22.12.13
Kristen says...
Happy Winter Solstice, those of you who are still enjoying that day...it's well into the day after the solstice for us!
So, it's been a big weekend for the Finks of Vladivostok...
It began on Friday with our Consulate holiday party, which was well attended and had a lot of really good Russian and American food (I brought
molasses cookies and some
seasoned oyster crackers.)
Ded Moroz (Father Frost) also made an appearance to give gifts to the children in attendance:
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| What a hunk! :) |
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| I even managed to snap a picture with him before he headed off for his next visit! |
The next morning we woke up bright and early to represent the USA at the Indian Consulate's Table Tennis tournament:
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| The team of Fink and Fink (or as they kept announcing us, Chris e Kristen...I guess Fink is a weird word to say in Russian?) |
Neither of us is all that great at table tennis, we will be the first to admit (although we did play in jr. high and high school PE!) but we had a really fun time trying hard to win against some Vietnamese, Koreans and Russians who had clearly practiced once or twice before attending the event (most of them even brought their own paddles! We had to borrow ours from kind people.)
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| Chris has his game face on |
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| Showing fine form |
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| All tied up |
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| Alas, it was not to be...all day... |
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| My first game of the day |
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| My face of concentration. |
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| A little bit of action in women's doubles |
We competed in singles competition, women's and men's doubles and finally, mixed doubles.
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| A great (but not so talented) pair! |
In the end, we decided it was more about the participation than the winning...but at the awards ceremony I was SHOCKED when my name and my partner for women's doubles were called as 3rd prize winners! We were so surprised, we had no idea we had even placed!
We left the competition around 4:30 and had to be downtown at the Philharmonia at 6 for a dance recital given by Lehrer Dance, a very talented group from Buffalo, NY (no crowd-taken photos allowed during the event but you can check out the
Consulate's Facebook page for some WONDERFUL official photos from the performance). We made it, just, but I was sooo tired and this morning I am rediculously sore from all that table tennis...
The trophy makes it all worth it, though! :)
KF
PS: We also made a new cooking show in the past week! You can find it on our
YouTube channel or just click play below! :)
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