Hey, didn't this go out with the 80's? Apparently not in this small Siberian city. Don't ask me the name or even to spell it. Just a nice small city where my team, the Green Team, is spending the evening on our day off ( acutally spent most of it traveling four hours to get here ).

After a dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, Rudy, Paul and I decided to take walk to the city square. Oh, Emmanuel with us, too. We heard a lot of noise and came upon a break dancing contest for teenagers. These guys and girls were great! Doing spins and moves my body could never imagine doing. It was fun watching people having fun.

Well, you knew Emmanuel would be a star attraction as the "dark man". Evidently these people have rarely, if ever, seen a Kenyan. I mean,. my skin is almost as dark as hid but I don't get the billing and none of us do, as he does.

The host of the event via a local high schooler who knew pretty good English, introduced us and asked us to dance, I don't think so! Emmanuel obliged and the crowd loved it. I taught some of the locals some scat singing and had them to repeat the non-sense rhythmic sounds with me while snapping their fingers. Again. my high school comrade was my interpreter. The scat goes like this but you have to say it with a beat, snap your fingers and be able to make a horse sound. I guess I would have to shwo you how to do that but here is the way it goes:
VA DOT and CHEW
BO BO SKA DIDNT DOTTEN
VA DOT and CHEW
ISKY DILLY ODENT DODENT
BO BO SKA DIDNT DOTTEN
VA DOT and CHEW
IT DIDNT LITTLE MITTEN
ODENT DODENT LITTLE MOTENT
BO BO SKA DIDNT DOTTEN
VA DOT and CHEW!!!!
Practice it til you can stand on your head while stacking greased b.b.'s with your tongue and singing it backwards to the tune of Yankee Doodle. Then you have arrived!!!

The people were very nice, wanting photos of us and giving us a spontaneous tour to the WW11 Memorial of locals who lost their lives during that time. There were names of all male and I wondered where were the female names. We were also presented with t-shirts. We in turn presented them with some pins and other memorabilia of the run. They are very anxious to get on the blueplanetrun.org website to email us and follow our route. I also found it interesting that a few of the guys thought I resemble Stalin with my mustache. I pretended then to shave it off and one guy said, "NYET, very beautiful, NYET!"
Hey, ok. I'll keep it for STALIN'S sake!

Many of these small Russian cities remind me of pictures of the old frontier towns. Log cabin houses and businesses are so abundant. Vehicles stay covered with dust from the streets or sidewalks. Like in America and I am sure, every country, there are beggars, pockets of trash, families out for a walk. areas with flowers, parks, many riding bikes, teens hanging out on a Saturday night, but, we just didn't expect a BREAK DANCING CONTEST!

Peace and blessings on a hot Saturday night in Siberia!

Stalin Lansing.......I don' think so!
Lansing