Almost too much to pack into one day

Major events of the day: Countdown to Court 6 of 7, Lunch at Masha’s, Kazakh Best Buy, a trip to the Trans Siberian Railway, and stopping by Grandma’s House

Morning weather report: 31, feels like 31. Projected high: 43. Brrrrrrrr!
Meanwhile back in Memphis: Overnight low of 60, heading to 73. (Wish we were there!)

Sorry about the late and long post. We didn’t get back to the apartment until after 10 pm, following a full day of adventure.

When we were getting out of the car as we concluded yesterday’s adventure, Masha asked if we had lunch plans for today. Indicating that we had no specific plans, Masha replied, “Good! You will come to my house for lunch. Sasha will pick you up at 1:00.” Masha also loaned us some of the adventures that Lynn from Memphis had written down a year ago during her adoption trek. One in particular got a real laugh from us. It was a story about a little “plumbing incident” and the two “plumbers” who came to take care of the problem. The story itself was a hilarious adventure through communication and cultural differences. However, the part we both found funniest was how she dubbed the two plumbers, “Butt Crack” and “Butt Crack in Training,” and how she described their parts in the adventure. We’ll just leave it at that. Perhaps we’ll be able to get the whole story and attach/link it to a later posting…

Although we have not run into exactly the same issues, we too have had our own adventures. The funniest one for us was when the RBS Assistant Director dropped in to observe one of our visits with the children. She asked if we had any other children and we indicated our older son who is now 21. Then she asked, “Cincinnati?” To which we responded, “No, Memphis.” We were absolutely clueless, but Masha’s face was turning a very deep red. What she had actually said was, “Сын Женатый?” which means “Your son is married?” Apparently the Assistant Director was trying to marry-off Masha. We all had a good laugh after we explained that Cincinnati is a city in Ohio and what she had said sounded exactly like how the city is pronounced.

The morning flew by as we shuffled through photos, picking out those which we will out in our photo album for court. We also went through our extensive gift list, checking it twice, and twice again. We’re really excited about visiting with Masha’s parents for lunch. Although we did not figure it out at first, her father doubles as our driver. Sasha arrived on time, as always, and it was only a short trip to their apartment. Once we navigated the gravel driveway/parking lot in front of the building, Sasha pointed up in one direction and said, “My house,” then pointed up at another close by building and said, “My antenna.” We had heard about some sort of radio phone that you can hook into your home phone and get up to 20 km coverage, sort of like your own mini-cellular site, and thought that might be what he was indicating. We were mistaken. We knew that Sasha works for a company that installs dispatch radios in vehicles, perhaps even the “plumbers” from the story above. Sadly, the cell phone is slowly putting his company out of business.

Once we were out of the car Sasha welcomed us to his building and we headed for the elevator. For a ten story apartment building, it was a very small elevator. You probably couldn’t fit more than four adults in there at a time. We headed for the 10th floor, where we were greeted by Masha and her mother. After our introductions we presented Sasha with some treasures from America: A Tennessee t-shirt and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Whiskey. He was ecstatic. (Memphis Grizzlies hat was a gift from Lynn last year) A small gift for Masha and a small box of Whitman’s chocolates for her mother rounded out the gifts.

After a quick tour of the apartment, with a long pause on the balcony for pictures, it was time to eat, rather, feast. We enjoyed dumplings stuffed with meatballs and onion gravy, carrot salad, tomato salad, and salad made with egg, herring and mayonnaise. Masha’s mother took great pride in telling us that the vegetables were from their own dachka garden. And the herring salad was from a recipe recommended by friends and specially prepared for us. In typical motherly fashion, Masha’s mother prepared far more food then we could hope to eat and saw to it that our plates did not stay empty. When asked if we would like more dumplings and how many, Masha replied that it would be good to say “ah-dien spaseeba” which means “one please.” We quickly learned that one is just a figure and she would land however many it took to cover the open space on our plates. Good thing we didn’t say two… otherwise we would have received 6 or even 7!

To top it all off, Sasha pulled out some homebrew made with vodka and rosehips. It was smooth and very similar in taste to a good German Ice Wine. Masha’s mother toasted to good food and again to good friends and good company. We could have wrapped the day right there with a good nap! However, it was time to hop in the car to “fetch” the kids.

LB and LG greeted us at the RBS gate and ran along after the car as we pulled into the courtyard. They were every bit as eager to see us as we were to see them. They did not have a lot of homework over the weekend so Cathe asked that they practice writing 4 English sentences. We weren’t even out of the car for our welcome hugs when both presented us with their completed assignments. Both were very proud of their efforts, as we are too. Masha signed them out and we were off to the apartment. Today is bath day and final fitting/adjustment of court wardrobe selections!

The trip back to the apartment was spent answering questions from both about the airplane trip home. They wanted some reassurance that Papa will be seated next to them. They wanted to make sure that Mama will email as soon as she gets to Memphis. They’re really putting some thought into the coming events, and we’re proud of them.

Although court isn’t until Wednesday (Now less than 36 hours away!), we will be meeting with our attorney tomorrow, so the kids need to be ready. Stressing the importance for both to stay clean, we know that the next 36 hours are going to be tough on them. In typical 10 & 12 year old fashion, they love to run, play on the gym bars, and hop into the middle of a soccer scrimmage. (unfortunately, all the above activities involve copious amounts of dirt!) They just love to play.

After everyone was squeaky clean and final wardrobe selections had been made, it was time to do a little review of the House Rules we had collectively devised. We got a good start on our family ground rules from Dee, who adopted Michael from Petro back in April. We have gained a lot of insight into the nuances of raising two older children from a different culture as we have followed her daily blog updates over the past few months. Having a set of house ground rules written in English and Russian will serve as a good reminder of the growing event we had while putting the list together. Rule #1 is to “Be thankful for every thing and for every day.” In between are important things like being respectful, learning new words every day, telling us if there is something you don’t like or don’t understand, no running in the house, etc. It was really neat to have their direct involvement in discussing and amending the list which culminates with Rule #18, “Remember our home motto: Live, Laugh, Love.” We cinched the deal with some generous slices of the cake that Masha’s mother made for us. (To follow Dee’s on-gong saga with her two children from Russia and Kazakhstan, view The Crab Chronicles at: deescribbler.typepad.com/my_weblog)

Sadly, our time went by too quickly! The short ride back to the RBS was mostly in quiet, interspersed with a couple more court questions. They’re looking forward to their last trip back and hope will come soon.

After saying our good-byes we headed over to “Sulpak,” the Kazakh version of Best Buy. We decided to buy a DVD player that doubles as a Karaoke player for the Family Group our children are in. Of course, that meant buying a microphone and a few movies to do along with it. Bill and Sasha reviewed two DVD players before agreeing that the second DVD would be a better buy because it will play both PAL and NTSC formats, so we can send DVD’s from the United States! Their English teacher will be proud of us since of course they will be in English. Check-out was quite an adventure. We decided to try our Mastercard since the logo is proudly displayed. Maybe we should have paid cash instead… Though not all of the lengthy check-out process was due to credit vs cash. Although it’s a very modern store, procedures seem to follow those of the little shops we have visited in mini-mall settings. Each “department” had to prepare it’s own “receipt” before we went to the cash register. There was one from the DVD isle, one from the keyboard isle (we picked up an English/Cyrillic keyboard) and another from the movie isle. The cashier first tallied everything in a big calculator, then entered the transaction into her computer. Two receipts were printed out (one for DVD player plus another for everything else). Then she had to go to what appeared to be a customer service counter to run our card. We were about ready to call her back to the register to just pay cash when the little receipt machine spit out two credit slips to go with the two receipts we already had. Then the signed receipts were stamped and stapled together so we could move to the next step in the process and one more step closer to the door. A technician removed our newly purchased DVD player from its box and plugged it into a small tv by the door to demonstrate it was fully functional, even plugging in the microphone. It took two tries before he could get things working because it rejected the first inserted DVD, a pirated “store test copy” of Finding Nemo. Once satisfied that we were satisfied, he handed us the warranty booklet and pointed back to the customer service counter. There we presented our stamped receipt and the warranty booklet into which the technician had copied the model and serial number information. The clerk who had run our credit card now examined the receipt and warranty booklet to ensure everything was in order. Satisfied that it was, she pulled out another stamp and gave us another stamp on the receipt and several in the warranty booklet. We then returned to the technician’s counter to retrieve our re-boxed DVD player, DVDs, et al. But wait, there’s one more step! The burly “Security Guard” who had watched the entire process which had occurred within a 15 foot radius of where he was standing, had to also examine our receipt, warranty booklet, and purchases before moving aside and allowing us to exit the store. Anyone who has ever watched the movie, “Gotcha” will understand because the transaction was very similar to the Visa scene. Sorry about the long paragraph. It actually took less time to compose, review, and creatively edit than did the actual transaction.

Shortly after being dropped off at the apartment, our phone rang. Hilton and Suzanne were at the kabob stand and wanted to know if we wanted anything. Duh! Bring two for us! Excellent dinner on top of a great lunch with super company as well.

Although it would have been a good wrap-up, the day’s adventure did not end there. On the way back from the RBS, Bill mentioned that he wanted to see the railway station on the famous Trans-Siberia Railway some time in the next few days. Masha had just picked up a passport for the newly adopted daughter of a couple from Spain and needed to take it to the train station to send it to Astana. Tonight. “Do you want to come then?” “Sure!” One interesting note is that Russia has retained ownership of the train station and the arrival/departure times are based on Moscow time, which is two hours behind Petropavlovsk. The time and temperature sign cycled between local and Moscow time, with the temperature in between. According to the sign, tonight’s temperature was 4C (~38F) at 9 pm when we dropped off the package, though we think it was reading a little on the high side. We got a few photos and a quick video of the adventure. Hopefully we didn’t ruffle any security feathers. No one said anything to us, so we made it out in one piece!

The evening was wrapped up when we parked the car at grandma’s house (she has a garage where Sasha keeps his car) and walked back up Constitution Avenue, enjoying the crisp evening air. According to Sasha, it won’t be long before we see some snow.