Reunited With Our Toys

My apologies for having let the blog go untended. (Although I guess that conjures up images of an overgrown, weedy mess, which is not exactly what has happened here. I guess I left it unwatered or something.)

OK, first order of business, since we have been complaining a lot about our echoing, empty 4-story home and the delayed delivery of our air freight: I need to update my dear readers on that situation.

As many of you are aware, we packed out of our Bethesda home on October 11-12 and lived in a hotel room with our darling baby daughter for 8 straight nights specifically so that we might receive our things that much more quickly, especially the more important things that we placed in our “unaccompanied air baggage.” Much to our chagrin, despite that planning, once we arrived in Vlad it quickly became apparent that the shipping company had pitched our loot in a storage bin at JFK airport and was waiting for, oh, I don't know, I guess a special, engraved invitation requesting that they complete the transaction.

To be fair, knowledgeable sources assure me that such shipments can't leave their port of departure until the recipient is at his destination. In any case, nobody at the shipping company seemed aware that they even had a shipment to deliver until Dan checked its status on his second day on the job.

At the end of that first week we were informed that we would have our stuff on November 4. Yee-haw! Since that was a Saturday, we got ourselves all ready for a delivery on or about Monday, November 6.

Where the story gets a bit hairy is after nothing shows up on said Monday and Dan checks on the status again on Tuesday, November 7. Friendly shipper dude tells us our shipment is sitting in Krasnoyarsk, awaiting clearance by Russian customs. Now, if you aren’t familiar with Krasnoyarsk or its location, take a gander at the link I’ve helpfully provided. Scroll down until you see it on the righthand side of your screen, pinpointed in the red center portion of the map of Russia. Now, remind yourself of where we are located -– Primorskii region of the Russian Far East -– and look at this page to refresh your memory of where that is, again highlighted in red. (Ah, what would I do without Wikipedia?)

Joking geography lessons aside, the geniuses at "Stonepath Logistics" seem to have estimated that the fastest way to get our stuff between Washington and Vladivostok was very nearly to place it on a horse-drawn cart a'clop-clopping down a stone path. They arranged for it to travel east across the Atlantic Ocean via Frankfurt, and then to enter Russia smack dab in the middle of Siberia, where the customs agents (bless their hearts [said in retrospect, having looked over the insanely careful but fairly meaningless documentation they created]) appear to have no idea how to deal with diplomatic shipments. (Why would they??) It sat there for a few days, while Embassy personnel in Moscow helped get the wheels turning, then caught a flight to Vladivostok on Friday, November 10, where it sat for yet a few more days awaiting more customs paperwork.

(To add insult to injury, or maybe just heartbreak, the family who arrived at post in Vladivostok a full week after us, also from DC, received its air freight on that very Friday. It was even initially assumed that this diplomatic shipment was for us, since we were here earlier, and it only stood to reason.... But then on Friday morning they clarified that it wasn't for Kronenfeld. Arrrgh! The frustration!)

Long story short –- well, OK, I hear you: long whiny story long -– our air freight arrived at our home on a Russian UPS truck as it backed into our driveway on the morning of Tuesday, November 14.

One of the most amusing things to us was the notation on the label in this photo, to the right of the big "JFK": "Deliver by 10/25/06." Seems like nobody at Stonepath got the memo.

Anyway, as you can see from the Flickr photos documenting the event, one of the best things -– in my opinion -– to arrive in the boxes was the supply of toys for Anya to play with and continue to develop her fledgling motor skills (and, yes, I'll admit, entertain herself for a few minutes at a time while I make myself a cup of coffee or whatever).

Toys for the adults in the family also arrived but are not pictured: stereo receiver, CD player, and full-sized speakers, as well as desktop computer and home wireless network doodads, which Dan proceeded to play with, so we are technologically even more plugged in now than in my last report. And last, but certainly not least, about 8 jars of salsa, 3 cans of chipotle chiles, 3 bottles of hot sauce, and 1 bag of ready-to-mix tortilla flour, which I proceeded to play with and use to make us our first spicy dinner in a while. Best ill-formed tortilla, open-faced burrito-type-thing I have had in a loooong time.