Жизнь Экспатрианта

11/29 12:00, Pushkin time

People at work all agree that I got off really, really lucky on Sunday. It's not quite the speeding-in-Queensland story, but it certainly sits on the outside bounds of plausibility. I suppose if I'm going to burn up my lifetime stock of good luck, keeping from getting my transportation seized isn't a bad cause.

Yesterday, I was very distressed to learn that Portland is getting hit with bitter cold weather, including snow and ice and whatnot. And I look out the window to see (in our five or so hours of sunlight allotment this time of the year) a grey, rainy day and mud everywhere. It's even going to get up to 9C today, and they're not calling for even an approach to freezing anytime soon. Of course, if you head a few hundred miles inland, the weather map gets a bit intimidating.

I've started dreaming in either english or russian (though I know I'm doing it while it is going on).

We did get some good news yesterday as regards our cars. Although they are currently cleared as temporary import until the ending of our current registrations (which is, until March) we will not need to make our cross-border round trip with them for two years. When we get our new registrations, we can simply go back to the customs office we were at the first times, and repeat the process of our final day to get the temporary permits extended until the end of our next registration. And so on each time. This is somewhat a relief to me, as I was becoming concerned about organizing fairly regular two-car caravans out of Russia and back. This way, by the time we're ready to take them out, we should be able to handle the affairs of getting them back in ourselves without much difficulty.
I have a friend from the US who is moving in January/February with his wife and daughter back to his wife's home town of Talinn. We're working on setting up a get-together most likely in Narva (just over the Estonian border) in March/April sometime. Now that we know the cars don't have to make the full trip, we're thinking we might drive up to the border and cross on foot or via train to save the waiting to get out and back in. I understand the US/Canada border is getting tougher, too. It'll be a shame if it gets to be as much of a hassle as the ones here; traveling and meeting is enough of a pain in the butt without having to accommodate the whims of two sets of bureaucracies.
And then also the mom of one of Z's classmates (and also of one of G's classmates) struck up a conversation with me yesterday. She observed A aтв I at the parent meetings and figured out that we probably didn't know many of the boys' friends' parents, and that maybe she would be a good start. So I got her number, and A and she will (hopefully) be coordinating some sort of get-together so we can get acquainted while the kids run aroundin one of the parks around here. Kids make great excuses.

And as a final point. On Monday, I went to go look at a possible other apartment (the two-roomer that we're in now is a bit cramped). It was a nice place, in a nice area, at a good price, but had one right-up-front strike against it that looks to be a likely deal killer. As I hoofed up the staircase behind the owner, I asked him if the elevator was new, or how well it worked. No elevator. And a fifth-floor apartment. Ummm.....

11/26 16:34, Pushkin time

Z's parent conference was even more illuminating than was G's. As he is in the preparatory-for-school group, the preschool psychologist tested all the kids at the beginning of the year to figure out who needed help where to be ready. She gave me Z's and told me not to worry, he had taken it at a time when they had a hard time communicating, and those parts that he understood what they were trying to do, he did excellently. And now (a full month after the test), she told me that Z is basically fully understanding what is said to him, and able to ask for help or clarification as he needs it. A nice thing to say, but since Z doesn't really talk to us in Russian at all, I'm a bit skeptical.

Until, that was, the meeting ended and I picked the kids up to go home. Thursday was a swimming pool day, and Z was without his swimming gear. We were looking around for it, when his teacher caught wind of the stuff being missing, and started to offer me suggestions of where to look. After she suggested a couple of places that Z had already looked, he whipped around to her and tossed back -- in Russian, and without noticeable pausing to think about what to say -- that he didn't know where the were, but that he hadn't lost them, and that he didn't put them anywhere in the school room. Bad grammar, limited vocabulary, but most definitely comprehensible, and more importantly, addressed as an answer to a person who was speaking Russian, without any noticeable mental translation delay. The look he gave me afterwards (a bit embarrassed) indicated that he definitely did know that he had answered in her language, but he is clearly comfortable in doing it in a way that I was not for quite some time. Good job.

Friday and Saturday passed without major event, and then today A's expat women's group had a fundraising bazaar in the city that she needed to go volunteer at, so we all went. Today is mother's day in Russia, so I figured on taking the boys out walking around to find her a present while she was working. And we basically did just that; at both boys' urging we drove the very short distance from the hotel where A was working to the nearest metro station, then took the subway to the big Victory Park in the southern part of the city. Walked around a bit there, then metro back to the place we parked the car and a bit of time shopping for the present. Once we had it, we got back in the car to drive the five or so blocks back to the hotel (it sprinkled all day, and no one wants to walk in that kind of stuff more than they have to). And then the excitement.

Going down Nevskiy Prospekt, I considered and discarded the option of turning a block early onto a sidestreet, then discovered that at that next intersection, we would be forced onto a bridge and over onto the other side of the Neva (it can be a serious pain in the ass to undo such a mistake). So, when traffic stopped, I checked for clearness and then pulled a u-turn. And just as I was pulling into my lane a ДПС comes around the corner. And pulls me over (the u-turn did involve crossing two sets of double-solid lines...). And as I am pulling over, all of two blocks away from the hotel where A is waiting for us, it hits me: I don't have the paperwork for the car I am driving!

So I pull down the road onto the sidestreet that I had skipped before, parked in the first open space I saw, got out of the car, and waited for the cop to park himself and come over to me. And he did. I immediately jumped, as I handed him my passport, to the issue of the fine. He asks for my driver's license, and then for my international license -- this is a ten-dollar translation of the info on a US license into several foreign languages -- which I did not have with me. No one has ever asked for it before. It just kept getting better. He (of course) next asked for my car papers. I got the papers for the other car out of my pocket, made a show of looking at them, then explained how I had left them with my wife who was working at the benefit-the-orphans fundraiser just around the corner.
For reference, being caught driving without the car paperwork is a good way to get your car confiscated or at least towed...
Now I start wheedling. Explaining that we just stepped out with the kids to get lunch and a mother's day gift; that she's just around the corner; that of course I always drive with paperwork, except this time. Finally I cut to the chase, would he be willing to let us drive up to the hotel and get the papers from her? To my delighted shock, he says okay. I offered to let him ride with us, but he followed behind instead. Of course, I called A, who dashed out with our cash and the paperwork. And then while she took the kids inside, I got into the cop's car for the negotiation process. Of course, now that I had the documents from A, we were legal (except for that whole 'moving violation' that kicked it all off, of course). And so he says, as I was expecting, "so what are we going to do with you?". Of course, I asked again about the fine.
He says, "Well, I didn't have to let you drive back here, and if you had walked, I would have ticketed you for a parking violation as well, which is itself 6000rubles. Then the issue of driving without the international license. And then the issue of crossing the double lines..."
I offered a thousand rubles (~$35) as five hundred for each of the things I did wrong, which he accepted. And away we went our separate ways. It was expensive, but this is the first time I've been nabbed that I actually feel like I've gotten the better side of such a situation. Lesson learned, though. And I've updated my tally to the side.

11/23 12:39, Pushkin time

Last night was the parent meeting for G’s group at the preschools (Z’s is tonight). I followed fairly well, and was able to explain at least the high points to A. The program bears mentioning: After the teacher went over the general themes of what the kids are going to be working on – math, some reading, and art; lots of art, with an eye towards developing the kids’ special capacities and motor skills towards better literacy – the school psychologist (maybe there’s a better word for it in cross-context translation, but the name they used was just that one) had some time. She talked about how the kids are relating, what sort of things happen in this age range, and what sort of things parents should watch for and in what ways they can help – in particular, by getting out of the way of kids who are wanting to do more and more things for themselves. All pretty much universal stuff (which may have helped my ability to follow quite a bit). Then the language teacher talked a bit. This is not foreign language, but just plain language (pedagogy, perhaps..). She’s working with all of the kids to help them pronounce words properly and to get a more formally-correct structure behind their language usage. I bet she works with G a lot, given his lackadaisical attitude towards communicating-to-be-understood. Then back to the teacher making some comments about each of the kids. For G, she said that he is getting on very well with the rest of the class, though he insists on doing things at different times (when they are eating, he wants to play; when they are napping, he wants to eat; and so forth…). He apparently speaks freely with the kids – they are all using a sort of m?lange of English and Russian together now – as long as he thinks he is alone. Once he becomes aware of an adult interloper, he switches to high-volume English. She joked that maybe he thinks Russian is a secret kid language.

Wrapping up, we also got to find out what part G will play in the winter holiday – a gnome (whose pronunciation here, with a voiced ‘g’, simply cracks me up). And then the parents were left to decide the situation regarding birthday and ‘New Years’ presents – how to arrange, who will collect and spend the money, and so forth. It strikes me, looking now at the increasing amount of swag and whatnot (they’ve got a tree up in the Egyptian Gates, even), that the big holiday here is New Years, and that Christmas is sort of the after-holiday. Much the opposite of the situation in the US. And here they have fireworks!

11/21 10:00, Pushkin time

And on Sunday? We spent a bit of time in the city getting a couple more odds-and-ends we've been needing for quite some time. And ended up accidentally stumbling upon the opening ceremonies for the new big mall over on Murmanskoye shosse, where some orchestra (I missed all the words; something like 'Petersburg Musical Conservatory' or something) was playing. So Z got to check out some orchestral music with me. The songs they played, I couldn't have named. However, thanks to the upbringing of my generation, they were almost all familiar to me, having been featured in Bugs Bunny cartoons. I told A that I can't wait to go with her to watch Niebelung -- or, as I'm sure I will think of it, 'I killed the wab-bit'.

Then from there, we went neighborhood-hunting. The place we were looking fro in particular is called Kobralovo, and from our maps it was located fairly easy-to-find to the south just outside Pavlovsk. And find it we did, after only a twenty minute detour through the backcountry. The roads were perhaps the worst I have ever driven on in my life (the qualifier that I was the driver is necessary, as I can guarantee that Indonesian roads are far beyond the state of these ones). And the neighborhood afforded us our first glimpse of the poor parts of this area. It remained still a step above third-world -- maybe just barely -- but wow. Needless to say, all of us pretty much simultaneously crossed it off our list of potential places to move. Amusingly, as we drove back through some of the merely ugly parts of the bigger suburb near Kobralovo, A commented on how much nicer it looked. I suspect that, despite herself, she is having her eyeballs recalibrated. And she's got another two months to go before she sees Portland again. I thought everything back there was irrationally shiny after returning from only a month out...

It's still nice and warm here, hovering around 1-4 degrees day and night. I'm getting nervous, waiting for the cold to set back in. I get the feeling it's going to come in hard and fast when it does. I took the van to get washed on Sunday evening after we got back from our excursion. The place near our house is a bit more expensive (280 rubles - six dollars), but after seeing everything covered with road muck, it looked almost unreal coming out of wash. I definitely can see doing that regularly.

11/18 21:42, Pushkin time

So the cleaning got done, the kids prepared, and the babysitter showed up. He turned out to be a 17-year old younger-brother-of-a-friend who bears at least a passing resemblance to one of A's cousins who babysat for the boys back in Portland. He's got some English, and between that and the boys being excited to have someone new around, he and the kids hit it off great (we asked, once he was on his way home, whether the boys wanted him to come back sometime, to which we got an emphatic "YEAH"). So off we went to dinner.

And dinner turned out to be good -- quite more similar to the chinese that I had in Kaiyuan than is the stuff in the US, less the more atrocious parts. Although pig's ear was on the menu. Uhhmmm.

No.


We got right started off with Е and his wife С in russian, since that's what the menus were in and the servers were speaking, but then when translating got too arduous, we figured a way to speak about half the time one way poorly and about half the time another way poorly. And the two ladies who had less of each others' languages sort of alternated participating actively and practicing listening and comprehending. A said afterwards that it was a really good thing, since it gave her a chance to really get her ears into some real russian conversation, and that she was able to fully comprehend maybe a word in twenty (which level, by the way, I was not at until after having had greatly more than three weeks of Russian classes -- she's doing really really well, and now she has seen it for herself; yay!). So the food was good, the conversation was good, the socialization was good, and it was a highly positive experience for A. You couldn't ask for a better night out.

And then.

On the way back home after dinner, maybe halfway out of the city from the restaurant we came upon a car accident that had pretty clearly just happened, as people were pulling other people out of the two cars and trying to pry open doors and whatnot. So we stopped, A fished out an old towel 'in case someone's bleeding', and we went over to help. The car in front, the door that could possibly open was jammed, and a guy was trapped inside, but he seemed basically okay. The driver of the car in the rear, however, was in bad shape (seatbelt usage here, by the way, approaches zero; kids in carseats and belted are an exception as people are fanatics about belting and seating them). He was barely conscious, blood all over, and broken in several places. Some people had just gotten him freed from the wreck of his car, carrying him over to the side of the road to wait for the ambulance to arrive (a digression on this I will avoid, but come back to at the end). No one really had any idea what to do, though one lady was trying. A spotted right away the bleeding from the side of his upper leg and with me translating (poorly) got him arranged and the towel situated into a tourniquet on his likely stickshift-impaled leg, which she maintained while the other lady and I talked to the guy to keep him awake -- he kept going from woozy to silent to yelling (as well as can someone who is banged up like that) and writhing. Eventually the cops and the ambulance came and got things under their care, and we continued home.
I'm still freaked about the whole thing (I was shaking for a good bit of it); A on the other hand was cool and effective throughout. Maybe she gets to thinking again now about the medical studies in russian. People here need help too sometimes, even if the pay sucks.

Now about ambulances.
In Russia, the ambulances belong to private companies. Which means that, while they have flashy lights, they do not have sirens or precedence at railroad crossings, traffic lights, or basically anywhere. And yet the Assistant Deputy Undersecretary to the Adjunct Vice Sub-Minister gets this nifty little blue flashy bubble-light for the top of his car that basically gives him the right to do whatever the hell he wants on the road. It's part of the reason so many road accidents, particularly outside of the cities in Russia, do not end well. Everywhere's got its totally-wrongness, this is one for here. Drive carefully here.

11/18 14:03, Pushkin time

I last wrote on the evening of the 16th (a Thursday, if my calculations are correct) so it hasn't been so very long since I was last here, but still I start today with a sense that I've fallen way below par, quantity, frequency, and quality-wise. The next week should see more of a return to relative normalcy. It certainly couldn't suck as bad as this last one has. Anyway, I guess I should count myself lucky to be even doing this much. As follows:

The ADSL package we purchased was the 'basic' that met our broad-scope needs (adequate speed, low cost, no charge for traffic). We learned pretty quickly, however, that the basic plan came with a disadvantage that became more and more severe the more we tried to use our computers like Russians do. We were locked into a single IP address, and absolutely unable to hop-route through others to accomplish such things as:

- Use Outlook (or any other desktop-resident program) to get our emails
- Get good streaming radio (I'm dying for a little bit of my stuff about now)
or most importantly
- Route our traffic through stepping-stone paths of cascading proxy servers to access things that are restricted (via querying the IP address of the requester) to users from particular countries by forcing the queries to select from a list of artifical virtual IP addresses. It's kindergarten-level here, but we've been helpless.

Until, on Thursday night after typing my post, I looked at the website of our ADSL guys and found what seemed to be the path out. For only a couple extra bucks a month! So I started clicking on buttons, trusting my 80% comprehension to serve me well enough to forego the use of a dictionary. All done! We figured, Friday A would check it out and let me know how great the new powers were.

But I got up early Friday morning -- the Virus-of-Doom just about faded from my system -- and went to check myself. Umm.

Access Denied

Just to get on in the first place. I had to run, but I briefly explained to A that I appeared to have broken something and that I would get on it at work right away. Z was still crummy, so we brought him to his doctor at school, got him his meds, and A got another day with a kid too sick to do anything more strenuous than being annoying. Once I got to work, I went back through what I had done th night before, this time with a dictionary to check up on the words I had skimmed or assumed over. Turns out, the missing 20% was the trick this time. I figured from context that the sentence said, "To modify your account, confirm here". In fact, it said, "To suspend your account, confirm here". Hardy har har. I explained it to one of the guys at work who, after laughing until his eyes teared up and asking me if, as a kid I used to push buttons whose purpose I didn't know and stick forks in electrical outlets (yes and yes), got me the number for tech support, and away I went. For tech support, it was a twenty-second operation and we were back in business. I suppose that is a bright side.. I interacted with phone tech support all by myself in Russian without screwing anything up -- although the call was necessitated by my screwing things up due to inadequate skills; so maybe call it a wash.

Today we got the place cleaned, a babysitter is coming over in another hour, and A and I are off to have a social dinner. And tomorrow? The city is always pretty empty if you can get in fairly early on a Sunday...

11/16 19:47, Pushkin time

Man oh man. Looking back at that last post... But what has been written upon the Inter Nets shall not be removed. Nonetheless, lemme explain.

Or at least, lemme sum up.

Monday morning was not a good day for A, and from all appearances, the beginning of a string of not-so-great days for me. By Tuesday morning, once I got myself to work, the thing had worked itself into a fever of some sort -- the intermittent shivery and sweaty pulses were a dead giveaway. By lunchtime, I couldn't manage to eat hardly anything, and by the time I got home (I even left about a half-hour early; by that time my head was getting decidedly swimmy and I was concerned about driving in the dark if it got much worse) I was in no shape for anything but straight to bed. A checked my forehead and winced -- the temperature was that high. She was sick with a cold of some sort but there was no competition over who was truly messed-up.
The real fun started Wednesday. Z was starting to get the coughs, and I literally couldn't move my legs at more than a slow drag, and even laying down was getting the unbalanced inner ear wooziness. And yet, that afternoon two guys from the South African headquarters of a company with which we are doing important business were coming primarily to meet with me. So I called in and told the guys that I would be staying home and would meet the two africans at lunch (when they were going to be showing up. But, come noon (lunch was going to be a relatively early 2:20 PM), when A checked my temperature it came up just a hair over 40 degrees Celcius. That's more than 104F. From there it went up slightly, then back down, but that's about where I stayed for most of the entire Wednesday. Needless to say, seeing the temp, A announced that I wasn't going anywhere. So I called one of the И's and explained the situation and apologied and promised to be in the next day (one of these guys was leaving that next afternoon). A (far from 100% herself) pushed pills and fluids on me -- and the occasional chilly shower when the temperature got her worried enough. But thankfully, the bulk of the fever broke sometime at 11PM Wednesday night, I was able to eat and drink, and was up from maybe 20% operational to as much as 75% -- a significant difference.
So today I made good on my word and made it to work. The african guys are a bit funny in the way things surprise them here. I got one of the guys in the parts warehouse (who has a bit of a medical background) to write me out what passes for a prescription here for an antibiotic to take care of the ear infection I seemed to have picked up during it all. The africans were shocked. "But you could have just written that yourself!?!". I, "Yep. We will, too, once we know our way around the easy stuff a bit better. For stuff we don't know, we'd want to have someone with a bit more experience do it." Knowing what these guys already do about Russia -- having been here a few times already -- and living in Africa, how is that kind of penny-ante sutff surprising to them?
Anyway, today since I was significantly better, and A and Z no better, it was time to swap around and me to do the caretaking. They're both still out-of-sorts at the end of today. A figures hers is working itself out, but for Z... I told his teacher that if he's still crummy tomorrow, I'll bring him for his doctor to check out. The funny thing? We all (by the symptoms, at least) have totally different diseases. Here's hoping we don't pass them around; we've got babysitting and Chinese food on the line for Saturday.

So, to further sum up, the combination of all the factors I listed in the past one, combined with an onrushing head-and-chest cold, conspired to put A in a far above normal state of agitation. And my onrushing whatever-the-hell-it-was put me in a state to a) argue and then b) get really, really, really gloomed about it.

Sorry if I freaked anyone out. We're good (when moderately healthy in at least quorum).

11/14 09:52, Pushkin time

Not so good yesterday.

Not very long after arrival, A began to exhibit symptoms of the terror that we were assured would soon follow our actualling making this move. Compounded on top of that in fairly short order was the fact that the English-language medical program that was a big part of A's enthusiasm was cancelled effective this academic year (for very reasonable cause -- students cannot very effectively interact with patients with whom they cannot speak). On top of that, we discover that A is pregnant with all the emotional seesawing that accompanied our first two kids. And this all comes at the onset of winter, as we are getting only a few hours of light a day.
I've been trying to keep her going through her rough patches -- which for a time seemed to be decreasing in frequency and intensity -- but it's not working now. Shes having a hard time, looks around and sees me and the kids doing [fairly] well, and takes that even harder. The house in Portland didn't sell for what we were hoping (though the fact that it sold at all is a great relief), so the hunt for a place around here is a bit tougher. I was able to find someone yesterday to do babysitting for us, but the need to look and the fact that everyone around here uses family for that kind of thing just made her feel even more alone.
And the only people she listens to back in Portland are the ones who didn't want her leaving town at all under any circumstances.

So yesterday evening into this morning, I am working on putting together a means for us to get our stuff anв ourselves back to the US. It's not cheap, but it looks like we'd still have a decent chunk of money from the sale of the house left over after getting everything back to get started again. As for what we'll do back there? I have no idea.

This is the last thing -- except one -- that I want to be doing.

I'm no inclined to whine (in print at least), so I'll leave it at that. I'll hope and try to make this just a particularly bad low spot, but I'm sure not feeling good about the chances.

...ending on a brighter spot, Z found out that his friend Vanya (short for Ivan) has the last name Gorbachev -- though he insists it is said 'gorbachooff'. Not sure how common that last name is, but it was cute to have him argue for his pronunciation. G is starting to make short sentences now, too.


..

11/13 10:51, Pushkin time

So the Chinese food thing didn't come off. In the end, we were able to find a couple of people who were willing in principle to keep an eye on the boys, but who by the time we got to them already had other plans. So, Е and I have put dinner off for another week.

The question arose, why couldn't the boys simply come along? Dinner out here is not quite the same as back in the US. At minimum it represents an hour and a half's worth of time; a more 'sociable' one could easily run three hours. One person at the office had the best explanation: it's cold outside, and once you've settled into a nice warm place with your friends, who wants to go back out into that stuff before they absolutely have to? Nevertheless, though the boys are good for relatively brief dinners, I am certain that more than an hour would strain their patience to the point that they strat making a sport of straining the patience of everyone around them. And that wouldn't be much fun.

So this weekend, instead, we went Sunday all together down to Novgorod (Velikiy, the one A and I had already seen). Mostly, to buy presents, but we had also been telling Я about the old castle and he wanted to check it out for himself. The drive down was pleasant; a day and a half of no snow, and dry windy weather had sublimated all the roads clear of ice, but traffic was still pretty much nonexistent. I did get nabbed by the cops in the little town of Ryabovo (Рябово - but I'm betting it's not big enough to show up on your maps) for going 83 in a 60 zone. Five minutes and a hundred rubles lighter, we were back on our way. These two cops had a great system set up. One was on the road radar-gunning and flagging people down, and the other was in the car checking paperwork and collecting money. A bit of a line started up after me, in fact, since I took a bit longer than I suppose is normal to find the bill in my wallet.

Nonetheless, Novgorod under snow is pretty much like without snow. Z was impressed by the arrow-slots up on the battlements of the fortress-wall. G was impressed by the gigantic bells, and all of us stood for a while on the fortress side fo the Volkhov River bridge watching the ice floes smash by. We've none of us ever seen anything like it -- a major river in the process of freezing over. The boys were of course most amused by the birds landing on a large floe and rafting down to the other side of the bridge on it before flying back to the upstream and starting over again. Neat.

11/10 12:35, Pushkin time

Yesterday A went all by herself to get her license back from the ГИБДД. And succeeded even in following what turned out to be a multi-step process (as explained to her by the cops once she got through the line) to wrap things up. Now all that is left is to get the stamped paperwork to the car rental place so they can gt the approval from their insurance to repair, and the whole issue is settled. Yay.

And now, we've run into my first major difficulty.

Е -- having been told that A was a fiend for Chinese food these days -- invited she and I to dinner on Saturday night. We'd like to have somewhere to deposit the kids for an evening, but are coming up dry. There's not a whole lot of options for babysitting around here, since most everyone utilizes granparents for that. In fact, I asked И В what someone would do with his kids in our situation if he didn't have parents, and he answered, 'get married to a girl who does.' Ha ha; almost as funny as his second idea, to take the kids over to a neighbor's door, ring the buzzer, and run off leaving them there.
This situation was bound to arise, and I'm not sure how A and I overlooked it in our pre-move planning and strategizing. Z and G know other kids okay, but we don't know any of their parents yet. We'll have to move solving that onto a front-burner pretty immediately, though it probably won't come in time to make dinner tomorrow. Grrr..

11/8 10:00, Pushkin time

It warmed up enough yesterday evening into today that the bulk of the snow is gone. Back in Portland, this would be it for the winter; the kids still don't fully appreciate the difference over here yet. The dark is something we've gotten fairly used to, now that it's been a couple weeks since we've had any kind of sunup time where we weren't workig, schooling, or so forth. There's still plenty during the weekends, and the dark doesn't stop the neighborhood kids from playing (the play areas are well-lit, after all...) We absolutely are going to need black-out curtains for the white nights; coming out of this, the kids are not going to sleep at all then without them.

Yesterday, I went to the Sberbank to pay the fine on A's accident. Simple enough -- now that I know what to look for. Go to the 'payments' section, find the table with the forms on it; check the reference sheets that are posted all around the table to figure out which form you need; get the form and fill it out, consulting the sample filled-out forms to make sure that you get all your numbers right and all the information in the right place; get in line (except, ha ha, there is no line at the Sberbank near our place!) and give the form to the nice lady behind the counter; wait while she stamps it and makes other mysterious notations on it; give her the money, plus the 3% that the police charge on top of their assessed fines; take your receipt. Simple as that. And I can now further update my 'money surrendered' tally to include the 103r (~$3.86) fine that wraps up our fiscal responsibilities from A's smashing up a rental car and another guy's car by not looking carefully enough both ways when crossing a main road. Today or tomorrow she gets to bring the receipt and accompanying paperwork back to the police station and trade it in for her driver's licence. I hope she gets to keep the receipt they gave her when they took the license away; that ranks up there with my bill for medical services in Indonesia as a unique souvenir. I'm actualy a bit envious of her for getting it. All I got in Australia was a 'warning'...

A also made cookies this weekend (a sign that's she's either stressed). As is her custom, she baked a mega-batch and only ate one or two herself. So she took a bag with her to her Russian class, and I took a gallon-sized freezer bag stuffed full of them to work. So the second half of yesterday, and all day today so far, I was getting compliments to relay back to her. The cookies were made without baking powder, so they were a bit on the dense side, and a tiny bit on the sweet side to the american palate; for Russians, they were crazy-sweet (in fact, two people said they were 'too sweet'), but that didn't stop anyone. I'm hoping the relayed compliments make her feel a bit better.

11/6 21:24, Pushkin time

Today was the day that we (with the exception of A, who's language school was in full swing) got to exercise our holiday-off. So of course, we went to play in the snow -- after waiting in a much smaller line to get the tires on A's car changed to studs. The tire guys recognized Z, of course, and were most impressed by his height-for-age, and by the fact that he could read the random posters they pointed him to. Comprehension is a bit outside his grasp (preschool vocabulary and auto-mechanic vocabulary have only the smallest bit of overlap), but his pronunciation is spot-on.

The off to the snow. We started out at the Aleksandrov park.



Snow and cold, but Z and G had a blast racing through the drifts and sliding on the frozen puddles. The ponds and moat seemed almost safe to walk on -- the several footprints in the snow going across the moat tended to support that -- but I figured we'll give it a couple more days' freezing time before trying it out ourselves. Ultimately, we landed at the hill (called 'Parnas') inside the moated-portion of the park. Z managed to climb it on his own; G and I struggled a bit more with the slipperiness. But the payoff was a satisfyingly-long butt-slide down a well-slicked-up sledding run.

Minus five is cold enough that, even if you do something like that in jeans, you don't get wet.

Then from there, we grabbed lunch and went off to the park near A's school. There is a statue on whose pedestal the paint has rubbed out enough that you can't read the name from a drive-by. And I had promised Z that we would go to find out who it was the first opportunity we had. Turns out, the statue is of Ernst Th?lmann, a German communist.Z needed no prompting to figure out what that guy deserved (though the snow doesn't really pack very satisfyingly right now).

And thus our day off.

One more piece of recollection comes to me. On Saturday we all stopped off at the market right near our place for some minor supplies. Right on the front-door side of the cashiers was a sample booth set up for traffic coming and going. The samples? The dozen or so different flavors of a particular brand of vodka.

They were giving out sample shots to any takers. Several shots to those who wanted to try the whole line. I watched (okay, 'joined'; sheesh...) a guy with armloads of groceries -- clearly heading out to the parking lot -- sample at least eight different flavors.

What a country.

11/4 18:23, Pushkin time

Morning we drove again into the city, this time to get the sets of snow tires our cars will need for the winter. That done, we set off looking (yet again) for the voltage transformer. The store that we are fairly certain carries them is closed today (it's a holiday; originally Revolution Day to celebrate the October Revolution, now 'People's Unity Day' or something like it). So, back to find a shop to mount the tires.

And with that, no luck at all. Every tire mounting place in town -- and there are a lot of them -- is full with waiting lines better than two hours long. We even found a place that operates for 24 hours a day, but they are appointment-only, and are booked up (day and night) until next weekend. Freaking insane.

Yesterday A and I got our antifreeze densities tested to see where we stand for that whole issue. Somehow, we both have coolant already from the States which can be counted on not to freeze and destroy our radiators down to minus 20C. Of course, this means we will need to have it changed out for cold-weather antifreeze before winter really sets in, but that at least there isn't a whole huge rush (or a risk that we had already allowed our cars to get busted).

Z and G are still excited by snow and ice. Z is right now out playing with the other kids in our buildings on the snow-crusted playground in our courtyard. People are starting to advise us to start him learning to ice skate, since he's at just the right age (as if I knew how to skate...). G continues to get more and more words, and has some very small sentences; several of them now dealing with ice and snow and cold and cold-weather gear. I suppose everyone starts with a relatively specialized vocabulary...

11/3 17:50, Pushkin time

Always a good day. Pay in Russia is monthly. For us this is on the 5th, but since that falls on a Sunday this month, we get ours today. Since mine is denominated in dollars, it's never exactly the same from time to time when I get my pile of rubles (a thirty-times multiplier makes for big-seeming numbers; that's for sure). But an envelope stuffed with bills does give a good feeling.

Yesterday, A and I went to the ГИБДД (police; I don't know what the letters stand for) to get the situatio of her accident wrapped up. The line was only a couple people long, and we made it in and out of the cabinet in a matter of less than two hours. They gave us another piece of paper (a carbon of the official police report, it looks like) that we got stamped to give to the rental car place. Insurance companies here insist on getting such police reports before they will authorize repair work. The rental guy has been calling me ever more frequently wondering when we're going to pass along the paper so he can get his car fixed. We got that stamped, and got instructions from teh police to pay A's fine (100r) at a Sberbank branch and bring back the receipt to get her licence back.

And that's it. Three-fifty (US dollars, about) and the accident as good as never happened. It cost me that much for not using my turn signal. Some people have all the luck...

11/2 11:24, Pushkin time

Now that I think of it, the guys here did say that the cold would set in in November. Yesterday was the last warm day -- it made it up to 5C for long enough to melt the snow into muck, and then fell to zero and below this morning.

Yesterday, I got to translate at the doctor for A again, doing only marginally better than the last time, but all went okay. Then after I took her home, on the way into work, I got sticked by the DPC that have taken up residence onthe south side of the Egyptian Gate roundabout. Apparently, even though the inside lane doesn't continue straight, you have to signal when you are following it to the left. But I got my revenge. heh heh.

I stopped the car, turned it off, got out and gave the DPS guy a big friendly, English-only (very fast), 'Hi there! What can I do for you? Did I do something wrong? Okay, i'll get into youк car; it sure is getting chilly out!'. Once in the car, and making absolutely certain to sprinkle my mostly-English with only the very occasional Russian word, all either declined or conjugated wholly incorrectly, I proceded to get the ВЗЫ guy to explain thoroughly and in great detail exactly what I had done wrong. This took the better part of fifteen minues and two pages of paper worth of sketches; periodically during that time his partner kept coming to the car window to tell him to hurry it up so they could get to pulling the next guy over -- I barely restrained a snicker at that (I can't understand what they're saying, after all...). Then we spent the better part of the next ten minutes with my asking 'what-if' questions about different intersection configurations and different traffic conditions, all for the sake of being able to better understand and do it right in the future.
By this point, the guy was clearly irritated enough at me that he read carefully through every page of all my car, passport, visa, and registered-address documentation, resumably looking for something more to swing at me than a 'failed to use turn signal'. Finding nothing, he turns to me and says, "So, what are we going to do with you?" In Russian, I responded [more or less], "Me be understanding on friend from, fines maybe forty, maybe ones hundred ruble." He says, "hundred". I say, "Me papers", and hold out my hand. He gives them all back to me, and I make a big production out of getting them all back in order and packaged back together an in their proper places ("No goodness, me losing"). Then I look through all my pockets very thoroughly, ending at the one that has my money. All I had was two 500-ruble notes, so I put one of them on the center console. He moves to put his wallet on top of it, and I say, "Mine fours hundred backwards?". He looks at me with an 'oh-for-christs-sake!' look, opens his wallet, and gives me four hundreds. And I get out and go along on my way.

Telling the story at work, the delaying tactics were appreciated, but the fact that I got a DPS guy to make change got everyone rolling. Good times. I can now also update my 'total money surendered' tally (new feature to the right side of the page!).

And now, looking out the window, I see that the snow has started to fall again.