Home

An old man was on an airplane in the middle seat.  A younger guy sat down in the aisle seat next to him and struck up a conversation.  They talked about this and that, and the young guy asked, "So where's home?"  The old man smiled at him, nodded to the woman sitting in the window seat, and said, "Wherever she is."

I've always loved that story.  It rings especially true now, since "home" seems to be an ambulatory concept.  We have a house with a lot of our stuff in it in Colorado Springs, lots of our stuff--some of it important, some of it not--in a storage room somewhere else in Colorado Springs, 64 boxes of stuff somewhere between Antwerp and Moscow, and an apartment with some of our stuff in it in Moscow.  (George Carlin did a great routine about stuff, but he didn't mention home.  Anyway...)

So for now, since Karen and the kids are here, this is home.  It's small and lovely and will do just fine.  Here's the grand tour:

Front Hallway

This is our entrance hallway.  It's a bit dark.  Lots of wall space for pictures and such.  At the end of the hallway, we have a large-ish china cabinet and a window.  At the window, you turn left.

Left turn hallway

When you turn left, you face two doors.  There are doorbells at each of them, indicating to us that our one apartment used to, in fact, be two separate apartments.  The master bedroom, laundry room, a full bathroom, and a small anteroom/hallway are all behind the door to the left.  Those pictures are below. 

When we first arrived, we had a full-size bed.  I am not a small man, and so we sent an e-mail asking for a larger sleeping space. 

Master bedroom with new King bed!

Where the King's clothes get clean!

The King's throne room!

They didn't have one in storage, so they had to order it from IKEA.  It arrived, they assembled it, and here we are.  Karen's thrilled because it means we have a fresh, clean mattress without any cooties on it.  I'm happy because it means I can get all of me on the bed.  The anteroom is big enough for the desk at which I am currently typing and, we hope, the piano once it gets here.  It also has a large built-in closet which will not only be useful but also very full.

The other part of the apartment has the kitchen, the living/dining room, and the two kids' bedrooms.  When we first arrived, the china cabinet was in the living room, and there was no dining room table.  This made us sad.  We asked for a dining room table, and it appeared as if by magic.  I got help from one of the other new guys to move the china cabinet, and now it all works.  This makes us happy.  See below.

Hallway to kitchen

The kitchen to the hallway will be lovely for hanging artwork or putting up shelves for more storage.  The other bathroom is along the right side of the hallway.  It has a shower and sink in one room and a toilet in the other.  This separation is a good thing.

Throne room #2

At the end of the kitchen hallway is the kitchen.  It's a small, European-style kitchen with enough room to cook or eat, but not really both.  The fridge is really hard to get into if someone is sitting at the table.  But it's functional, seems to have enough storage space, and I don't think we'll starve.  A nice part of the kitchen is that it sticks out past the other walls and so has a decent view to the north and the south.  There ain't much to see to the south, but the view to the north can be quite nice. 

Kitchen

Moscow to the north

The rest of the apartment is three good-sized rooms: the living/dining room, Addy's room, and Izzy's room.  We've painted Addy's room.  It's a nice grey-ish blue color that when he's in a good mood will tell you is blue, and when he's grumpy he'll tell you it's grey.  It's kind of like a mood ring.  We've gotten one wall of Izzy's room painted a nice, soft purple, and we're hoping to find time to get the other walls taken care of.  Once their rooms are done, we'll attack the living room.  The goal is to have the walls painted before our shipment arrives.  If we didn't have to do the whole work thing, it might actually be possible.  Fingers crossed!

Living Room from the entrance

Living Room from the window

So that's where we live.  It's where we go after work, and it's where we sleep at night, and it's our home because of those things.  It doesn't really feel like "home" yet, but it'll get there.  The walls are all kind of asylum-y right now, and that will all change once our shipment arrives.  Pictures will go up, artwork will go on the walls, books will fill in space...it'll make it feel more like...home.

Addy's room

Izzy's room

   The Spanish have a saying about home as well:  "Mi casa es su casa."  The couch in the living room is a fold-out bed, Addy has a full-size mattress on order, Izzy will inherit the twin bed that Addy is currently sleeping in, and other beds are only an e-mail away.  Come see us.  We'll give you the real grand tour.

We've been in Moscow for almost 30 hours now, so we consider ourselves experts on anything and everything having to do with Moscow, Russian history, Eastern European geography, and the rise and fall of the proletariat.  Really! 

Well, no.  But it has been an eventful 72 hours.  Read on!

First Impressions

The Trip

We loaded the shuttle at our hotel and the driver introduced himself by saying, “My name is Animal and I'll be your driver this morning. If you need anything, just say, 'Hey Animal!'” Oooookay... We got to DIA uneventfully and began the checking-in process by putting our luggage on the scale. Apparently, the little hand scale I bought at Marshall's was off by about five pounds. We had packed every bag to about 47-51 pounds according to our scale, and the airport scale had them all between 51 and 56 pounds. Aaaaarrrggghhhh! So there was a bit of shuffling of things around, two books bit the dust, and we were on our way.

The flight to Houston was fine. We were scattered all over the airplane, and Addison talked the ears off of the young guy that he ended up next to. I'm sure the guy knows more about Addy than he ever wanted or needed to. Transferring in Houston was fine, and then we got on the plane to Moscow.

I was excited about flying Singapore Airlines, but I've pretty much decided that an airplane is an airplane. There were parts of flying Singapore Airlines that were different from the usual flying experience, but when all was said and done it was still 11 hours sitting in the same place and trying to get some rest. The kids did relatively well. I think each of them got somewhere between four and five hours of sleep. I was on my way to getting about that, but the woman sitting next to me would have random almost-epileptic fits trying to get comfortable about every five minutes or so. Made it slightly difficult. And Karen just stuck to her usual pattern of not sleeping at all, Ambien be damned!

Clearing passport-control and customs at the airport was a bit of an adventure. We initially were herded into this large space that looked like it had about three times the fire-marshal-approved number of people. We hesitated just long enough to have an airport lady send us up the escalator to another room that was much more manageable. So, first travel tip: if you arrive at Domedodovo airport and the passport control room is a little chaotic, go upstairs! Much more doable. We ended up in a line that was going to four different passport-control windows, and it took us about ten minutes. The bags came out unscathed, and we sheepishly pushed our three carts carrying nine large-ish bags through the nothing-to-declare line. Carolina, the Elementary School Assistant Principal, was there to meet us, and we were on our way into Moscow.

The Drive

STOP!

It's melon season in Moscow

Rublovskoye Shosse (our street...sort of)

I realized many things on the drive in to Moscow. The first one was that I couldn't read about 95% of the words on the signs. The second was that by the time I figured out what the other 5% said, it was too late. The sign was gone. We spent much of the drive on the M-CAT, which is the large ring road around Moscow. It wasn't so bad. There were the occasional crazy drivers, but it wasn't anything that stood out beyond what we saw driving around the US for the last month. We drove past at least three malls, one big statue/medallion of Lenin, several Auchan stores, a Media Markt, a pretty little statue garden, a bunch of watermelons, and made it to the apartment in one piece.

You just can't go wrong with a big Lenin

The Apartment

Our new home is lovely. Pretty hardwood floors. Windows facing east for sunrises and other windows facing west for sunsets. Three big bedrooms—Izzy's in heaven after her hovel in Kleinmachnow—a very small, European-style kitchen (with a magnetic fridge, though!), two small, full bathrooms, a laundry/utility room, and a living room. There's a big hallway space just past our front door that's kind of wasted space, but it's nice and wide so it doesn't feel claustrophobic. The only real downside, and it's kind of a big one for us, is that there is as yet no place for a dining room table. We're working on rearranging some furniture, and we'll make it happen, but it really would be useful to have one more room.

The furniture is dated IKEA but mostly in good shape and certainly serviceable. Izzy has a twin bed, a big wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a couch, a desk, and room left over. For any of you who saw her room in Kleiny, you'll be shaking your heads. Addy has all of the above except for the couch, and he has a comfy chair instead. Our room is just fine, with room for two big wardrobes, two chests of drawers, and a lovely full-size bed that we're hoping to upgrade to a queen or a king. We've put in our requests.

View to the west

View to the north

Playground off the east side

The neighborhood is much more urban than we thought it would be. We're right at the intersection of two major roads, and the traffic noise is significant. Last night was apparently happy fun racing time for the local motorcycle crowd, and they did laps up and around and through our neighborhood from 2230 until about 0230. I'm sure people have spent good money to watch what we got to watch; it was an interesting introduction to the neighborhood. Fortunately, the noise went away with the windows closed, and I'm inclined to believe that we'll keep the windows closed for a significant portion of the year. If we lean out our kitchen window, we have a pretty view to the north of a stadium, a bridge, and a large chunk of Moscow. The back side of the apartment is much quieter, and it looks over the playground and sports field. Both of those have already been big hits with the kids. In the distance, we can see one of the seven sisters. I'm not sure which one, but I intend to find out. The buildings that surround us are, for the most part...oh what's the word? Scuzzy? Tired? Dated? Dirty? There's the occasional exception, but most of them must have been thrown up (literally and figuratively) during communist times and have certainly seen better days. It will definitely be a change from what we're used to, and that has the potential to be good. We'll see.

View to the east

View south

The People

On Wednesday evening, we had dinner with three other couples. They each have two kids, and between the eight kids we have every grade level from grade 3 to 9 covered. The only double up is at grade four. They ate quickly and promptly ran downstairs to play on the playground, run around checking out everybody's apartments, hang out, and generally had a great time. There are three girls and five boys, so it's a nice mix of age, gender, temperament, and I can see lots of play dates in everybody's near and distant future.

The adults seem very nice. Three of us have been overseas before, and one couple is teaching internationally for the first time. There are six other families in our apartment complex, but they won't be coming back until sometime next week. It will be great to add even more people to the mix.

The people at school seem as proactive and organized as they have since the day we took the job. Case in point: At our orientation this morning, they mentioned that the embassies would need our passports for the next two weeks to take care of various documents. At 1100, I told them that I needed my passport to get to Berlin to pick up Molly in nine days. When I sat down for lunch at 1230, three separate people came up to tell me that Erica (HR) had contacted the US embassy, asked to expedite the process with my passport, and that I'd have it back no later than Thursday. I continue to be very impressed by how quickly and efficiently they take care of whatever issue happens to pop up. It's very nice to feel like we're being taken care of.

Our orientation activities today were a neat combination of warm fuzzy and businesslike. There was a large group of people to meet us as we came off the bus. There was a bread and salt offering and we danced and 

Welcome!  Kids from left:  Monet, Izzy, Sebastian, Simon, Addy, Catherine

 clapped and socialized for a bit. We then had all 40 of us in a big room for meet-and-greet type activities and taking care of initial business. The director, Drew, talked about how the real focus for the first four days is on taking care of the personal side of things—food, clothing, shelter—and that we'll take care of the classroom and school related side of things later. He said almost verbatim what both Karen and I have said in the past, so it was nice to feel like we were on the same page. We know we can teach; where can we buy food? We're not worried about what to do with our students; is there a decent bakery nearby? So that was good.

At the end of the whole spiel, they gave us a T-shirt for our group picture at Red Square on Sunday, lots of paperwork, and a Starbucks Russia travel mug with a matryoshka doll on it. Given our ever-expanding collection of Starbucks mugs, we felt right at home.

We then went on a tour of the school, and it gave us a chance to talk with many of the new staff. It seems like a nice mix in terms of age, gender, and nationality, and there will certainly be a large mix of interests and activities. The group included a classically-trained pianist, an ice-hockey fanatic, a bass-player who, in a previous life, put out six albums with his band, a former Olympian, and all sorts of other interesting stories. I tried to keep track of all of the different countries people were in last year, but I lost count at about 15—everywhere from Morocco to China to Indonesia to Berlin (that was us) to the US to Canada to Sudan to Hong Kong and on and on and on. It is fascinating to talk with people about where they've been and what they've seen and what different schools and cultures are like.

The School

It's big. I hadn't realized how large the pool would be. Or how big a 640 seat theater/auditorium would be. Or how many classrooms 1250 kids would need. The school is built into a hill, so the ground floor changes depending on where you are in the building. The courtyard is very pretty. The gyms are large. The teacher workout room looks a...wait for it...mazing! If I don't lose weight at this point, it's nobody's fault but my own. The classrooms are classrooms. There's tile in the front part of the room and each kid gets a locker to keep stuff in the room. My windows look right down on the lone tree in the traffic turnaround at the front of the school and Karen looks out on the courtyard. One of the big draws for us in taking the job was the quality of the facilities, and it was nice to get there today and realize that we weren't sold a bill of goods. 

One small part of AASM

 

The Neighborhood

We're not in Kansas anymore. Or Kleinmachnow. Or Colorado. We's in the big city fer shore now! There are grocery stores in walking distance. The Metro stop is about a 10-minute walk, and there's a shopping center attached to the station that has a little bit of everything. About three more minutes down the road is another, bigger mall that has an Auchan store, an Intersport, and a whole bunch of other, smaller stores, including one we deciphered to be a “Lensmasters” which is either in huge violation of various trademarks and copyrights or is the Russian equivalent of Lenscrafters. There's also a Hallmark store. Who knew? We spent about 15 minutes in Auchan, which was just long enough to realize that we won't want for anything during our stay here, however long that may be. It wasn't quite Walmart—I didn't see car tires for sale—but it's pretty close. And, most importantly, they have Staropramen! (That's the Czech beer that I fell in love with in Berlin. It's the little things in life...)

Along the way to the Metro and the Auchan there are a whole bunch of other little shops and Rynoks (kind of an indoor farmer's market with fresh honey, fresh vegetables, fresh breads, flowers, and butcher stalls). We got a really nice loaf of fresh bread for 28 Rubles (about a buck) and the guy who was showing us around remarked that the price three weeks ago was only 26 Rubles but the fires and drought were driving prices through the roof! We got keys made, looked around, and walked back. Our favorite store was probably the combination butcher and chocolate shop. We didn't go in, but it's certainly on the list.

Closing thoughts

We've been saying “We'll see” for so long that it's nice to finally be here to see. And...we'll see. The people we've met so far have been lovely. We need space for a dining room table. The kids have playmates and playdates galore. The traffic noise isn't wonderful. The shops are convenient, plentiful, and stocked. The writing is a guessing game at best and humbling/frustrating at worst. The school facilities are amazing. The commute is much longer than we're used to. I could go on and on.

We've also been saying that it would be an adventure and we see no reason not to continue saying that. We're getting to do and see and experience some very unique things, and we're also getting to share in all of the various experiences that our new acquaintances bring to the table. Between the people we met in Berlin and the people we're meeting and will continue to meet here in Moscow, we're one degree of separation from a huge chunk of the world. We all have stories to tell and the international teaching crowd seems to stock up on some really good ones.  Just this morning, on our very first day, one of our teachers got locked into her apartment.  Not out of, into.  She hollered at her window when she saw one of her colleagues waiting for the bus, and they managed to call one of the green guys (the housing worker-type-people) who then showed up at the apartment, unlocked her door, closed it again to show her what she was doing wrong, promptly locked himself and her in the apartment, and began banging on the door to get someone's attention.  Fun stuff!

So, the adventure continues, this chapter is off to a decent start, and we'll see what comes next. At this point, we've only been in country for a little over 29 hours. The US embassy is tomorrow. IKEA and the Megamall are on Saturday. Red Square on Sunday.  

Life is good. 

The best kids ever!