On Thursday we went with Daniel’s family to Brazilian restaurant, I mentioned earlier in this blog, to celebrate Daniel’s mom birthday (the actual birthday was on Wednesday, July 26). We wanted it to be someplace nice for one more reason - Daniel’s aunt Lilya is leaving New York. Her son moved to Moscow and she just wants to be close to him. It’s very sad, especially for Daniel’s parents. They lived close to aunt Lilya for many years. But I from all people know that sometimes you have to make choices and leave someone dear behind. On the other hand  world has become a much smaller place with all those means of communications. So hopefully they will help to keep contact. I think that for aunt Lilya this transition could mean expansion of her social circle.

She is very smart, well-educated, well-read woman with a great sense of humour. Unfortunately, when you move to another country after certain age it’s that much harder to pick up a new language. For many elderly immigrants the sacrifice that needs to be made is the lack of ability to express themselves in full extent. Basic vocabulary in foreign language can’t be compared to the extensive native language base. So in many cases people just think that you are not that smart or don’t have a sense of humour because you can’t understand jokes, or that you could be taken advantage of. I think most people who make that choice do it with their eyes open, but it’s still nice to be able to talk about music, literature, politics, any stuff that you wish to talk about without drowning helplessly in the voids in your stock of words.

I will miss her too, because she was nothing, but nice to me. I’ve come to think about Daniel’s family as if it’s my own.

On a different note, yesterday I got the 2nd dose of MMR immunization shot, required for college. MMR stands for measles, mums and rubella. Not sure if I was immunized for those when I was a child, but it’s much easier to get new shots than to find old records and translate them. I don’t recall needing immunization records for my college back in Minsk. One thing that was required though were x-ray results from the lungs check-up for tuberculosis. We were supposed to do it once a year or else would not have been allowed to take our final exams. I hope that I can skip the meningitis shot (seems that even though it’s strongly advised, it’s not a requirement).

1

DR2ooo says:
July 31, 2006 @ 12:44

While we were having dinner I asked my aunt which placed she used to live at and how long. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it came down to something like this:

Novosibirsk - 19 years
Frunze - a couple of years
Ashgabat - 14 years
Tashkent - 14 years
New York - 13 years

So New York is much of a home for her as Tashkent was. And now she’s leaving for Moscow.

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