About Various Topics
How Modern Children Communicate.
It’s very rare to see children of the same age as Mark, walking alone on the street. Kids are dropped off at school an hour before classes, and they interact. They also socialize when they are picked up after school. They sit under the awning right on the grass, waiting for their parents, and engage in their interest groups. He socializes with friends during practices. Friends invite each other to birthday parties, not only those he is currently studying with but also those he studied with in previous grades. Recently, a boy from a parallel class had a birthday party at home by the pool. Invitations were sent out for a “Fun Pool Birthday” with the time specified from 12 to 3 PM. Americans, even adults, always indicate the start and end times for a party, and no one lingers after that time; it’s good manners to leave half an hour before the designated time.
About Gifts
I have long been giving Mark money as gifts. He knows how to spend it. It’s very common here to give gift cards with a set amount of money. Stores sell cards either with fixed amounts of various values or you can load any amount at the register. These cards can be used to pay for purchases in a specific store. Visa cards are also sold, onto which any amount can be loaded and they can be used to pay for purchases at any store. However, when you load money onto such a card at the register, you have to pay an additional $3 to $5 for activation. It’s very convenient. All his classmates give each other such cards. I wonder if gift card systems are common in Russia now?
My gardening is mostly for leisure. The pepper bushes have grown very tall, they’re blooming, but there are almost no peppers or they’re very small — about the size of a walnut. Maybe they didn’t set fruit in the summer due to the intense heat, or perhaps I just need to plant new ones every year (these bushes are from last year), or maybe it will get cooler now and they will start to bear fruit. The experiment continues. The eggplants are growing slowly; I gather 3 to 5 small ones almost every week.
About Leisure
I hardly watch television here. When the football championship ended, we decided not to pay for Tiviteka — the channel through which we watched Russian television. In the evenings, the whole family sometimes watches the series “Fresh off the Boat”, which consists of individual episodes. It translates as “Recently Arrived.” It’s about a Chinese family that emigrated to America. It’s interesting to draw parallels between the ways different nationalities adapt to another country. But I think it would be uninteresting for a Russian audience, so it probably won’t be purchased.
Right now, I’m writing while my daughter took Mark to practice. She just messaged me on WhatsApp that near the entrance a small Rattlesnake is slithering in the parking lot. The club staff called the fire department, and a staff member is standing guarding it so that no one runs over it. They call the fire department for any reason, even for first aid, to catch snakes, and to put out fires. They’ll catch the snake and release it in the desert.
