Memories from Russia
Pre-story: My sister has not seen our father for 12 years. 10 years for me. Last month she decided to travel to Cambodia for work and I suggested that our father should come to visit, given the proximity to Siberia. Somehow it was organized and it was his first time abroad.
Grandma gave our father some pictures, and he brought them to my sis to Cambodia… These pics travelled for quite a bit :) It is only grandma who has our old picture now, as we left them behind when moved to Canada.
Here are a few of them:
- Me, I think this is about Grade 3

2. This is epic. This is something I was super proud of: we have made 3,000 crepes over night and delivered them next day for this event. We almost ran out of time, and it was a crazy night :-) The woman in them middle is the original director of the restaurant. I learned a lot from her about the business. The man at the back, on the right is her love. An amazing businessman, great navigator in Russia muddy waters of business. Quite a love story those two had! I also ended up living in of their apartments in the city years later. I owe them a ton for everything they taught me and would do anything for those people. I am in a hat on the right.

3. Four women of my family. I truly believe we all only look better with age.

4. Silly me trying to pose, haha

5. First time on the ocean. Not sure why grandma had it in this pile.

6. Siberian winter. I hope now one can understand why I never liked skiing — it is because I got to try it with all this gear on me. How do you think I felt after about 20km in this gear on skies for the first time? Oh yeah, I am on the right.
p.s. I love snowboarding though :)

7. Saint-Petersburg. University residence. This was a ‘better room’ — at least two rooms shared one bathroom, and not a whole army sharing one bathroom on a floor. The bathroom door is behind us. Everything looks a little dirty? Ha! You haven’t seen the ‘worse’ dorm!

8. Since the moment I could afford to buy rollerblades:

9. My class. It is amazing how I remember everyone’s personality. I am on the left, wearing boots, clearly, bored.

10. Banya. Russian sauna in translation. If I told you stories about heating it up once a week and doing a big family bath-wash — well that’s exactly this place. Sometime in winter you have to pile through the snow to get clean :-)

11. New Year. I don’t know why I chose to post this picture. I never liked that dress anyway… I am on the right, about 12 years old.

12. This is also epic. I’ve owned this jacket for over 10 years. My granda bought it for us for probably CAD $1. The zipper just broke this summer (2017!), and I am very sad about it. I am planning to fix it :-)

13. I almost put this one in the other pile of non-posted pics, but then I realized that this is probably the only picture of me playing piano…

14. Why choose between biking and rollerblading if I can do both at the same time? May be I didn’t need to spend $100k for Rotman integrative thinking?

15. I am not drunk there. The left eye was damaged by a doctor and at that moment in life I accepted the fact that it will always stay that way. I am lucky it didn’t and I have both of them opened. Equally. So lucky. 2003

16. I think we sent this to grandma, that’s why it was in the pile. This is when I just moved to Toronto and mom cam to visit and I met her with the flowers. The jeans are funny: I didn’t have money in PEI to buy jeans, but wanted to pretty up a bit for Toronto, so I got this old pair of jeans somewhere, but they were too short. Someone also gave me this red jacket which was huge for me, so I cut sleeves from the jacket and added them to the bottom of the jeans to make up the length.
