March 24, 2009
Today we tried the washing machine that came with the apartment. We had heard of these and it was an adventure using it. Here is a picture of the machine after we moved it into the shower room. The agitator is interesting. It only turns clockwise and while it stirs up the water fairly well it is a bit challenged to actually agitate the clothes. We fill the machine with the shower attachment.... and it uses gravity to drain into a bucket which we dump into the tub.... Finally the clothes are wrung out by hand, the wringer on this machine is broken, and the shower becomes the clothes line... We had a fun time using it but we think maybe we'll buy a new one when we move to another apartment.. :) Here is a short video of the process.

We got a request for a map to help visualize where we are in this country with 11 timezones...so here goes. The first map shows Tambov in relation to Lipetsk. The second map gives you an idea of where in Russia we are. You can see Tambov inside the figure and you can see that we're not far from the Ukraine. Hope this helps put some perspective on the geography of Russia.

Our first few weeks in Tambov

March 18, 2009

Here are some pictures of our apartment that we are renting for the first few months we are here in Russia.

We are in the process of getting our paperwork for the residency permit approved so that we can submit it for processing. Most activities related to registration and visas are quite involved here and always take a lot of time. Acquiring a 3-year residency permit is no different. In our first week back we went to a number of different places for a variety of medical and psychological tests. These are all required before we can even begin the submission process. We also had to have our passports, background checks, marriage license and birth certificates translated into Russian and notarized. We had a very successful week and on Monday we went to the Migration office where we were No. 22 in line. Sounds great doesn't it....we stood in a crowd of people for 3 hours before we got to the window to meet with the official. What happened next seems typical of what happens in Russia when interacting with "official" offices. Our documents we brought from the states were fine and our various tests were also fine. However, they didn't like the version of the application that was used (it was taken from their website) and we have to resubmit using an older version of the application. We also found that the office that registered us in Tambov uses a copy of a form signed by the director of the OVIR (Registrar). So we now have to re-register and determine how we can tell the OVIR that they need to change the way they are doing business. There were a variety of other minor issues to be resolved and we are hopeful to be standing in line next Monday morning at 6:00am and hopefully have a number closer to the beginning of the line. Please continue to pray for us in this process. There are many timing issues that we will be faced with and the most important one is that we have to leave Russia by June 6th for 90 days.