After an overwhelming majority vote of one vote by Zac Little, I've returned to the blogosphere to fill your spare moments with tales from 11 time zones away. A lot a lot a lot has happened in the months since I last wrote, and I have to be honest, for the most part it's been disappointing. I think a lack of proper planning on my part is mainly to blame. Here are the cliff notes of what happened:
-Came to Tomsk, Siberia to visit some friends
-More or less ran out of money and was forced to stay in Tomsk (my original plan consisted of living with my friend Dustin in another town)
-Found a place to live within a few days (I pay ~$100 a month to sleep on an old lady's couch. I lived with her when I did a study abroad to here)
-Found a job teaching at a private English school
-Tried to register my visa, because legally you have to
-The immigration office wouldn't let me register my visa, even though legally I have to
-It got really fucking cold
-Found some private students
-Found out it was impossible to extend the type of visa I had, forcing me to return to the US
-The university promised me work, I applied for a student visa through them
-Was forced back to the US of A for a month, sat around, gained 7lbs
-Came back to Siberia a month ago
-The dean of the language department is crazy and forgot who I was, putting my work in danger
-It's still cold
-Got my work problems (hopefully) solved today
-I still unfortunately sleep on a couch and searching for an affordable apartment is nearly impossible
If anyone would like an extended version of any of those events, ask.
Now on to the thrilling tale that I promised a long time ago: My brief trip to Russian jail.
At this time I had moved out of Benjy's uncle's apartment and had taken up residence at a hostel located on Arbat street, the center of tourist activity. I may or may not have already blogged about being there, but I don't remember. Anyways, at some point during my stay, a 36 year old Vietnamese man who lived in Switzerland was assigned to my room. His name was Phan (pronounced "Fun" according to him). After ignoring him for the better part of a day, we became buds. The next day we went around town together and I showed him the sights of Moscow. After 2 weeks there, I was a pretty good tour guide. I was also the only non Russian in the hostel who spoke Russian, so I was able to help people with various things such as buying plane tickets, but I've digressed. After a day of taking in the town, Phan bought me a beer to celebrate. After telling Phan how much I hated the foreigners I'd met who were only in Russia to find a wife, Phan revealed the fact that he was in Russia because he had met a girl on an international dating site, and after months of correspondence, she invited him to come visit. He bought tickets, planned his trip, and then she wrote him to say she had gotten back with her ex-husband. Bitch.
Phan and I headed back to the hostel and Phan began talking to what I had assumed was a homeless person who I had seen around the hostel. It turns out he was actually a fairly well-off Columbian who had fell asleep on the metro a month prior and had had his wallet and passport stolen. Having no money, the hostel had been nice enough to let him sleep on a couch in the entrance way. Every once in a while he got a bed. He spoke no English and no Russian, but luckily Phan spoke Spanish, and was able to translate. I don't know why, but I decided we should drink some more and that I would buy the Columbian kid a beer. We set off to a carry out where Phan and Columbia got a beer, and I bought a bottle of my favourite and rumoured to soon be discontinued champagne. Since we couldn't drink inside the hostel, I said we should just drink on the street. Phan was uncomfortable about it, but I pointed out that everyone else was drinking on the street, and that in my 2 months in Siberia I had never seen anyone bothered about drinking on the street. (short note: drinking on the street is illegal as of 2006(?) but no one bothered to tell the general population, and the police generally don't give a shit).
We sat down at a table directly outside the hostel and began to drink a little bit and chat about our different experiences here. Phan, always ready to contribute to the celebration, asked if anyone would like a snack. We decided to make the 2 minute trek to the McDonald's down the street where he bought us a 20 piece McNugget to share. We returned to the table and got out the sauces and began to eat the McNuggets. Not even 3 McNuggets in, 2 police officers (one with a machine gun) approached our table and shone a flashlight in my face, then picked up my bottle of Sovietskoe Champagnskoe to examine it. Yes, it contained alcohol. We were busted. I told him I thought it was still legal to drink on the street and that we were sorry. He demanded our registration papers. I handed over my passport and what I thought was my registration. This is where the trouble started. I had registered at the hostel, but they hadn't given me the correct paper proving my registration. Phan had arrived that morning and had yet to register (you are allowed 3 days), and Columbia had no documents what-so-ever. I explained this to the officers. They explained they were going to have to take us to the station for not having registration, and for drinking on the street. They actually had a brief argument amongst themselves about this. The one with the gun didn't seem to care that we were drinking, he cared more that we didn't have registration, but the other one was convinced we should be booked on both counts. Luckily the one with the gun seemed to be in charge. My poor attempts to bribe the two officers didn't seem to work either. Perhaps it's for the better. We offered them some Chicken McNuggets as well, which they declined. One of them escorted Phan into the hostel to get his registration papers, while the other one questioned me since i spoke Russian (very poorly at that point since i was nervous). At some point during all of this, some tourists came up and asked the officers if they could take a picture of a cow statue. This detail struck me as kind of stupid so I decided to include it.
Phan and officer #2 returned and we all were escorted to the police station, located a convenient 2 minute walk from the hostel. I feel it's important to mention that we brought the chicken nuggets along too. After all, we didn't know how long we would be sitting there, and perhaps they would keep people from taking advantage of our bums. When we got there, the officers told me we could do things the easy way or the hard way. The easy way was that I would translate and after paying a fine, we could all leave. The hard way was that we would sit in a cell until morning, at which point a real translator would arrive (we'd have to pay for that too). We agreed quickly to option #1. Unfortunately, my Russian wasn't very good at that point in time because i was nervous, and the officers quickly got annoyed. They told us we'd have to stay until morning, and then took our passports. We stood there, and decided we might as well eat our McNuggets. After about 20 minutes, another police officer drug in a drunk and bloody man who had been booked for fighting. He sat him down at a table and tried to interrogate him. We clearly didn't belong here. The drunk man kept trying to talk to us instead of the interrogator. He asked why the hell we were standing around in the police station eating McNuggets, and I answered we had been told to stand there. He escorted the drunk man away. After a few more minutes, the officer returned to tell us that they couldn't get ahold of a translator. He returned our documents and told us to just go away and not do this again. A lesson learned.
