This is a potentially plot-spoiling post if you have not gotten far in our group reading of Anna Karenina. If you are not yet up to Section Two, Chapter 10 please put down this post and catch up on other adoption blog reading.

For the rest of us, I want to talk about what happens in chapters 10 and 11 of Section Two, or perhaps more appropriately, what doesn't happen.

Section... more

I was switching the clothes in my kids' closet to summer from winter this morning and I came across a set of Russian picture puzzle blocks. If memory serves, they were given to my older son in Vladivostok by one of the other families crowding the upper floors of the Hotel Vladivostok in early December of 1999.

Depending on which way you turned the blocks, they made six different pictures. I never knew what they were, but this morning, as I was struggling to break my writer's block on another assignment,... more

As a single, working mom of two, I have a long to-do list of things that don't get done.

But when I was working on a reorganization of the basement the other day, I came across the box of materials I had put aside for my younger son's life book. There was the journal I kept during my two trips to Sakhalin Island in 2005, and copies of all the e-mails I had sent or received while I was away. There were photos, but I am not the world's best with a camera and most of the time during my trips I was playing with my son, not taking his... more

OK, I have to admit it: I have never been comfortable with the first sentence of Anna Karenina.

"Happy families are all alike," reads my translation, "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Other translations render the first sentence as "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.")

Wiktionary, the dictionary affiliate of Wikipedia, defines "happy"... more

I found the mother lode of information on Russia last night.

It's called "Sher's Russian Index", and it is a portal to all things Russian--art, culture, sports, science, language and much, much more. Well, there's not a section on adoption, but I can forgive its creator that because of all the other material that's here.

A word on the site's creator. He is one Benjamin Sher, and after a bit of sleuthing, I learned that he is a Russian translator by profession. His main Web site contains... more

I finally carved out a few days to get started on reading Anna Karenina (and I see from the forum posts that a few of you have too). And I ran smack into the problem that made it so hard to read the book the last time around: the names.

As I wrote earlier this year, meeting one Russian means having to learn a whole lot of names. There's a first name,... more

Folks, we have some time to kill here.

The Ministry of Education's call for more paperwork at the end of March and the subsequent expiration of all accreditations means we have to wait to get the referrals coming again. We might as well use it productively.

So here's my proposal: An online book club on Anna Karenina. At 864 pages in paperback, it definitely has enough heft to keep us reading for a while. (After all, it took author Leo Tolstoy four years to publish it all!) And there is nothing more emblematic of... more

I realize I should have gotten this up earlier in the day, but between church, Sunday school, baseball practice, checking in on a sick family member and going to a movie, the day got away from me.

I opened a box of books the other day, and out tumbled a Russian folktale, The Night It Rained Pancakes. It's a wonderful tale about fooling the political authorities, which Russians even to this day take on like an Olympic sport. (Word to the wise: Never pass up a tag sale at a library; you never know what bit of culture you will find to pass along... more

So my son wound up picking Black Geese: A Baba Yaga Story From Russia for his fairy tale book report. It is a quintessentially Russian story, but its subject matter makes it seem like the last book you would ever want to read to a child adopted from Russia.

The basic story of Baba Yaga--and... more

This month, my older son's class has to write a book report on a fairy tale. And as luck (and an obsessive mother) would have it, we have several Russian fairy tales to choose from.

There is How Much Land Does a Man Need?, a 2001 adaptation of short story by the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. It is a classic tale of a man who, after years of building a life through hard work, succumbs to the temptation... more