leading a couple of others to depart in solidarity.

Meanwhile, we’re still without an ambassador. There’s one lined up but still has to be confirmed by the Senate, and, let’s face it, as much as we need an ambassador here, there are more pressing domestic issues. At this point, no one expects her to arrive until mid-November at the earliest.

That thwarted my hopes of taking off the first two weeks in December. I had no place to go, but if I don’t use just over a week of annual leave, I will lose it and I don’t want to that happen. Considering we’re supposed to “quarantine” where we go, I figured I’d just have to be gone two weeks. I have a virtual class planned for the third week in December, so taking off the first two seemed reasonable.

Now, though, knowing we *might* get an ambassador soon after, I can’t count on that. My additional wrinkle is that so long as the ambassador doesn’t have an assistant, I will fill in. Essentially, I’m pretty much counting on not going anywhere from the time she arrives – whenever that might be – for at least a month after and possibly longer. I’m perfectly fine with that; it’s just that I don’t want to lose my week of vacation.

Still, knowing I’m trapped here makes me kind of want to get out, so it was a relief when we got a TDYer who came to post by car. She hoped to explore a bit on weekends and I offered to tag along. (So considerate, I know.)

We’re limited in range because of the time; she needed to be back by 2 p.m. or something, so I got on Viator and poked around for a place to go and came up with a little outdoor museum that’s only a half-hour from the central part of the city, if that. IT’s called the Belarusian State Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural life, and it mainly consisted of wood buildings depicting life in the late 1800s in Belarus. I love stuff like that, and it was a non-crowded area in which to walk around.

They had little homes and buildings set up to show what life was like throughout the country during the late 19^th and early 20^th century, including a little tavern, a couple windmills, a church and a school.

Just as we were getting ready to turn into the place, Colleague saw an ultralight flying around, and we thought, wow, that’s pretty cool; I wonder where they take off from. Immediately upon entering the museum, we discovered it: right there.

My Russian isn’t good enough to query about it, but Colleague discovered it only cost about $20 for a 10-minute ride and asked if I wanted to do it. She said she didn’t because she’d been up in a little plane and had gotten sick.

Me? YES. Absolutely.

My only hesitation is that it was chilly and a bit overcast, but the place had this giant jacket for me to borrow so I tossed it on over my LL Bean barn coat. (Upon return, I learned I could have borrowed snow pants, too, and should have – it was COLD.)

Oh, it was so much fun. All we did was a giant circle but it was beautiful. I thought I’d be able to take photos, but they – fortunately – also loaned me some gloves in Shaquille O’Neal’s size. Trying to take a photo would have put either the phone at risk due to clumsiness or my fingers from frostbite, so I just took it in. There was one shot I regretted missing – an overhead (obviously) view Belarusian tractor working a field – but other than that, it was mostly just pretty landscape. Seeing the little open-air museum from the air gave me a good perspective of how big it was, too.

If you’d have asked me on Friday what I would do this morning, that would have been a blip on the conscious-o-meter, but boy, it was fun.