Orthodox Christmas

Yesterday was Russian Orhtodox Christmas. This is not as big a celebration as New Year's, but everyone was still happy for an excuse to eat nice food and drink nice things.

The cooks yesterday really treated us. In the morning they had baked fresh cakes, in the form of crowns, and also made "bubliki", a type of bagel, which were strung up onto the windows. This reminded me a lot of some German traditions. The evening meal was a treat of salmon, both cooked and fresh, caviar, shrimps, rabbit, and huge chocolate cakes. There were bottles of beer and wine (all alcohol-free) to drink. Ochen vkusna! (very tasty). All in all a very enjoyable evening.

Here is a photo of some of the bits; unfortunately I could not take any photos of the loaded platters as the canteen was too busy and the food was disappearing at the speed of light...here you can see one of the Christmas crowns as well as a persimomm...first time I come accross one of these, and it is much bigger than I expected.

Yesterday we also finished off the Winlog for the well we logged the other night, while the next well started drilling. I was training Yuri as Radik was down with an upset stomach-what a day to choose for that...

I also managed to finish off some jobs that Alexey had been nagging me about, as well as complete my GPA (goals and performance appraisal) so I feel a lot better for that. Although I think I should now amend it, adding in the title of "career's advisor and GPA assistant to Salym staff"! The boys here have been asking me for a lot of help, and when I felt like a break I went to see Pasha for a cuppa and he promptly asked me to check through his too!