Кошмар!

The past 24 hours have been a roller-coaster, that's for sure. Throughout the day as I thought of what I would include in this entry I came up with a bunch of excellent titles (including, but not limited to): My Birthday?, White Russians....Mmmm!, The Sky is Falling!, and Lost....again. I don't completely like the current title because my day really wasn't a nightmare, but one of those great days to look back on and have a hearty laugh years from now. For what it is worth, I'm laughing now. Enough all ready about the title; on to the action.

Monday evening I was supposed to be home at 22:20 so that Slava could stop by and help me hook up my washing machine (the шланг was too короткий (in English this sounds funny)), but arrived a few minutes late. Just as he was getting into his car to drive off, I came walking up. A few days ago we had decided that to save the 600 rubles that extra long hoses would cost, I would adopt the side-saddle approach to using the toilet. Just two minutes after we made this decision and he left I did the calculation and realized that we were only talking about $20. Двадцать bucksов in exchange for a year of riding my john in an unnatural position (to say the least). At first I was tempted to call him up and say that I would pay for it, get the longer hoses. Then I reconsidered and thought of the great stories I could tell my heirs about back when the terlets weren't straight. That and the possibility of propping my legs up on the side of the tub while unloading convinced me that I should leave things as they were. Anyhow, after a little difficulty getting the тройник (t-joint used to split water for toilet and washing machine) situated, everything was fine. He insisted that I run a load to make sure everything was working. I felt that I should wait for it to finish and ended up staying up until a bit past one to make sure no leaks sprang and to hang up my clean wet towels.

While I was waiting for the machine to finish, I grabbed some food. I absolutely love the brown bread here in Russia. When I was shopping on Sunday, I bought just another dark loaf. It was called something different than what I usually buy, but I didn't think anything of it. Until I ripped off a chunk to eat with some tomato sauce and noticed a gargantuan white grub-like thing inside my bread. Having momentary Survivor delusions, I grabbed the white dude and chucked it in my mouth. It didn't crawl around (too much) and didn't taste like meat so I gulped it down and inspected the bread a little more closely. To my surprise, I found a few more of these little guys poking their heads out from the bread and wondered why I hadn't noticed them earlier (the loaf was about a third gone). This was enough to make me glance over the ingredients. Not seeing any meat words (in my vocabulary), I finished my snack and started to write in my journal. I wasn't able to get more than a few lines down when curiosity overcame me, so I grabbed the ingredient list and my handy dandy dictionary and went to town. My pocket dictionary didn't have most of the words, but fortunately the one on my Clié did. The second to the last ingredient: smoked lard. Excellent. I decided that I wasn't ready to chomp down on Wilbur yet, so picked the remaining white grubs out of my bread. It sure does have a sweet smoked aroma, but I don't believe I'll be eating хлеб "Белорусский" for a while.

Getting to bed a bit later than usual, I set my alarm for 8. That didn't go too well, and I ended lumbering out of my bed at about 10. Since I didn't have to be in to the office until 14, I threw my whites into the washing machine for another trial run (and because I hadn't done laundry for two weeks and was running out of clean undies). While I made some breakfast, shaved, showered, and did one of my lesson plans the machine chortled away. When it finally stopped making noises, I unloaded all my clean wet things and hung them to dry. Having some more Belorussian bread with sauce and kvas for lunch, I left for the office. While there I began working on my other lesson plan. Round about 14:20 in walked Elena and Ksenia, two prospective students the same age as my brother Timothy. I was beginning the grammar diagnostic portion of our interview when the building shook a little and the windows rattled. The other ladies in the office seemed a bit distraught, but after looking out the window they said something that led me to believe a jet or helicopter was really close. I finished the interview and went back to my lesson plan. Not ten minutes had passed when the accountant's daughter phoned. Whatever she said got her mom all worked up into a tiff. When she hung up the phone she mentioned something about землетрясение to me. I smiled and said okay. She didn't let me get away with that, so I decided to look up the word, but I couldn't find it because I didn't know how to spell it. Judging from her gestures and the unexplained shaking I thought earthquake. Looking that word up gave me my землетрясение. Lovely - a little earth shake-a-rousky. But nothing to worry a hardy Russian who would trek for an hour to get to school when the buses couldn't make it because of deep snow. Right? Wrong. A few minutes later I found out that all schools had been closed until they figured out what had happened. Eeew, pick me! I think an earthquake happened. Case closed. In the office they were unable to get anybody to answer the phone at school № 40 where I teach. Armed with a class cancelled sign, I made my way to school. The first thing that struck me when I exited our building was the number of people just standing around. En route to the bus stop I have to pass several government buildings - all of which had huge crowds outside. I chuckled to myself that these people were protecting themselves by getting out of the building and standing two feet from it. Smooth move. I found that my school building was opened and figured it made sense to have classes. While I was waiting for my first set of students to show up, I whipped out the Clié again to look up some word when what should pop up, but a notification that today was my Uncle Dave's birthday (happy birthday, Uncle Dave!). This is nice and all, but if I remember the tale correctly, I was supposed to enter this fine world on the 21st of September according to my mom's doc. For some unknown reason I liked my watery cocoon and stayed there for three more weeks. But in a mildly far fetched way, I suppose you could say that today was birthday. Happy 24th to me! Okay, now back to the classroom. 16:20 (starting time), and no students. Hmm, I wonder if this is any indication of my evening. A few minutes later in walked one person. We talked about the events of the day and I checked over her homework. She said that the authorities were predicting another one at 17:30. I planned on keeping an eye on the clock, but either the authorities were a little bit off or we need to review telling time because at 16:35ish another one (stronger in my opinion) struck. The sound of running in the hall and the nice chap who is the security guard told us to leave the building. Fair enough. I grabbed my things as quick as I could (the shaking had finished) and we left. Still wanting to continue the lesson, I asked my pupil if she wanted to study outside. Come on teach, get a life. She wanted to go home and check on granny. So I figured, no sense hanging around an empty school building and left.

Been in Kaliningrad a little over two weeks and still I haven't found time to get my cell phone working. This is bad because I use it as my clock. What a great opportunity - a whole afternoon / evening to get my cell phone operational. Walked back in the direction of my place hoping to find a Би-лайн store. About fifteen minutes away from the school I found one. But it was closed. Must have been due to the earthquake. Muttering to myself (in Russian) I continued on. It started to rain when I was near the office, so I swung by there to drop off the boom-box I was carrying. And then stayed for forty-five minutes or so. I thought that if another tremor came, it would be easier to get out of a first floor office than my second floor apartment. I attempted to phone the director of the school to let her know that I decided to cancel classes but she didn't pick up. Got another lesson mostly planned and then headed for home. Once I arrived at the bus stop, what I thought was my number came. Inside the windows were quite fogged up because of the weather. Usually I ride the bus late at night (when the route is a little bit different), and this coupled with the foggy windows made me miss my stop. I noticed things that I'd never seen before and we kept going. It seemed logical that once the end of the bus route came, it would go back for another loop. This wasn't quite the case and I found myself walking about in the suburbs without much of a clue where I was. The main difference between the 'burbs and downtown where I live is that the mean height of an apartment complex is only 6-8 stories instead of 12+. And there are a lot more green things around. I started meandering in the way I thought the bus had come from, hoping to find a road. After a while the sidewalk was paved (or had been at one time) instead of being a muddy blob. Further on I came to a big road, with buses passing every few minutes. I was up for the exercise, so kept plodding in the right direction. It was pretty neat to see that side of town. I think the highlight was being up on a bridge that crossed over a railyard. Trains in every direction. There was even a control tower that looked somewhat akin to what you usually find at an airport. As a matter of fact, I think that it was in much better condition than air traffic control at Kaliningrad's airport. The rain began yet again as I came to the other side of the bridge. Luckily, there was a small shelter at the bus stop not too far ahead. So I decided I'd walked for long enough (probably 75-80 minutes) and waited. After watching the buses go by and trying to read the street names before they pulled away from the curb, I finally saw a number I knew and boarded. We hadn't gone 500 meters when I started recognizing things. So close but so far. I think it was 20:30 when I finally got off the bus for my 15 minute walk home. Four hours earlier I had left school. Soon I would be home and could relax a little bit....

The rain picked up in earnest as I neared home. I was a little surprised to find a good number of people on the landing outside my entrance. One of them was my neighbor, Бабушка Женя (Grandma Jenny), that I met last Sunday evening. She looked worried. Great. By the time we had climbed the two flights of stairs to my apartment I understood that the apartment below me had been rained upon, presumably by me. I opened the door and in we went. Yup, my bathroom floor was wet. She offered to check things out because I was still quite wet from the rain and wouldn't be able to tell where the water was coming from. No argument from me. She tried to tell me a few more things and I did finally get the picture - the main water had been turned off. I thought it was just for my flat, so I said that was fine with me. She elaborated that it was for everybody in my building - the first, second, third, fourth, etc. floors. Okay, now I saw the problem. In addition, the water had dripped down into the electrical box so the power was out for everybody on my floor (except me, for what reason I don't know) and a few floors above me. I said that my friend was good with plumbing and that he didn't live very far away. She replied that she'd be outside with the rest of the people (her apartment was dark, thanks to me). After mopping up the water on the floor, turning off the water into my apartment, putting a bowl under the faulty joint (my little тройник), and briefly assessing the damage from землетрясение (two things fell off my TV - the remote and my stuffed guard dog) I hunted for Slava and Nina's cellular numbers. They wouldn't work for some reason. About this time Бабушка Женя knocked on my door to check on the status of my calls. The only thing I could figure was that my phone wasn't working, so I told her this. We went into her apartment so I could try calling from her phone. While she chased her cats out of my apartment, I tried dialing unsuccessfully. She glanced at the numbers I had written down and told me that after the earthquake all cell phone service had been down. Okay, now what. I told her that they lived only five minutes away, so I would run over there and explain the problem. Ладно. When I arrived I was happy to see Slava's van out front, that meant they would be home. Ehhh, wrong. Nobody answered when I rang, knocked, rang, banged. Nothing. Since they live on the first floor I whipped out my handy dandy flashlight and peered in through the windows, banging on a few. Same response. At a loss for what to do, I was meandering in front of the outside entrance when I heard my name. Looking up, right beside me stood Slava. As you may recall, he speaks no English, so with my broken Russian I explained the situation. He understood, but said he had to get his wife. They had been shopping at the supermarket and had too many bags to carry. After picking up Nina and Milana we returned to their apartment to grab the rental contract for my apartment and then back to my place. After maybe half an hour things were straightened out, my neighbors had water and electricity, and Slava took his wife and daughter back home, promising to be back in ten minutes to help figure out the problem.

It was a long ten minutes, so I started translating the instructions on the internet card I bought this afternoon after some tea and the last of my pork laden bread. Twenty four hours after he hooked up my washing machine found him taking it apart again. The hose that was purchased to replace the short one was defective and that was the culprit of my leak. Turning my washing machine at an angle even less conducive for toileting we hooked up the short hose. No leak. I had promised him some tea so we moseyed (how d'ya like that 'Mr. Grammarian sez') into the kitchen. Over a cup of green tea, I discovered that the center of the quakes had been just 40 kilometers outside of Kaliningrad. And that the bigger one was 5 something on the Richter scale. Correct me if I'm wrong Daddy, but I think that is bigger than the ones we had in Columbia back in the early 1990s. I can still remember sitting on the gym floor waiting to choose my prize from Tom Watt sales when the whole building went up and down. The principal who was standing on the stage fake fell off and ran to check on the boiler that she thought had exploded. Ahh, the fond memories. But I'll save that one for a later day.

I suppose this brings to a close the recounting of мои ясные дни (pardon the incorrect plural form, I'm listening to Олег Газманов). What is the moral of the story? When you wake up in the morning and decide not to bring your camera with you because you haven't taken any pictures for the past week and a half and wonder why today would be any different, ignore your common sense and bring the camera anyway!