Torzhok Russia...

I thought I would take a sec to post a couple of pics that were taken a couple of weeks ago here in Torzhak. Me with Vladimir Lenin Statue and some other statue of a famous architect.

Well it has been a wacky few weeks here. Utilities are rough here. One day I got home from the mill and had no water for a few hours, cable is intermittant --It's all in russian anyway so it doesn't matter. Electricity bumps all the time. Hell of a place to install electronic equipment.

Posted a picture here of a fine new russian fence, and some of the really old churches here. The ones in the pictures are over 1000 years old. The wooden skyscraper church is from 1683 and is built without nails. Oldest wooden church in russia, and is called the church of the accension. Still haven't been in it yet cause they are working on it but it is a beautiful building.

Went to T'ver (pronounced Ta Veer) yesterday to do some shopping. Pictures from that trip next post.

Missing you all from Torzhak.

Congralutations to my sister and brother-in -law for their new baby - Welcome Ella Grace

Bob

Going back again.....

Well, I left to go back to Russia again today, and this time for 1 month. Hopefully it will go by fast! It feels really weird when your "VACATION" is actually going home FROM Russia! It should be the other way around.

GOOD BYE RUSSIA.....

Good bye Russia...For now! I am leaving today to go back to the states. Can't wait to be home, and back in my own bed, and be with my family again, who I missed a lot! I go back to Russia on Oct 17th, and I am sure my time at home will fly by faster than my time in Russia did. Oh well! It really doesn't matter right now, because I am coming home! YEESSS!!!!

A few pictures around the town - It was raining and about 45 degrees, ON THE 31st of AUGUST.

BRRRRRRRRRR. Had a good walk around town and I will get some more of the pictures up as time allows.

Doing well here. Kinda have this place figured out. It is a totally different world. The way they do things, the way the people interact, the things that we take for granted, they don't exist here.

Couple of more pics to give a sence of scale in this building. It is huge with so much going on. There are 3 major machine areas here. All to make LVL eventually.

Here are a few more pics of the equipment I am working to try to start up. It is going well. We have power on now and I am starting to get stuff to run. I am under the gun though because there is a deadline for "first board" of Sept 15th. It is a hugely political date. Don't forsee anything that will cause problems yet.

Thank you everyone for the birthday greetings. They were all very appreciated. Today I fugured I would throw up a few pictures of where I work over here. The first couple of pics are the front of the MLT building and the third one shows a little of the the container farm where a lot of the construction workers are living. They have hired some operators from the states and they are living out there in the containers too. The containers are bigger and nicer than my hotel room but I think they will be a bit drafty in the wintertime. Also I don't want to spend all my time here on site.The first one is a picture of the office where they stuck us "foreign specialists" along with some of the translator staff.

Shopping Trip

The other day we went to the little grocery store on the other side of town. They sell a good mix of stuff there, but it is nothing like an american store. They depend on small stores here and the people that I have seen usually seem to do their shopping on a daily basis. You see a lot of people in the evening walking to and from the small stores that sell basic supplies. The grocery store we went to has a little larger selection including some toys, shampoo and soap stuff and fresh meat. They even had chicken heads. Next time we go I'll get a picture of the chickens.

For those interested in where Torzhak is put these coordinates into Google Earth. I have it saved as a .KMZ but it would not let me attach it to the post.

57° 1'7.24"N, 34°57'45.31"E

Outside Pics

These are pictures taken outside of our hotel. The first one is the view outside of my hotel room window and the second is the front of the hotel. The last two are looking up and down the street in front of the hotel. The bridge goes over the railroad tracks and we walk down the dirt roads to get to the little restaurant where we eat dinner. The building next to the hotel is a car repair place, and the first floor of the hotel is a new restaurant and soon to be a hair salon. Everything about this place is so foreign, but there are some things of western culture thast crop up once in a while. Most of the young people have cell phones and there are a lot of cars. We passed litterally thousands of cars on car hauling trucks headed for Moscow during the 7 hour trip from the airport to here.(It is only 120KM- 70 miles or so). Most of the cars were foreign - Honda, Mercedes, Toyota, Hyundai,a few Chevysand Fords- cars you can't buy in the states. Only a handful of big cars- Saw 2-3 Tahoes/Expeditions, and 1 Hummer.Lots of LandRover Discoverys. No larger pickups, only the small ones. Funny though all the imported cars all had the american names on them. If you were going to export a Hyundai Santa-Fe to Russia from Korea wouldn't you give it a Russian name?

More later about my trip to the supermarket

Well I finally figured out a way to get my pictures off of my camera. So I have included several pictures of my room . Home Sweet Home. I will be spending most of my time working so it is not that bad. Pizza for lunch - We will see how it is.

Well its day 1 of my adventure in Russia. It took 30 hours to get here and I am pretty tired even though I slept some. It is going to take a long time to get used to being here. I guess the biggest change is going to be cultural differeces. It feels like they are 30-40 years behind here but with some modern conviences. My room has a tv that gets 1 or 2 stations. I have High Speed internet access but my cell phone won't work because I didn't get a world phone. They have a different system here than Verizon uses.

After I got up - went and ate lunch with Jeff and then went out to the mill. Got an idea of just what a huge task I have ahead of me. Well if nothing else it will keep me busy.

I don't have a cable to connect my camera and I don't have a card reader so I guess photos might be a little while in coming. I can take them but have no way to transfer them. I'll figure it out though.

Well I wanted to get started on this and get it set up so Danelle can get everybody linked to it.
Got that done and now it's dinner time.

More Later