Feeling Isolated

Seriously, none of my faithful readers out there want to come visit us?! Certainly one of you has spare time, money, and/or Siberia on your bucket list! It is very likely this will be our only summer here, so unless you love winter as much as we do, this is your chance. After surviving a really rough month, we feel like we need to catch our breath... and make small talk with Americans. Small talk isn't really a thing here, and although serious conversations are nice, we miss casual banter!

Our current landlord finally got us registered (a full four days after the deadline), but he didn't register us at this address!! So here we are, afraid the police will come knocking again. He had agreed to register us here, but then it seems he didn't care enough to figure out how to do it correctly (nor did he let Matt walk him through the process that we are now very familiar with), but paid off some hotel on the far side of town to register us as living there! Hairs are rapidly turning gray (me) and falling out (Matt) from this experience. It really wouldn't be hard for him to do it right if he would just

let us show him how. We will see him again next week when we pay rent and intend to push the issue; either he will register us correctly at this address when we return from Kazakhstan or we will have to leave. Yet again we feel like our relationship with him might be damaged beyond repair due to him being so unreliable and dishonest. Other than that, we really love our new place, for what its worth.

Monday night Finn had another episode of extreme stomach pain and after 40 minutes of him screaming and writhing, we broke down and called an ambulance. Every time we have taken him into the doctor for more testing they have encouraged us to call an ambulance if he has another bad episode, so we did. Its free, after all! A nice middle-aged lady doctor arrived within about 20 minutes and luckily Finn's pain had subsided quite a lot by then. Had it not, they may have whisked him away to a hospital and that thought terrifies me; I avoid hospitals in the US like the plague (hello homebirths!), not to mention in a foreign country where I don't know the language! Because he was stable, she sat down next to him and checked him over and then proceeded to review all of his medical records and talk with Matt for the next hour and twenty minutes (during which time Finn fell back to sleep). We've reached the conclusion that his abdominal pain is stress-related and possibly aggravated by the fold on his gall bladder and consuming fatty foods. So, no more school for Finn. Sad day for Mama. That seriously was the most genius idea ever and I'm slowly coming to terms with letting it go.

He really seemed to enjoy school (he was always giddy with excitement when we picked him up and eager to show us the cute little craft he had made), and he certainly learned lots, but I was asking him about school and he said he didn't like not knowing what he was supposed to do next. I suppose that makes sense. This is the kid that asks "and then what?" a hundred times a day. And then once he knows exactly what we are doing and why, he is quick to inform Lev and the other parent, as though he was fully in charge of the planning. So I can imagine being at school in a foreign language and culture he probably never knows what he should be doing and just copies what the other kids are doing; if he had his way he would know exactly what was coming next and would be able to inform his classmates and tell them what to do. Can we say Type A Personality? Anyway, we are going to take him out of school for the summer and try to de-stress our lives and spend more time at the beach or in the forest, where everyone is more relaxed and happy.

We took the training wheels off Finn's bike and he is a real hazard out there now. He still needs a little bit of help getting going, but then takes off careening over sticks and rocks hollering with glee. Lev scrambles close behind on the balance bike. We explored downtown Novosibirsk the other night and there are loads of cute little coffee shops and quaint outdoor dining; oh, to have a date night.