March in Portland

The past few weeks I stopped bringing a camera with me. Bad idea, because now I don't even remember much of what happened last month. D takes his camera (phone) around with him every day but he mainly takes photographs of mushrooms. Yes, you heard it here first!

You can take the guy out of Simferopol, but you can't take the Simferopol out of the guy ; )

Anyway, if February seemed long, March was an eon instead of a month. Wasn't even worth keeping track in a planner because the pattern rarely varied: work work work work doctor work work. But I do remember the first weekend- my brother turned 30 and we celebrated in a step-by-step painting class at The Loaded Brush. It was really cool to see a room of regular people create beautiful art!

And the flowers weren't just on canvas last month- they were everywhere. 

One day I stood under these blossoms waiting for the train. They're gone now, replaced by bright green leaves.

Have you heard of the website meetup.com? We've been using it to explore the city and meet other people here looking for friends. Last weekend I didn't read the description closely enough before RSVPing and showed up at a support group for immigrants, oops. Close enough! The table was full of interesting expats from all around the world, including Olga, a Russian chemist who recently moved to Oregon from Moscow. We didn't get to talk much since the restaurant was noisy and there were lots of people at the table, but I'm hoping to meet up with her again. I've also been meeting with Katya, another meetup friend, who moved here a few years ago after marrying an American man and doesn't even want a 50/50 language exchange- she's willing to go the whole time in Russian :p

And that was March, a long countdown to the last (bittersweet) day of work and a month in which I watched an entire season of The Bachelor instead of doing things that mattered.

Here's the rest of what turned up on my camera...

Lunch this week @ A Modern Organic Tea House with Katya. Green tea w/ sunflower + peach!!

Kit got an upgrade from cardboard box + towel to his very own pillow.

Reflection of the KOIN Center, a 35-story downtown tower.

Lots of gray days in Portland still.

Came across this on a late-night walk. On one side of the street was this scene, on the other was a crowd of college students holding up their phones to record videos and chanting "Naked guy! Naked guy!"