It’s Saturday, and we are going to The Training House again, first to work in the schoolyard in the morning and then our Azeri language lesson at 12:30.
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| Stolba |
The cityscape is littered about with the common soviet-era concrete telephone pole, called a stolba. These are found all over the place, pretty much anywhere Soviet construction methods were/are used, including the playground area of The Training House. It is a cast concrete column with six pieces of rebar in it, about ten inches square at the bottom and about six inches square at the other end, approximately 25 feet away. Various hardware will top it depending on the usage of the stolba in particular, this one had carried wires, so it had a couple of bars protruding near the top and a couple of ceramic insulators had survived to today.
This is the second stolba to come down in the yard, and we tackle it in the same fashion as the one that came down last week--start digging. There are five of us including Beloved, and after about two hours we are approximately 36, maybe 40 inches down. One of the locals scampered to the top of the pole and secured a rope, and now we start pulling. Kind of a see-saw pulling until it finally yields, which means it breaks off below the ground level. There will be rebar to cut, but the stolba is down and can be taken away.
Azeri language goes okay and then we are at home for the afternoon. England calls and asks if we would like be introduced to a board game that his family likes, called “the Settlers of Cattan.” We say yes, and shortly after 7:00 we start this game. It is a very interesting game, and the play is probably a little bit slower than it might regularly be, for there is lots of explaining to the rookies, and two of the players are age 13 and 8. We eventually find the rhythm of the game and it proves to be a very enjoyable game.
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