Moscow, Russia

Where to begin?! I came to Moscow for work purposes. You see, the flight planning group always has someone stationed in Moscow as a kind of liason between the Houston planners and the Russian planners. These people usually have 3 month stints, but the Shuttle flight planning group usually sends one planner out for the space shuttle missions. For STS-127, they sent ME out.

Moscow was a real shocker for me. From the moment that I left the airplane, everything was different. It seemed dimmer, older, and smellier :) When we left the airport and we were driving down the highway, I would look to the right and left and see cars parked/dead on the side of the highway. People would park wherever they needed/wanted to. It was crazy. I saw a lot of old cars that were broken down on the side of the road.

Once we got further into the city, I wondered to myself where the "nice" parts of Moscow were. Unfortunately, we were driving into the worse parts of Moscow :(

When I finally got to the Volga (my hotel), I didn't know WHAT to expect. I had heard many horror stories about the hotels. Safe to say, it was NOT as bad as what everyone had said. It was probably worse than a Motel6, but not by much :)

Due to the shuttle launch slipping a few days, I got the chance to explore Moscow. For the first couple of days, I just went out to various "night-life" locations around Moscow. Things like restaurants, bars, and a club were all included :D Funny, but I actually didn't have "Russian" food until about my 4th day here! We would usually go to america, mexican, or indian food!

The first sight-seeing place that I went to was the famous Ismailova. It is a flea market where everything is cheap! This is where I bought all of my souvenirs! It was a very interesting place that really reminded me of Guatemala, including the smell! For a while, NASA employees were asked to not visit due to threats to foreigners that entered the area. Fortunately for me, they lifted that ban a couple of days before I got there. They had tons of different stuff including nesting dolls, jewelry boxes, furry hats, DVDs, or just about anythink you might want to get. Attached to it, was this area that had really interesting architecture that we walked through. They also had painters that were selling their artwork, persian rugs... it was crazy! UNfortunately, due to illegal black-market dealings going on, they "closed" the market. We tried going back, and nothing seemed to have changed :D Lucky for us, cuz I had a bit of shopping left to do!

The next place that I went to was the Red Square. This is considered to be the "center of moscow." It's where the president lives as well as where "all roads lead to" in Moscow. It is a very beautiful place with a things like Lenin's tomb and St. Basil's cathederal, as well as the GUM (a pricey mall).

The next place that I visited was the Space Museum! It is marked in Russia by a HUGE tower in the shape of a rocket blasting off into the sky. It had amazing statues around it and images at the base of the tower. Under the tower was the actual museum. Unfortunatly, on the day that I visited, they were closed, so I didn't get a chance to go in :(

That same day, I went to watch the Russian National Dance Show. Just across the street from the Space Museum, in the Cosmos Hotel, it was a VERY interesting experience. I was expecting something in a nice auditorium (thinking Hobby Center nice). When I walked in, however, the place was WORSE than my high school auditorium. The show was very intesting though. They went through the history of Russia and some of the dances in that history. Of course, they did the expected "squat-kick" dancing as well as other dances and flips all over the place!

After that, work started and I didn't get the chance to do much sight-seeing. I worked the night shift (9pm-5am) and slept during the day. Of course, I went out to dinner at various other places, had Abe cook some delicious dinners for me, as well as lived off of Ramen and Coke for a few days!

All-in-all, I say that I would have liked to see more of Moscow, but I'm ready to go home. After almost a month spent in Russia, I'm ready to go home, and see my wife and "kids" again :D

For more pictures, check out my Picasa album here.

Some Changes coming

It's been while... I hope everyone is doing well...first off there are some changes coming our way...I finally submitted my application for grad school at Lamar University. Weirdly enough I haven't heard back from them, but hopefully I will start in July. I am also going back to teaching this coming school year. For me to be able to get my Principal-ship I need a minimum of 3 years of teaching. I only have 2 under my belt. So this will be my third year. I am hoping to get in 4 years and then start applying for assistant principal jobs. Who knows...hopefully in 5 years or so you can call me Principal Reyes! How awesome would that be??? Right now I am teaching summer school. Most of your should know that my certification is in Social Studies...well guess what??? I'm teaching Biology this summer...How crazy is that?? I'm learning a lot though as I teach myself the night before I teach my students. This is my life... JR was suppose to be in Russia right now, but the Russian space people are being slightly ridiculous so JR probably won't be going until November. That means he may miss Christmas or Thanksgiving :(

JR and I recently celebrated our 25th birthdays! Wow we have both lived a quarter of a century...its still kinda hard for me to wrap my head around. We had a huge birthday outing with several other June birthdayers! Happy Birthday everyone!! It was a lot of fun. On my actual birthday I spent a day out with the girls. I wish all of my ladies could have been there. Thank you for those that could take time off to celebrate with me. Alexis, Nicole, Jesii, Carol and I drove to the Blue Bell factory toured an ate deliciousness. We then went shopping at some outlets in Houston! We ended the night joined with JR and other friends for some Italian at Zios ;) Thanks for everyone's birthday wishes :) JR and I got each other bikes for our birthday. When we went out for our first bike ride, I was a wreck. It was almost as if I had forgotten how to ride! I could ride for very long... but now that a few weeks have gone by, I can ride about 5 miles! That is a lot for me and I am pretty proud of myself.

Well that's a quick update on life!

<3
Jenn

10 Commandments, Elegante, and Kegs

I had an awesome weekend with my lady friends and just thought I would share our adventures. JR is still working the mission so he didn't get to go out much. My friends Erin and Jake were having a second wedding reception in Nederland, Tx (near Beaumont). So it was a girls weekend. I'm not going to bore you you and write this huge post. But I am going to hit the high points... We stayed at the nicest hotel in the area called Eleganté. Trust me when I say that eleganté was definitely the word of the weekend. The hotel has a 10ft stone tablet of the 10 commandments out front. The wedding reception was filled with Bud and Miller lite kegs, cheap wine and BBQ :) It is awesome to see friends drunk that you don't normally.. Thanks Nicole, you had me laughing off the wall. After the reception we went to a Beaumont bar called The Pace Setter. This place was filled with a very eclectic group of people. It was interesting just watching all the interactions around me. So I will end with this. As we were leaving the bar at close, I saw a tall white man wearing a long white t-shirt. When he turned around the front of his shirt had just one thing: a black male genitalia. Please only click on the link if you are over the age of 18.
This is what it was --->http://www.linkognito.com/b.php?b=1804

Hope everyone had an awesome weekend! Thanks Alexis, Nicole, Erin, Jennifer and Beaumont for a good laughs and crazy people!

<3 Jenn

J.R.'s Turn

So now that Jennifer has gotten the blog going, I thought it was about time for me to get in on it...

I'm currently working the early morning shift for STS-125 at NASA. 125 is the fourth Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission (HST SM4). At work, I'm a flight controller in the Flight Activities Officer (FAO) group; my call-sign for this flight: Timeline. I make changes to the plan that the crew follows throughout the day. In essence, I tell the crew what to do and when to do it. Unfortunately, I have to work at 3 in the morning to do this :( 125 and its crew will be fixing a few of the components on Hubble. This is going to require 5 space walks in the same number of days... something that hasn't been done for a while. This flight is going to be VERY interesting.

Other than work, I'm not really doing anything. It's about 3 in the afternoon, and I'm trying my hardest to stay awake. Luckily, I only have 10 more days of work left before the mission is over. Two weeks after that, and it's off to Moscow!

Rockets: Round 2, Game 4

This weekend has been awesome with moms, sports and friends! JR and I went with a group of friends to see the new Star Trek movie. It was so good...the movie was about 2 hours long but it didn't feel like 2 hours and I definitely could have sat and watched for another hour or so. Go see it even if you aren't a Trekkie :) On Saturday, we celebrated Mother's Day with JR's mom. We put together this great photo collage of the family to give her. When mom's get to a certain age... it's hard to figure out what to get them, so you have to get creative. She really wanted to eat Chinatown Chinese so we picked some up and drove to her house in north Houston. My mom is in Hong Kong right now.. so I'm going to call her using Skype tonight.

We then headed home to meet up with Abe and Spicer to go to "The Boiling Crab" (see previous entry). Two of my friends (Alexis, Carl) were meeting us there a long with a lot of our other friends from NASA. I called to tell Alexis we were running late. She wanted to go ahead and put down a name but I was afraid someone else in our group had already done so...I didn't mention in the previous entry that this restaurant attracts certain groups of people...asian and black to be more specific. So I told Alexis "find the 4 white people.. they are probably in our group". And that advice helped :) So all 12 of us ate very happily our share of crawfish, shrimp, and crab. JR and I ordered 9 lbs between the two of us...delicious!

Then Abe, Spicer, Menal, JR, and I headed to the Dynamo game. We had 3 extra tickets...Our friend Terence was suppose to go with us, but his cat got sick (hope she's feeling better). So we got our friend Tej (whom we haven't seen in a long time, I'm glad he came) and our friends Jason and Melinda (who recently got married, Congrats!). Abe and Spicer smuggled in some margaritas (14 to be exact) If you don't know what Black Iguanas are then imagine Capri Suns for adults. It was a good time had by all...except JR spilled beer on me. The Dynamos won the game 1-0. There was this hard core 5 year old sitting by me that kept yelling "you suck dallas".

And now I bring us to today (Sunday, Mother's Day). JR and I met up with my family in Chinatown for dim sum. It was delicious as always. If you have never had dim sum before then you should definitely let JR and I know so we can take you...We don't recommend inexperienced dim summers to try and eat on their own :) That's a post for another day that involves our good friend Mark Kiefer from high school...

JR and I along with my sister and brother-in-law then headed to the Rockets game. WOOHOO!!! it was a lot of fun.. Thanks to Abe for getting the tickets...So the weekend is now coming to an end...going to do a little work and relax...Hope everyone had an great weekend as well!

<3
Jenn

The Boiling Crab Round 2

So last week JR and I went to this seafood place in Chinatown. This place is known for their crawfish. We tried to go once before and there was a 2 hour wait... so we left. When we went last week, there was no wait and got down to it. We had 10lbs. of crawfish, sausage, potatoes, and corn. And boy, oh boy...it was delicious. Tonight we went for round 2 and brought my sister and brother-in-law. We tried a few other items including, fried catfish, fried shrimp, fried soft shell crab, gumbo and two other crawfish flavors. By the end we were all thoroughly satisfied. This Saturday will be round 3! I can't wait!

What's happening now?

So JR and I thought we would try this whole blogging thing. Let's see how well we keep this up :)

I'm about to submit my application to grad school. I researched a lot of online programs for a masters in educational administration. I wish i could stop working and just go back to school, but we have to pay a mortgage :). So hopefully starting this summer, I will be a grad student at Lamar University. I just went to Barnes and Noble today and picked up some GRE study guides. I am extremely rusty in math. I haven't taken a math class since high school and I'm not really good at studying. So wish me luck in that.

This has been a busy week. Cinco de Mayo celebration with margaritas of course, Astros game, tonight a celebration for a friend, and then Star Trek tomorrow night. This weekend is just as busy with The Boiling Crab, Dynamos game, Mother's day and the Rockets game. JR, me, Jadnnie, Scott, and two friends (Spicer and Abe) have tickets to Game 4 of the Rockets v. Lakers. I am so excited. I have never gone to the playoff series and the energy in the Toyota Center is going to be insane! Let's Go Rockets!!

On a random note, my parents are in Hong Kong for the month. My mom keeps asking me if i want anything... and after they have traveled there for the 5th time or something and having gone myself not that long ago... she really needs to stop asking. I used Skpe the other night and video chatted with my parents and my uncle. I have never used it before. My uncle in HK told me to sign up and i did. Then one night I'm sitting on the couch surfing the internet and my laptop starts ringing. I click accept and there they are on my computer, half the world away. I know this isn't new technology but it was amazing to me and free! I'm not sure why we don't all have it. Did I mention it is free?

Alright that's it for now. I think....

<3

Jennifer