On the run from the law...

Ah, the miracles of bureaucracy! When a foreigner comes to Russia, he has 3 business days to register with the local authorities of the city he is in. That's the law. When I arrived 2 months ago, I gave a copy of my passport and visa to the school's lawyer and merrily went about my business. Little did I know at the time, but the school's lawyer was away on holiday for 2 weeks. Of course, he told his assistant to take care of stuff like this. And, of course, this assistant didn't. The good news: 99 times out of a hundred, registering late isn't a huge problem because there's so many different registrations to keep track of that it is easy to slip through the cracks. The bad news: we (me and 5 others from the school) didn't. 

So, on Wednesday I got a nice little break from school to go down at the Migration Office. We waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, my turn came. So, I went into the back, signed a document saying I didn't register on time and so I will pay a fine to make sure that it doesn't stay on my record. The kicker was I had to write in Russian: "I understand Russian. I don't need an interpreter." I can write in Russian, but only with the same speed and accuracy of a 6 year old. I get about halfway through when they realize how long it's going to take me to write this out. They wrote it out for me on another sheet of paper to copy. Of course, it was in the Russian cursive, which I have trouble reading in the best of times, but especially when the handwriting is poor. So, another guy from my group just took the pen and finished writing it for me. Apparently an "affidavit" has a different meaning here... 

I then was thumbprinted. Then fingerprinted. Then handprinted. I don't know if you have ever been fingerprinted, but the ink they use is very sticky and difficult to remove. It is of greater difficulty when they don't provide you with anything to clean your hands with. Fortunately, we had come prepared with a pack of babywipes which left my hand smelling mountain air fresh all day. Then we waited, and waited, and waited, and then were told the fine we had to pay. The school took care of the fine and so I am now completely legal, almost. I still have yet to receive a new registration paper to erase my old (illegal) registration. 

I discovered  Highway 61 Revisited to be an excellent album to listen to while walking to work. 

I proofread one of my Korean students'  English paper. It was an essay on "The Road Not Taken." This kid is extremely intelligent. Maybe a little too intelligent for his own good. This 7th grader's interpretation of the poem as a social satire critiquing capitalistic society using neo-Marxist terms would be exhibit A.