Defeat

It all happened so fast, and we're still trying to process our decision, but we have plane tickets to return home Friday. Basically, nearly two weeks ago we reminded our charming landlord that our registration was due; he said he would take care of it. Last Monday we still didn't have our papers so we texted him again and he said he would stop by with them on Tuesday. We assumed that meant he had taken care of it, and just hadn't had time to swing by to drop them off. Well, Tuesday he never showed up. Wednesday he called to say he was on his way and upon arrival he informed us that he wasn't going to register us anymore! Nevermind our registration was now a full week expired!! All laws are ambiguous and very much up to interpretation, but as we understand it, we had 48 hours to get registered or leave the country! Panic set in. We contacted a realtor to start looking for a new apartment, met with Aleksei to enlist his help with registration and created a detailed action plan. We agreed if we found a place, any place, that was within walking distance of Finn's school and was willing to register us, we would give it one last try to stay until summer. Well, Aleksei made two unsuccessful attempts to register us and the realtor came up with nothing. Even if we had found a place, we discovered we would have had to leave the country to get a new migration card (for whatever reason we were oblivious to this

requirement the first time we moved and managed to slip through the cracks) prior to registering at our new place; no small feat for a family of four! So, we booked a night in the hotel nearby to get registration (for whatever reason the process actually works fairly seamlessly through a hotel) and made the agonizing decision to give up and come home.

Ever since the police paid us a surprise visit in May, stress levels have been elevated here, especially knowing we were again registered illegally (and sometimes, not at all!). Anyway, it has been an emotional roller coaster here, and leaving is so very bittersweet, but it is nice to finally not have a pit of worry in my stomach for the first time in a long time. We constantly second guess ourselves, wondering if we could have just shown a little more resilience everything would have worked out for us to stay longer, and there is no shortage of feeling like quitters, but we're coming home, and we knew we would have to eventually. We didn't realize how attached we would become. We have so much to look forward to, but we leave a piece of our hearts here.

There is so much more to be said, but alas, we have bags to pack and work to do in order to land somewhat gracefully stateside next week.