Сентябрь 22, 2007
Stop by
9/22 13:38, Pushkin time
Just by way of explanation: A's parents came into town last Sunday night and will be here visiting until next weekend. This past week was mass-busy for me because, in addition to the impending opening of the factory, the beginning of wood construction at our house, the visitors, and the other assorted normal things, I had to expend effort to cause things to run well in my absence over the coming week (which I am taking off). So no time for posting.
It is possible that I will find time during the course of this week to write a bit here and there. Possible, but honestly, not likely. Best simply to figure that I'll be next able to put stuff down in a week's time.
Just by way of explanation: A's parents came into town last Sunday night and will be here visiting until next weekend. This past week was mass-busy for me because, in addition to the impending opening of the factory, the beginning of wood construction at our house, the visitors, and the other assorted normal things, I had to expend effort to cause things to run well in my absence over the coming week (which I am taking off). So no time for posting.
It is possible that I will find time during the course of this week to write a bit here and there. Possible, but honestly, not likely. Best simply to figure that I'll be next able to put stuff down in a week's time.
Сентябрь 11, 2007
Work
9/11 16:22, Pushkin time
At long last I find a couple minutes of spare time.
Let's try to pick up where we left off.
That next day, A and I went over to the customs office on the east side of the city to get things at least started for re-papering our cars. Only to find out that that particular office no longer did the temporary-import registration, and that we needed to go to the office on Vasilieyskiy Island -- more or less the east side of the dead-center of the city, as this was the only place doing those anymore. So.. cutting through Petersburg we went (A has by now attained a high degree of proficiency navigating the streets of downtown Peter... thank god...). We made surprisingly good time and arrived at the sea terminal customs office only about ninety minutes after leaving the first place. And when I got there, they informed me that as for the Caravan they were more than willing to have me signed-off as having showed up on time so I wouldn't get fined for taking it in to register a bit later on. But as for the Ford, we needed to take it out of the country and re-import it. And to make matters more interesting, we had sort of overshot the term of its registration by a couple weeks (A was in the US at the time). And so we were looking at some likely hassles crossing out. But okay; at least we knew what needed to get done.
So right away the next day I got the head of the service shop attached to the office to write up a paper stating that the Ford had been unusable for a month-long period due to massive engine failure. Written up to indicate that it had left the shop on this last Friday. And we started making plans to drive to Estonia -- since I had been told that the border was closer and that the lines for light automobiles were not so bad -- the previous horror stories passed to me having been all concerning heavy trucks.
The week passed; Z went to school, started getting homework, and has so far shown a clear preference for his sweater over his suitcoat. G fell right back into good times with his friends at the preschool, A slowly got back into the time zone, and L kept right on doing his four-month-old things. Friday late, discussing the exact mechanics of the Narva/Ivangorod crossing, the ever-helpful А Ш pointed out that the reason teh lines looked so small for the Narva border crossing was because cars were not allowed to line up inside city limits; instead you went to the place, put your name on a list, and waited on the outskirts of town until your turn was up. And the parking lots outside of town were packed.
So... okay... Finland it would be. А Ш's advice was to skip the Torfyanovka crossing that the boys and I used on the way to and from Helsinki and to cut north from Vyborg to the much closer -- and not-used-for-truck-traffic -- crossing to Lappeenranta. That crossing is more touristed, but in general, all agreed, if you could make it there relatively early, you'd have no problem getting through; and the return trip on a Saturday would be traffic-free.
Thus decided, we got up somewhat early on Saturday morning, piled everyone and some stuff into the Escort, and drove north. After a slight mishap (wherein we drove a couple miles past the unmarked Lappeenranta turnoff on the ring around Vyborg and had to backtrack a bit) we made it to the line at the crossing (Brusnichnoye-2/Nuijamaa, technically speaking). And what a line it was. Already there were 179 people in front of us -- I had plenty of time to count -- and the Russian customs/passport guys were only taking groups of ten. With fairly decent delays between groups. We sat for something like two hours -- aсегфддн made it into sight of the front of the line -- before a helpful Russian couple driving past spotted A holding L and pulled over to let her know that "people with infants less than a year and a half old were 'without lines'". Skipping around the last of the people, I mentioned to A how very important that word, 'безочереды', is. There is literally not a single instance of its use that is not a good thing. So we turned what could have been a three-hour wait into closer to a 150-minute wait. But at least we know for next time.
So, finally getting to the crossing itself, right away we ran into the Customs guys -- and the fact that, technically, we had broken the law in not having gotten the Escort out of the country by the end of the temporary import permit. Since that car is in A's name on all the Russian paperwork, she needed to be around to start off, but I fairly quickly managed to get her freed up to hang out with the kids while I and the customs guy went off to a side building to work things out. Twenty minutes and a handful (not literally, unless referring to the equivalent in small-denomination coins) of rubles later, we were going through the passport control side an don our way into Finland. On that count, the passport folks are technically supposed to take both the migration card that gets filled out coming into Russia, and also the scrap of paper that constitutes one's alien-registration. But our registrations are good until February-March; we had just gotten them; and they cost like 300 rubles, each to get. So fortunately, I was able to nice-talk the passport control girl into taking some really old registrations that had somehow not gotten collected in lieu of our useful ones. And a smile sent us on our way out of Russia.
And once there we figured, why not at least check out the town? Which was good for all of an hour -- the bulk of which was spent looking for a toilet that wasn't regulated by a Euro-coin-munching robotic device and finally settling on the one at the McDonalds we had passed coming into town. And then we turned around and headed back.
The Finland side of the border crossing is completely unremarkable. If I never mention it again, please understand why.
Coming back into Russia, as advertised, there was basically no line at all. We got to the passport/customs points, and A and I dashed in to get the car taken care of. And then.
I give A's passport, the customs form, and the Escort's title to a very brusque (and not-particularly-fond-of-kids) customs guy. While I am digging around for the insurance papers, he says to me, "don't bother, I'm not going to register this car."
In Russian, there are ways to construct negatives to make them softer -- more 'preference' -- or concrete. This guy's was the latter sort. "Машину оформить не буду."
It caught me enough by shock that I didn't really do anything useful for a couple beats, which he took as an opportunity to point out to me that, stamped on the title were the words 'export' and 'Houston, TX'. I'm not sure what difference that makes -- though perhaps since we're looking for a 'temporary import' there needs to be indication that the car is permanently registered somewhere -- and anyway, you would think the first we would have heard of that would have been a year ago when we did this all for the first time. I started to say that it didn't make sense, since we had just had like five hours ago a temporary import registration on that very same car, and the guy cuts me off with the same sort of impregnable construction, "I don't need а story; I'm not going to register it" [Не нужна рассказа, оформить не буду.]
So again I gape-mouthed babble a bit (by now, perhaps A had figured out something was amiss; I really don't know what was going on around at the time) and the customs guy tells me to come with him to talk to the boss. So I follow, telling A on the way that the guy doesn't want to let our car in. She and the boys follow.
The customs guy disappeared into the office, and for a good five minutes A and I started brainstorming strategies for 'what the hell to do next'. We were debating whether to turn around and try crossing at the Torfyanovka/Valimaa right away or to spend the night in Finland and start trying again the next day when the customs guy comes out of the boss office and, with no explanation (not that one was desperately needed, granted) says, alright let me get your car registered for you. And a matter of a few minutes later we were back into the country and on our way home.
Needless to say, Sunday was spent doing as close to nothing at all as possible. We did manage to swing by Pokrovka to check things out. I know A took pictures of the boys bothering the crew of Uzbek/Tajik bricklayers, who by today have finished the brick portion of the house. As regards the next steps, this week I am aiming to get arranged for drilling the well and installing the septic. Also, at the end of the week I should be ordering (still not confirmed whether with or without deposit) the lumber for the house. We are also in the final stages of getting the various permits in order and in getting the electricity set up. We need to wait on actual building until the well and septic are done, but it still seems a safe bet to say that by November we may have a fully-built frame. Pretty freaking cool.
On the work side, we're coming into the mad flurry of activity surrounding getting stuff ready for the beginning of factory operations. I'm turning out something like a tool or fixture worth of drawings a day plus [trying to] coordinate with the people in Caxias, Brazil and Illinois who are sending us our parts and with the various Russian structural steel, wheel and bearing, furniture, warehouse equipment, and fluid management equipment suppliers to make sure that everything comes together in a way more or less resembling the way we want it to. Thank god I'm not dealing with the actual building construction or utilities folks, and that my compadre, П К, is taking care of keeping the welders, mechanics, and gastarbeiter day-laborer crews moving -- division of labor. At the moment, it looks -- due to a delay on the production line of the Mexican company that is supplying us some chassis beams -- like we'll be putting our first truck on the line in the second week of November. Very exciting.
As for things, tonight Z gets to spend the night with a friend, since A and I are getting up sufficiently early to be at the Vasilievskiy Island sea customs terminal by 8:45 in the morning to get our cars taken care of. Then, depending on how it works out, I may be going over to a wood-frame house factory (they sell pre-assembled walls and the like for slap-together assembly on-site) to see it they're interested in maybe hooking us up. If not, as I mentioned, there's the offer we already have from one guy, the other guy (whose workers we will almost certainly be using -- I am so far very satisfied with the crews he's had out for us) who has indicated a quote in the next couple of days, and anything else that comes up.
Oh yeah, and A's parents are coming into town this Sunday for a two-week visit.
At long last I find a couple minutes of spare time.
Let's try to pick up where we left off.
That next day, A and I went over to the customs office on the east side of the city to get things at least started for re-papering our cars. Only to find out that that particular office no longer did the temporary-import registration, and that we needed to go to the office on Vasilieyskiy Island -- more or less the east side of the dead-center of the city, as this was the only place doing those anymore. So.. cutting through Petersburg we went (A has by now attained a high degree of proficiency navigating the streets of downtown Peter... thank god...). We made surprisingly good time and arrived at the sea terminal customs office only about ninety minutes after leaving the first place. And when I got there, they informed me that as for the Caravan they were more than willing to have me signed-off as having showed up on time so I wouldn't get fined for taking it in to register a bit later on. But as for the Ford, we needed to take it out of the country and re-import it. And to make matters more interesting, we had sort of overshot the term of its registration by a couple weeks (A was in the US at the time). And so we were looking at some likely hassles crossing out. But okay; at least we knew what needed to get done.
So right away the next day I got the head of the service shop attached to the office to write up a paper stating that the Ford had been unusable for a month-long period due to massive engine failure. Written up to indicate that it had left the shop on this last Friday. And we started making plans to drive to Estonia -- since I had been told that the border was closer and that the lines for light automobiles were not so bad -- the previous horror stories passed to me having been all concerning heavy trucks.
The week passed; Z went to school, started getting homework, and has so far shown a clear preference for his sweater over his suitcoat. G fell right back into good times with his friends at the preschool, A slowly got back into the time zone, and L kept right on doing his four-month-old things. Friday late, discussing the exact mechanics of the Narva/Ivangorod crossing, the ever-helpful А Ш pointed out that the reason teh lines looked so small for the Narva border crossing was because cars were not allowed to line up inside city limits; instead you went to the place, put your name on a list, and waited on the outskirts of town until your turn was up. And the parking lots outside of town were packed.
So... okay... Finland it would be. А Ш's advice was to skip the Torfyanovka crossing that the boys and I used on the way to and from Helsinki and to cut north from Vyborg to the much closer -- and not-used-for-truck-traffic -- crossing to Lappeenranta. That crossing is more touristed, but in general, all agreed, if you could make it there relatively early, you'd have no problem getting through; and the return trip on a Saturday would be traffic-free.
Thus decided, we got up somewhat early on Saturday morning, piled everyone and some stuff into the Escort, and drove north. After a slight mishap (wherein we drove a couple miles past the unmarked Lappeenranta turnoff on the ring around Vyborg and had to backtrack a bit) we made it to the line at the crossing (Brusnichnoye-2/Nuijamaa, technically speaking). And what a line it was. Already there were 179 people in front of us -- I had plenty of time to count -- and the Russian customs/passport guys were only taking groups of ten. With fairly decent delays between groups. We sat for something like two hours -- aсегфддн made it into sight of the front of the line -- before a helpful Russian couple driving past spotted A holding L and pulled over to let her know that "people with infants less than a year and a half old were 'without lines'". Skipping around the last of the people, I mentioned to A how very important that word, 'безочереды', is. There is literally not a single instance of its use that is not a good thing. So we turned what could have been a three-hour wait into closer to a 150-minute wait. But at least we know for next time.
So, finally getting to the crossing itself, right away we ran into the Customs guys -- and the fact that, technically, we had broken the law in not having gotten the Escort out of the country by the end of the temporary import permit. Since that car is in A's name on all the Russian paperwork, she needed to be around to start off, but I fairly quickly managed to get her freed up to hang out with the kids while I and the customs guy went off to a side building to work things out. Twenty minutes and a handful (not literally, unless referring to the equivalent in small-denomination coins) of rubles later, we were going through the passport control side an don our way into Finland. On that count, the passport folks are technically supposed to take both the migration card that gets filled out coming into Russia, and also the scrap of paper that constitutes one's alien-registration. But our registrations are good until February-March; we had just gotten them; and they cost like 300 rubles, each to get. So fortunately, I was able to nice-talk the passport control girl into taking some really old registrations that had somehow not gotten collected in lieu of our useful ones. And a smile sent us on our way out of Russia.
And once there we figured, why not at least check out the town? Which was good for all of an hour -- the bulk of which was spent looking for a toilet that wasn't regulated by a Euro-coin-munching robotic device and finally settling on the one at the McDonalds we had passed coming into town. And then we turned around and headed back.
The Finland side of the border crossing is completely unremarkable. If I never mention it again, please understand why.
Coming back into Russia, as advertised, there was basically no line at all. We got to the passport/customs points, and A and I dashed in to get the car taken care of. And then.
I give A's passport, the customs form, and the Escort's title to a very brusque (and not-particularly-fond-of-kids) customs guy. While I am digging around for the insurance papers, he says to me, "don't bother, I'm not going to register this car."
In Russian, there are ways to construct negatives to make them softer -- more 'preference' -- or concrete. This guy's was the latter sort. "Машину оформить не буду."
It caught me enough by shock that I didn't really do anything useful for a couple beats, which he took as an opportunity to point out to me that, stamped on the title were the words 'export' and 'Houston, TX'. I'm not sure what difference that makes -- though perhaps since we're looking for a 'temporary import' there needs to be indication that the car is permanently registered somewhere -- and anyway, you would think the first we would have heard of that would have been a year ago when we did this all for the first time. I started to say that it didn't make sense, since we had just had like five hours ago a temporary import registration on that very same car, and the guy cuts me off with the same sort of impregnable construction, "I don't need а story; I'm not going to register it" [Не нужна рассказа, оформить не буду.]
So again I gape-mouthed babble a bit (by now, perhaps A had figured out something was amiss; I really don't know what was going on around at the time) and the customs guy tells me to come with him to talk to the boss. So I follow, telling A on the way that the guy doesn't want to let our car in. She and the boys follow.
The customs guy disappeared into the office, and for a good five minutes A and I started brainstorming strategies for 'what the hell to do next'. We were debating whether to turn around and try crossing at the Torfyanovka/Valimaa right away or to spend the night in Finland and start trying again the next day when the customs guy comes out of the boss office and, with no explanation (not that one was desperately needed, granted) says, alright let me get your car registered for you. And a matter of a few minutes later we were back into the country and on our way home.
Needless to say, Sunday was spent doing as close to nothing at all as possible. We did manage to swing by Pokrovka to check things out. I know A took pictures of the boys bothering the crew of Uzbek/Tajik bricklayers, who by today have finished the brick portion of the house. As regards the next steps, this week I am aiming to get arranged for drilling the well and installing the septic. Also, at the end of the week I should be ordering (still not confirmed whether with or without deposit) the lumber for the house. We are also in the final stages of getting the various permits in order and in getting the electricity set up. We need to wait on actual building until the well and septic are done, but it still seems a safe bet to say that by November we may have a fully-built frame. Pretty freaking cool.
On the work side, we're coming into the mad flurry of activity surrounding getting stuff ready for the beginning of factory operations. I'm turning out something like a tool or fixture worth of drawings a day plus [trying to] coordinate with the people in Caxias, Brazil and Illinois who are sending us our parts and with the various Russian structural steel, wheel and bearing, furniture, warehouse equipment, and fluid management equipment suppliers to make sure that everything comes together in a way more or less resembling the way we want it to. Thank god I'm not dealing with the actual building construction or utilities folks, and that my compadre, П К, is taking care of keeping the welders, mechanics, and gastarbeiter day-laborer crews moving -- division of labor. At the moment, it looks -- due to a delay on the production line of the Mexican company that is supplying us some chassis beams -- like we'll be putting our first truck on the line in the second week of November. Very exciting.
As for things, tonight Z gets to spend the night with a friend, since A and I are getting up sufficiently early to be at the Vasilievskiy Island sea customs terminal by 8:45 in the morning to get our cars taken care of. Then, depending on how it works out, I may be going over to a wood-frame house factory (they sell pre-assembled walls and the like for slap-together assembly on-site) to see it they're interested in maybe hooking us up. If not, as I mentioned, there's the offer we already have from one guy, the other guy (whose workers we will almost certainly be using -- I am so far very satisfied with the crews he's had out for us) who has indicated a quote in the next couple of days, and anything else that comes up.
Oh yeah, and A's parents are coming into town this Sunday for a two-week visit.
Сентябрь 02, 2007
School
9/2 21:10, Pushkin time
As expected, it was a very busy week. The two gents took up the bulk of my time not otherwise occupied with Z and G; then A came home on Thursday afternoon; and the whole weekend has been pretty crazy.
Let's look at that last one.
Friday, A took Z to his school for the pre-first-day med checkup (kids' doctors in Russia are associated with their schools). Just a quick in-and-out, though she did get a chance to meet up with a friend of hers whose daughter is in Z's class.
That afternoon, I swung by Pokrovskaya to confirm that the bricks and everything were ready to go as had been promised, and to pick up some meat from our neighbor. He had called earlier the week, indicating his plan to slaughter one of his pigs and wondering if we would be interested in any of it. So when I went into his place to pick it up, I really shouldn't have been surprised to see a pig that had been beheaded, gutted, and more or less simply cut in half lengthwise. He tried to get me to take an entire half of the damn pig (call it eighty pounds of meat, bone, and skin) but I ended up carting off only the right side of the ribcage and a front leg. For some reason, I was expecting it to have been somewhat more butchered, but what the heck... I'd helped butcher a couple of deer, and A grew up in a hunting family; how hard could it be?
A was somewhat less than delighted when I got the two massive pig hunks home.
Then Saturday, the first of September, was the first day of school. Since A was around to take Z in and pick him up, I had arranged to meet with the guy about the lumber at 9 in the morning. G and I showed up at the lot a couple minutes early to find that the brickwork had already been started.
In the wrong place!!!
We're raising up the non-garage half of the house 1.3 meters on bricks. And the workers had gotten about two layers done on the corners of the garage. I called the crew chief to scream at him; he rushed out and screamed at his guys that he had told them three times where to put the bricks and that if they couldn't get their heads out of their asses and do things right he would get his other crew to work -- and that, by the way, don't expect to get paid for the last day's work or for the half-day they were going to spend taking down what they had put up.
Good man.
Anyway, we waited on the lumber guy for about twenty minutes and were on the verge of leaving when my phone rang -- A. From what I could gather, the first day of school had turned out to be more involved than I had been led to expect. And she really needed me to get over to the school right away. Then as I was getting into the car to head back to Pushkin the phone rings again, И, to give me the first of my bitchings-out about why the heck I was doing something -- anything -- during the first day of school.
Umm...
Driving back through Pavlovsk, the dread started setting in as I kept passing groups of well-dressed adults accompanying uniform-dressed students carrying bouquets of flowers. At least -- I comforted myself -- Z was in his suit and tie and whatnot.
So then pulling into Pushkin, И's wife К called. To let me know that they were in the parade ground over at the bigger-kids school (that is, class 5-9, or ages 11-15). So I swung over that way...
To discover that the first day of the school year in Russia kicks off with a massive festival including 'introducing' the new first-classers to their older schoolmates and to the community as a whole; the presnetation of those students just starting on their final year of school; and so forth, ending with the last-yearers escorting the first-classers over to their new classrooms. And here I am, the big asshole, making other plans. I tried to explain -- ended up explaining to a dozen or so people who all absolutely had to express their distaste at a dad who would be elsewhere on his son's first day of school -- that where I come from for the most part the extent of first-day ritual involves sticking one's kid in a classroom or on a bus and walking away. In fact Z already had a bit of this experience, in having for a couple of months attended kindergarten in Portland before we left. Frankly, I don't think my explanations helped a bit. This week will show for sure (as I am certain that the morning alone will suffice for my failings to make themselves known throughout work) whether my cultural faux pas was as monstrous as some people made it feel.
Picking back up, I arranged to get Z and his friends М and Н along with Н's mom after school ended (at 11:30; they make for a slightly shorter day that first day) and to carpool the group into the city for the capper to the First Day festivities -- a concert/show for all the first-classers in Petersburg. For about an hour at the Petersburg Ледовой Дворец ('Ice Palace'), an auditorium full to the seams of kids got to watch singing, dancing, skating, trained bears, and so forth. Just sort of, you know, a recognition of them getting to join the ranks of the 'big kids'.
Holy crap.
And Monday is Z's school picture day. I'm pretty stoked to see how those turn out. His uniform is a maroon suitcoat, black slacks, black shoes, white shirt, and tie (he gets to pick the color for that one; he had A buy six different ones; Saturday's was a dark purple). And he's been practicing his 'dangerous' face for picture-taking -- see the Kiev pictures for reference.
And then today was a more or less relaxing day -- as much as can be said when you have a third of a pig to deal with. Suffice to say that A and I got that work done with only one mishap. Of that, we can simply comment that it is better for no one to try to engage A in conversation when she's occupied cutting meat off a bone, and that her finger is all cleaned up now and will be just fine.
Tomorrow after we drop the boys off at their various doings, A and I will head over to the customs office in the city to get the process of papering the cars for the next six months underway. Most likely we won't finish this trip and will have to come back later, since A's registration isn't completed yet and since the insurance we have on the cars runs out in a month. But to avoid getting fined, we'll 'open up an application' now and then come back by later this week once we've got everything in order. It sucks majorly to have to blow so much time on paperwork crap; but at least we're getting the hang of it and we should only have to go through it the two times for the next calendar year -- unlike the six trips we made out over the last one.
As expected, it was a very busy week. The two gents took up the bulk of my time not otherwise occupied with Z and G; then A came home on Thursday afternoon; and the whole weekend has been pretty crazy.
Let's look at that last one.
Friday, A took Z to his school for the pre-first-day med checkup (kids' doctors in Russia are associated with their schools). Just a quick in-and-out, though she did get a chance to meet up with a friend of hers whose daughter is in Z's class.
That afternoon, I swung by Pokrovskaya to confirm that the bricks and everything were ready to go as had been promised, and to pick up some meat from our neighbor. He had called earlier the week, indicating his plan to slaughter one of his pigs and wondering if we would be interested in any of it. So when I went into his place to pick it up, I really shouldn't have been surprised to see a pig that had been beheaded, gutted, and more or less simply cut in half lengthwise. He tried to get me to take an entire half of the damn pig (call it eighty pounds of meat, bone, and skin) but I ended up carting off only the right side of the ribcage and a front leg. For some reason, I was expecting it to have been somewhat more butchered, but what the heck... I'd helped butcher a couple of deer, and A grew up in a hunting family; how hard could it be?
A was somewhat less than delighted when I got the two massive pig hunks home.
Then Saturday, the first of September, was the first day of school. Since A was around to take Z in and pick him up, I had arranged to meet with the guy about the lumber at 9 in the morning. G and I showed up at the lot a couple minutes early to find that the brickwork had already been started.
In the wrong place!!!
We're raising up the non-garage half of the house 1.3 meters on bricks. And the workers had gotten about two layers done on the corners of the garage. I called the crew chief to scream at him; he rushed out and screamed at his guys that he had told them three times where to put the bricks and that if they couldn't get their heads out of their asses and do things right he would get his other crew to work -- and that, by the way, don't expect to get paid for the last day's work or for the half-day they were going to spend taking down what they had put up.
Good man.
Anyway, we waited on the lumber guy for about twenty minutes and were on the verge of leaving when my phone rang -- A. From what I could gather, the first day of school had turned out to be more involved than I had been led to expect. And she really needed me to get over to the school right away. Then as I was getting into the car to head back to Pushkin the phone rings again, И, to give me the first of my bitchings-out about why the heck I was doing something -- anything -- during the first day of school.
Umm...
Driving back through Pavlovsk, the dread started setting in as I kept passing groups of well-dressed adults accompanying uniform-dressed students carrying bouquets of flowers. At least -- I comforted myself -- Z was in his suit and tie and whatnot.
So then pulling into Pushkin, И's wife К called. To let me know that they were in the parade ground over at the bigger-kids school (that is, class 5-9, or ages 11-15). So I swung over that way...
To discover that the first day of the school year in Russia kicks off with a massive festival including 'introducing' the new first-classers to their older schoolmates and to the community as a whole; the presnetation of those students just starting on their final year of school; and so forth, ending with the last-yearers escorting the first-classers over to their new classrooms. And here I am, the big asshole, making other plans. I tried to explain -- ended up explaining to a dozen or so people who all absolutely had to express their distaste at a dad who would be elsewhere on his son's first day of school -- that where I come from for the most part the extent of first-day ritual involves sticking one's kid in a classroom or on a bus and walking away. In fact Z already had a bit of this experience, in having for a couple of months attended kindergarten in Portland before we left. Frankly, I don't think my explanations helped a bit. This week will show for sure (as I am certain that the morning alone will suffice for my failings to make themselves known throughout work) whether my cultural faux pas was as monstrous as some people made it feel.
Picking back up, I arranged to get Z and his friends М and Н along with Н's mom after school ended (at 11:30; they make for a slightly shorter day that first day) and to carpool the group into the city for the capper to the First Day festivities -- a concert/show for all the first-classers in Petersburg. For about an hour at the Petersburg Ледовой Дворец ('Ice Palace'), an auditorium full to the seams of kids got to watch singing, dancing, skating, trained bears, and so forth. Just sort of, you know, a recognition of them getting to join the ranks of the 'big kids'.
Holy crap.
And Monday is Z's school picture day. I'm pretty stoked to see how those turn out. His uniform is a maroon suitcoat, black slacks, black shoes, white shirt, and tie (he gets to pick the color for that one; he had A buy six different ones; Saturday's was a dark purple). And he's been practicing his 'dangerous' face for picture-taking -- see the Kiev pictures for reference.
And then today was a more or less relaxing day -- as much as can be said when you have a third of a pig to deal with. Suffice to say that A and I got that work done with only one mishap. Of that, we can simply comment that it is better for no one to try to engage A in conversation when she's occupied cutting meat off a bone, and that her finger is all cleaned up now and will be just fine.
Tomorrow after we drop the boys off at their various doings, A and I will head over to the customs office in the city to get the process of papering the cars for the next six months underway. Most likely we won't finish this trip and will have to come back later, since A's registration isn't completed yet and since the insurance we have on the cars runs out in a month. But to avoid getting fined, we'll 'open up an application' now and then come back by later this week once we've got everything in order. It sucks majorly to have to blow so much time on paperwork crap; but at least we're getting the hang of it and we should only have to go through it the two times for the next calendar year -- unlike the six trips we made out over the last one.
