In Bloom

Often the irony of life in Vladivostok has meant that for one reason or another I haven't really been able to describe life here very well to those who'd like to hear about it. One reason comes at times when nothing much is going on, and the general mood has been a bit melancholy, and therefore there really isn't much inspiration to write either e-mails or blog entries about news here. The other reason is at play when there's a lot going on, when the mood picks up, but when there's just so little time to write something about the developments and news. We've gone from a winter of a lot of the former to a spring with already a bunch of the latter, so I feel I need to force myself again to at least try to write entries to the blog a bit more often and make them a bit shorter, just so I can get the news out the door. It feels like I've been jotting down ideas of what I want to report throughout the past month since the previous entry, only to lack the time to really edit it well, and then I watch as things change yet again, and the news of the day or the week shifts. I need to catch things more often and offer them up so that you can see them!

Play
The Pink Elephant is no more. Sometimes it seems like all the good things in Vlad just end or disappear right after you've found them and have started to get used to them being a joyful part of your life. I was pretty bummed about the closure right after I became aware of it, just before May Day. But then I decided we should just get right back up on the horse again and check on another local Montessori center I'd heard about for the under-3 set. Who knows, I told myself, maybe this one will actually be better than the P.E.! Then, in the couple of weeks after the Pink Elephant breathed its last, life of course sort of oozed into the cracks where that activity had been fitting, and after one frustrating unsuccessful phone call to get the basic info on "Vershina" ("Summit" -- a decidedly less interesting name...), it took me a little while to make another attempt to get us signed up and try it. An update on the new place will follow in the next post.

We did exchange phone numbers with the class leader from the Pink E. with whom we clicked the best, though -- Vika. Well, since we encountered three different leaders there in our 3 months of going, all of whom were named Vika, that isn't very precise. But we know which one we mean, and we are planning to meet her tomorrow for our first attempt at the children's performances that are given at the Regional Philharmonic. Tomorrow will be "The Ugly Duckling." I told you, there is so much going on, I need to set myself to writing a little shorter posts a little more often to really report it all on time -- so news of performances will have to go in the next entry, too.


Drive
OK, I admit that I was kind of a whiner about the car. It probably sounded like I was a spoiled brat who couldn't bear to take public transportation (except that, for those of you who have seen our location, really, it is not the easiest place to move around from without a car, am I right?). It was mainly the shopping (getting there and back AND lugging groceries or other purchases, e.g. big bags of diapers) that I did not relish having to do on buses. But, to be honest, I've actually had fun this past month viewing the city from a new perspective, taking the bus and marshrutka (minivan fixed-route taxi) to get around when it's just me and my work. And what has undoubtedly allowed me to have that fun was our decision to go ahead and use the car a limited amount, for grocery shopping and going places with Anya, just to try to stay off of it, like a bad ankle, as much as we can. Well, that, and the fact that it really is finally spring.

For some of the places I need to be for my research and writing, the bus can actually be a better way to get around. Right now I'm working at the state archive down next to the railroad station, and sometimes at the regional medical library, down across from a large candy factory and just up the hill from the regional clinical hospital (and upstairs from the regional blood bank - just in case!). Both of them are on easy and reliable bus routes, just a single bus to get there and back. And taking the bus certainly lets you see your surroundings in a different way. I'm really able to look around in a way that isn't possible when you're driving -- I see the ads for the latest performances in town, plastered on all the fences (Tibetan yaks at the Vlad Circus, anyone?), notice new businesses that either just opened or never caught my eye before. And you're just able to coexist with people in a more direct (if anonymous) way on the bus than driving around in a car lets you.

(And about the car itself: oh, it is a long and drawn-out saga indeed. Let's see, when I last reported in, we had had our steering wheel mauled by a particularly mal-meaning Russian mechanic, had made first contact with Nissan USA, who then made first contact, before first light, with the Riverside branch of the family. Everything from there just kind of got more and more mired in the muck. The well-meaning Nissan rep apparently gave us the wrong contact number, so all of Dan's increasingly urgent calls over the last two weeks of March went unheard. A few more calls at hours when most of us are asleep, to Riverside and to Vlad, and we determined that nothing this side of Irkutsk has enough of a legitimate connection to the Nissan corporation for the folks to send the part. But we determined we could get reimbursed for a part and labor we paid for directly, as long as Nissan is on the bill(s). Dan immediately ordered the part from a dealership in Virginia and our feet seemed to be loosening from the mire.

Cut to this week, when the part finally arrived via diplomatic pouch (no special delays, that's just how long it takes), and Dan goes with the help of a friend and colleague to begin getting the work done. One disappointing moment is when we learn that indeed neither of the 2 places that appear to have a connection to Nissan have enough of a true claim on the name to put it on their official bill. But the more depressing and frustrating news arrived when the better of the 2 choices of mechanic, apparently a thoughtful guy who was very willing to hear Dan out and not leap in where he didn't have enough information or didn't know what the heck he was doing, noticed that THE PART SENT BY THE U.S. MECHANIC GOT BROKEN IN THE MAIL! So, who knows what recourse we have with them: as Dan notes, they probably just threw the thing in a box to our Dulles address, not taking into account the beating it might take between State Department warehouse and plane, etc., and if they hear the whole transit itinerary they will surely withdraw all responsibility for its loss of integrity en route. We are just heading into the weekend, so we haven't had a chance yet to take stock or investigate what our next steps are. All I can say is: what a royal hassle!)


Work
Whether thanks to the bus, or spring, or just an unrelated change in momentum, my research is resurgent. I returned to the archives in March and I've finally found a lot of interesting primary documents on regional public health and tick-borne encephalitis. I have a bunch of things I hope to get a chance to look at (and the time left is just starting to seem like perhaps too little to get through it -- but regardless I'll have time to collect a bunch of interesting stuff).

It's also just fun to be back in the archives, after an absence essentially since last summer, before I took the Consulate job. There is a weird kind of feeling you get working there and being accepted by the ladies who run the reading rooms, one of whom especially here in Vlad is very serious and bureaucratic until you crack her, and she then really is friendly and supportive when you need it. It sounds good, but there's a weird side that emerges when you see someone flailing who hasn't cracked the unsmiling exterior, and you feel a little superior and comfortable in your position -- I don't necessarily like that feeling, but somehow having a little success in Russia in the face of adversity can do that to you.

My experience generally in archives so far in my career, primarily during my dissertation research, was a very needle-in-a-haystack experience, mainly because of my topic. I think that feeling is actually pretty much par for the course in archival work, but I suspect that the way my dissertation topic was defined so very differently from the way the archives were organized (and from the way any Russian asks questions of Russian history), it made it difficult to easily pinpoint what files might be useful. But now, simply by virtue of the fact that I'm interested in a particular disease, one that has a regional significance, for the first time in my work I've actually had the experience of writing in my notes "Jackpot!," after finding a file titled "Data about the morbidity and mortality of tick-borne encephalitis and malaria for 1940-41."

A Brief Update

What we're saying:

This month we have turned to verbs! And we're just recently getting into prepositions, noticing when those that are essential to a particular verb get attached to words in English. So, "put your shoes on" gets repeated as "shuzon"; "let's take your hood off" becomes "hoodoff."

tawai! = "vstavai!" ("get up!" in Russian)
go-oup = go/get up
syajish! = "syadis'!" ("sit down!" in Russian)
shiji! = "sit!" or "sit there!" in Russian
sit down! (very well enunciated - no need to translate - and almost always all of these sit-related imperatives are directed at "Beah," the funny little stuffed puppy whose species in the sleep-deprived mode of new parents we evidently could not identify, and thus he received the name "Rabbit-Bear," which for Anya is now and will surely always be "Beah.")
want (another one that really is pronounced pretty much on target, and is starting to be used to good effect.)
no (unfortunately this one is now in VERY wide usage. I know it would have gotten in there inevitably at some point, but I think I can actually trace its integration pretty well to the week we received a gift from Cousin Stacey and family: a really good little book, "Where's Spot?," whose refrain in every location where Spot is sought is, sadly, "no." Anya picked up on it very quickly and has run with it.)
pway! = play!
syuda = this way, over here in Russian
syagi = sadik, "preschool" (what I call Montessori center) in Russian
bai-sik-ull = bicycle (a real obsession for some reason, surely related to the appearance of our neighbors' tricycle outside, Anya's recent notice of the adult bikes perched unused downstairs in our house, and the existence of a picture of a trike on one of her blocks)
yogurr = yogurt (more to report next time, but I'll note here that we have ourselves a fan of homemade yogurt. And a person who has trouble distinguishing between the concepts "yoga" and "yogurt" when they are referred to too close together in conversation.)
syippah = slipper
tapogi = tapochki, "slipper" in Russian (For some reason, the little slippers with the velcro closure that I picked up on sale for the equivalent of about $7 at the local Bubbl-Goom store are a real hit.)
caw = car
mahina = mashina, "car" in Russian
crukk = truck
bussss! = bus (often followed by the comment "biiiig!" and more often followed by the comment "noi[se]" -- and in general when the identifying-vehicles mood strikes, it seems like every third one is a bus, so this word gets a whole lot of play.)

Fat Cats, Fast Cars

Forgive the alliteration, but after a long day at work I will seize upon any available stylistic crutch on order to force myself to get words to screen.

First, the cats. We have two of them. We inherited them from a former consulate employee who had the misfortune of being posted to Bermuda – where, evidently, British Commonwealth regulations require that all incoming animals be quarantined for some length of time. Either he didn’t like the cats that much or he figured the quarantine would break their little kitty spirits, but either way he decided to pawn (paw?) them off on us.

The cats are great. Really the only problem with them was their names: originally, as I understand it, Lilo and Sinatra. Well, they are now Edgar and Sanchez. Edgar keeps himself relatively clean, but Sanchez can be a bit dirtier. When we first got the cats, we were told that Edgar (né Lilo – or was it Sinatra?) is affectionate and cuddly, whereas Sanchez (né Sinatra – or was it Lilo?) is rather more the scruffy cat-about-town. In fact, however, Sanchez appears to be the more house-bound. In fact, he’s turned into a bit of a nuisance. If Anya is not crying, then the sound we are hearing is Sanchez at the bottom of the stairs, mewling loudly to be allowed into our room. The really annoying thing is that our room door is generally open, and all Sanchez has to do is get his lazy cat ass up the stairs and through the door.

Once in the room, however (usually after a combination of coaxing and carrying, the latter often in guilty recompense for having angrily thrown a shoe at the whiny bastard), Sanchez likes to meow a “hello” then curl up in a corner of the bed and get his serious catnap on.

Edgar, on the other hand, has turned out to be downright aloof. A week after we got him, in fact, Lisa let him out, and he disappeared. And the cat did not come back the very next day. In fact, after five days without seeing him we were pretty sure that he had been eaten by one of the wolf-like dogs prowling unleashed along the goat path. Imagine my surprise, then, to look up from my reading a couple weeks ago and see Edgar padding across the floor of the living room. He must have slipped in when one of us wasn't looking.

On to the cars. Or, more specifically, ours. It's here. In fact, it's been here since November 20. But we can't drive it yet. Allow me to offer you a window into the bureaucracy.

The car was apparently offloaded in the Port of Vladivostok on the evening of November 20. We were told that it would take some time to clear customs – perhaps until Friday, November 24. Friday, of course, came and went, as did the following Monday. On Tuesday the 27th, we got the green light (I don't know who gives the green light, but we got it). Usually our GSO (General Services Office) guys go down to the port themselves and pick vehicles up, but I wanted to go with them, which they kindly allowed.

We arrived at the port at around 3:30pm and waited a bit in order to meet the relevant people (in particular the representative of the freight forwarder that handled the shipment). Once these people showed up, it looked like things were going to happen. But at 4pm, we were told that it was "tea time." I thought maybe this was a joke – even the Russian GSO staff thought maybe it was a joke – but, no, in fact the period from 4 to 5 is tea-time and no-one works during that time. This was a little frustrating because we could see the crane operator sitting in his seat, and with the push of a few levers he could grab our container and send us on our way. We started to wonder: Robert Shonov, second-in-command at the GSO, thought we might have to wait until 6pm, since “coffee break” might run from 5 to 6. But, I said, 6 to 7 must surely be vodka break. But our driver, Sergey, said that vodka break likely began at 8am, and had not yet stopped.

Long story, um, long, we got the car at 5pm. Very exciting to see as they opened up the container and there it was: our 2006 Nissan X-terra, in an entirely different part of the world from where we saw it last. A little heart flutter as it failed to start, but then we realized the battery was not connected. Success! We got our paperwork and drove out of the port.

Success, however, turned out to be a relative term. It would require a few days to register the car with the traffic cops and get plates for it. Fine. I figured we could go in the next day. But, as it turned out, they don’t do inspections on Wednesdays. So, Thursday, Sergey takes the car down to the traffic police. He returned later that day, however, saying that the traffic police could not find the “engine number” on the car. That is, we had the VIN, but they wanted the engine number before registering it. We looked ourselves, but could find nothing. The traffic cops told us to bring it by the next day, Friday, and they would have an “expert” in who could presumably find the number.

So Sergey brought the car in on Friday and, sure enough, the expert found the number. (It’s buried under the exhaust manifold on the left side of the car, by the way, almost at the bottom of the engine.) Success! I again (foolishly) thought. But no. Now that we had found the correct engine number, it had to be entered onto our customs form (on which an incorrect number had earlier been written). And this was not simply a matter of us running by the customs agency. No, we had to contact our freight forwarders, who would themselves handle the paperwork. They had of course closed by this time.

On Monday, we did finally get the form – someone had simply crossed out the incorrect number and scrawled in the correct one, slapping it with a fat stamp making it all official. Off to get the plates! I thought. Of course not: I should have remembered that they are closed on Monday.

So Tuesday, we set out. I have the feeling that I will be driving the car home. This time Sergey is not available, so Robert and I drive the car up ourselves to meet with Sergey’s traffic cop contact. First, the car is briefly inspected, during which we spend a considerable amount of time showing the traffic cops where the engine number is. (Time goes a little slower as well for us because what must be the first X-terra in Vlad is attracting a little attention – which is in and of itself somewhat surprising, because the X-terra’s more pimped-out, gas-guzzling cousin, the Armada, is in plentiful supply here.)

Inspection successful. Success! Of course not. Now we must bring the forms to the traffic police office where they will be officially received. It is there that the news is broken to me that the license plates are in another location altogether, and I won’t be getting those today. In fact, there appears to be some question about whether the plates are even available – since we need special red diplomatic plates ordered from Moscow. If we are out of them, we are doomed, because it will surely take months to get them.

Update: the plates came! We are now free to roam the madcap streets of Vladivostok. We’ll talk about driving in a subsequent post...

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.