Frozen Teardrop by Lucinda Ruh Page A

understood what was happening, he explained to me that we were on the border of Mongolia and Russia and the tracks were different in each country. They would become wider as we entered into Russia, so they had to change the upper carriage on to a new undercarriage to fit the new tracks. It took another couple of hours but it was truly interesting to watch them work on it and to know how things worked back then. I feel lucky to have had such unforgettable experiences.
    The ten days went by way too quickly and the sight of the Lake Baikal, the deepest, clearest, and oldest (25 million years old) lake in the world, made the trip top the charts. I was in heaven. On arriving in Moscow we had much more to experience. It was an astonishing sight to our eyes going from the characteristics of the Chinese people when we left to the colorful personalities of the Russians when we arrived. Both were very poor at that time so it was like the same people inside, but just camouflaged in different attire on the outside. We scrambled through the markets on arrival and people wanted to sell us all sorts of products. We got a taxi and went to the hotel. At that time Russia was still Communist and our hotels were wired. All our conversations and telephone communications were listened to. Since this freaked me out, I did not dare to utter a word in the room or on the phone. Having not had a bath for ten days, my mother filled the bathtub with water and I got first priority to sit in the tub for a while. It felt luxurious even though the amenities of the hotel were scarce and bare.
    At that time my mother and I especially admired the woman skater of the Russian Olympic champion pair skaters. I used to copy a lot of her moves and expressions and many people commented about how I was skating just like her. You truly become who you look up to the most. My parents knew that they were training at the Moscow athletic government training center, and they promised me we would go there where I could skate and meet them. I couldn’t contain my excitement. I don’t know how my parents managed for me to skate at the same rink where the Russians champions were since at that time it was government owned with very strict quarters, but again they always made things possible. At the rink I was up and ready with my skates laced up and I stepped onto the ice. I was warming up ready to show them all the moves I could do and to show off of my skating. But to my disappointment they did not come. We learned that they were away at a training camp near the sea of Russia.
    I was too happy to be truly sad about this, because for me to be able to etch a painting on the same frozen water as they had skated meant nothing could dampen my mood. Nobody else was there and I soaked in their wonderful past energy and prayed I would be as good as them some day. I was however a little relieved, too, not to have the pressure to show the woman skater my skating. Whenever I was on the ice I felt tons of pressure from my mother and ultimately myself. Little did I know I would be skating in shows with the Russian skater later on in my life.
    With my turtle still in tow, being in Moscow and our next stop in St. Petersburg gave us lots of memories. One such memory is when we were stranded in the outskirts of the city trying to get back to the hotel but no taxi wanted our Swiss money. Another is the meal we ravished in a restaurant in the most beautiful dome-like hall where people brought their own liquor and own flowers to place in the stained glass vases filled with water placed in the middle of the table. After about eight days we were off to Switzerland. I remember the vast difference encountered coming all the way from Beijing. Switzerland was like another planet after what we experienced on this particular vacation, expressed with luxuriant green forests and spotlessly clean sidewalks as if money grew on trees here and even the cows seemed to be living a spoiled life. It was