Hidden Village

 

Last Saturday night, feeling exhausted and a little chilled after the whole day spent outdoors, we stopped at the closest restaurant we could find, which happened to be a vegetarian and pescaterian Thai place in Bellevue, WA. We are neither, but sort of naturally leaning that direction in the last couple of years, and we love Thai, and our dinner was amazing! Anya got wide rice noodles with "veggie meat" (you wouldn't know the difference, honestly), Justin had pineapple rice with prawns, and I had pad thai with mixed seafood - delicious! No wonder I look as pleased as punch in these pictures! 

Nothing's new here - you've seen pretty much everything I was wearing that day. The olive green dress with lace you could have seen HERE and HERE (Summer 2017). It's a little difficult to show this shade of olive correctly, it is much greener than it usually appears in the photos. I chose to wear it with my Russian hand-painted enameled earrings which I have had since forever (take a better look HERE), old Converses (recently shown in June HERE and HERE) and a denim jacket (last time, shown HERE).

A good pad thai can please anyone, but it's not the only reason why I look so happy. Last Saturday, we had an amazing day! We were invited to participate in the first ever Educational Fair for the Russian speaking community, and for the first time I had an opportunity to share my books with my community, and I absolutely had a blast!

It was quite a chilly and cloudy day, and the air quality was still questionable - I mean, we've seen worse, but we've also seen better before and since Saturday. So Justin had to wear a mask almost at all times. Most people don't do it, but oddly enough when we were seated at the Thai restaurant that evening, our neighbor, a beautiful young Asian woman on a date, wore the same kind of mask! I've noticed that Asians are just so much more conscious about air quality and their own health, while most of us (myself included) seem rather self-conscious, at this point, to wear a mask and take care of our lungs. Anya and I shared my Russian platok and even a fleece blanket since we both weren't prepared for the chill.

But despite the weather, we definitely felt warmly welcomed by the community of Russian speaking people - educators, entrepreneurs, and the visitors - parents and children! We were free to decorate our booths as we please, and I decorated our table with a few birch bark boxes from the exquisite Andrei Lialin collection, which is always a show stopper and receives a lot of admiration. It is always very heartwarming to experience, but I wasn't there to sell boxes - I was there to present and, possibly, sell a few our books. Will they generate any interest? I did not know - and I couldn't possibly know that, of course! We've had a few sales here and there, but mostly through Amazon, a local bookshop, or friends and acquaintances. Justin had a few sales at a holiday show at his office last year - but again, those are the people who knew him personally, or at least, they knew of him. But at an event where nobody even heard of me as a book author?..

My fabulous family: Anya, who inspired me to write my first book, Anya and Her Wings;

and Justin, without whom our books would not have happened!

It isn't easy to sell your own work, and most creatives would rather stay in their studies and studios and create, and if you'd ask them, they would never ever have chosen to have to sell their own work. I am no exception! But I knew that sooner or later I had to dive in and just do it. Once I'd worked through my irrational, but very common for creative people fears, I realized that that was it - I've killed the monster. Ever since that, I was able to stay open and lighthearted. And I was AMAZED that so many people who came to my booth that day were also open, curious and just absolutely delightful! They WANTED to meet a new author, a local author - and they WANTED to buy our books! We've received so many warm words about our work, both Andrei's visual arts (boxes and illustrations) and my art - language! They asked good questions and appreciated my ideas of bilingual books. They showed me to their kids and with respect and even admiration, telling them that I'm the author who wrote these books. A few schools invited me to present my books at their classrooms, and I signed over a dozen books to my new little readers! I think if I've ever been in seventh heaven, it was that day, and I thank each and everyone for being there, for being so kind and open-minded. I feel so grateful for this experience! An American said to me that day that they had no idea that there is a whole "hidden village" of Russian speaking people around here, with its own schools, businesses, ideas, events...  I knew about the "village", of course - I made a huge effort to build such a village myself a few years ago. Our world is pretty much filled with such infrastructures hidden from the vast majority of population, and you can be sure that there are not one, but many "hidden villages" in your own town. But you know what I had no idea about? That this hidden village is exactly what was missing from my life, and many people let me know last Saturday that I was missing from their lives, too. 

There is only so much I can tell in one post, but the effect last Saturday had on me is incomparable to anything I've experienced before. Such a mix of feelings I've had ever since that day: happy, amazed, humbled, honored, grateful, curious what's next, floating, soaring, all of that at once and more...

Last, but not the least. Ivana, dear blogging friend and the most wonderful author of the blogs A LITTLE PLACE TO CALL MY OWN and IN LOVE WITH BOOKS, wrote a wonderful, just wonderful review about two of our books, Anya and Her Wings and Superseal. Read it HERE!

Photos are taken by Anya and me, with my phone.

Dress - Lane Bryant (2017)

Denim jacket - Old Navy (2017)

Converses, Russian platok and earrings - old

My new site - ChickenlegHouse

Free games for the whole family - AnyaStories

Instagram - AnyaStoriesBilingual

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