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	Create New Topic   My Posts   My forum buddies   Invite friends   Private messages Russian brides > Main Forum > Doug’s Trip Report Part 1 – Setting the Stage Author Post Doug Salem Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 12/18/2004 9:21:50 AM   Doug’s Trip Report Part 1 – Setting the Stage Readers: Please bear with my long lead-in to my trip to FSU, which includes this and four subsequent parts, which themselves are actually a prelude to a serious of more current and traditional trip reports. Somehow I feel the need to set the stage… In the fall of 1998, when I decided to investigate the possibilities of “mail order brides” from FSU, I was 41 years old. My now-wife Olga, who hails from the remote, (ex-Soviet) mining and steel mill center of Krivoy Rog, Ukraine, was only 20. Olga was 21 when I first visited her in June of 1999, still only 21 when she arrived in the U.S. on a K-1 visa in November of 1999, and still only 21 when we married 87 days later in Las Vegas, Nevada. Now we have been married for four-and-a-half years. We are 26 and 46, respectively. We live in Southern California. In May of this year, Olga and I began planning a series of separate but coordinated trips to and within FSU to visit her family. Olga and I had returned to Ukraine only twice in four-and-a-half years. The first visit was in August of 2000, about seven months after our stateside wedding. We stayed at Olga’s parents’ flat in Krivoy Rog, where we had a belated, epic, Russian-style wedding reception. Olga’s older brother, Andrei, his wife, Angela and her parents traveled from Novorossiysk and Krasnodar, Russia to join the festivities and meet me for the first time. The visit was a smashing success. I was enveloped by a warm and passionate extended family fold. On the way back to the U.S., Olga and I made a detour through Spain for a belated and abbreviated “honey month” (Russian “honeymoon”). But because I am an indentured American corporate slave, ours was only a “honey week”. About a year later, Olga and I returned to Krivoy Rog for another visit. Olga went ahead of me and stayed for about a month. I joined her for two weeks and we returned together. That time it was just Olga’s parents. Like our first visit, it was also successful, serving to further narrow the chasm of our cross-cultural marriage. It is not my imagination that the closer I get to Olga’s family the closer Olga gets to me. This is an important aspect of Russian culture that should not be ignored by aspiring Western bachelors. You must pay sincere respect and attention to the parents, despite the 10,000 mile separation. You must give them your time. And not just during the courtship mind you; it’s a package deal and you’ve got to keep it up for the duration of the marriage. (Once you begin to truly absorb your Russian wife’s culture, you will come to appreciate, and even enjoy it. You may find that you had this capacity for family intimacy in you all along, but that your Western family did not really encourage it.) Our marriage was becoming firmly cemented. Olga was adapting well to her new life in America. We had bought a house, acquired a dog, and begun nesting. For me, the domestication was unconscious, unfolding in front of me as a series of random, haphazard tacks before a prevailing wind. But with Olga, it was more of a deliberate course. She seemed to have set her sails shortly after Las Vegas, and to have somehow steered us toward a rooted existence with a higher purpose. This is another important aspect of Russian culture – the Russian woman’s ingrained, subliminal, and purely female nesting instinct. Code word “cozy home” (as advertised in their marriage agency profiles). With a Russian woman, it is as pervasive and natural as the incoming tide, and just as impossible to stem. Because of this nesting call, Olga and I decided to forgo a third trip to Ukraine during years 3 and 4 of our marriage - to focus our time, money, and energy on nurturing a family of our own. To be continued …. southernman Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 12/18/2004 9:29:55 AM   Very well Doug. The suspence is killing me. On with the show. wtrav02 Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 12/18/2004 9:33:24 AM   Excellent! we're missing part II, please, please post it again! wtrav02 Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 12/18/2004 9:35:23 AM   I'll check on this later, part II is missing, it's like watching a movie's beginning and end ... something tells me the juice is in the middle Doug Salem Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 12/18/2004 11:42:21 PM   wtrav and southernman, Thanks for the positive feedback. I have put a lot of work into this series, so it's encouraging to hear your comments. Your Reply: Your name:   New Registration Password:   Forgot password?   refresh Code:   Russian brides > Main Forum > Doug’s Trip Report Part 1 – Setting the Stage
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