From Russia With Love

Alright. So I probably shouldn’t write this with how frustrated I am right now…maybe I should wait until I’ve calmed down and assessed the situation a little more. But what good story ever came from a calm, rational point of view?

I’ve talked to quite a few people about this, so you might already know, but I think it’s time to go public.

Getting into Russia, much less staying and working here, is very difficult. You have to have a visa, and once you are in a city, you have to register your visa within the city unless you are there for less than three days. Well, obviously, living and working I am in Moscow for more than three days so I have to register. This is true throughout all of Russia, so if I left to go to St. Petersburg and was there for more than three days, I’d have to turn in my registration here and re-register in St. Petersburg. This is also true for if I leave the country (I have to turn in my registration and re-register upon returning to Moscow).

My American colleagues and I found out less than two weeks ago that there are problems with the paperwork (Russians are all about paperwork and stamping everything) with registering foreign teachers and that if we left the city of Moscow (and this is until the end of the year), when we returned, we could not re-register and therefore couldn’t legally be in the city and would lose our jobs (and without work a work visa is no longer any good…). Now, yes, I do have a (somewhat expensive) plane ticket to Egypt (so do the rest of the teachers) because we had been laboriously planning our trip to Egypt that would have been less than two weeks away. It’s just a little bit annoying (ok, a lot) because this has been a problem for at least three months, and we just found out about it. After we bought our tickets. Which could have been avoided. Anyway.

So this is why I’m telling you: I’m asking you to please pray that this situation would be handled and that in some way, I would be able to accept whatever circumstance I am forced to be in. And pray that I would make the right decision about whether or not to stay.

So now I’m a prisoner of Russia.

OMG what if they go back to being communists and don’t let us out of the country, ever? And I have to just eat little rations of bread and they’ll make me work in a shoe factory and my fingers will all get cut off from the machines and they’ll make us stop wearing colors on our clothes and I’ll be all oppressed and I’ll write these posthumous-award-winning novels with symbolism about the evil tyrannical government by candlelight and I’ll probably get hunted by the KGB but then North Korea will swoop in and…I’m going to the embassy. I’m just going to get airlifted out. This is serious stuff. I know I’m being a little dramatic, but it could happen. It happened once and it lasted a long time. And who thought this would happen? Right? So now I could get deported. If I could just apparate like Harry Potter then this would be so much easier.

This will be me in 10 years:

So goodbye desert sands. Goodbye tan. Goodbye seeing God’s chosen people’s origins. Goodbye experience of a lifetime. The closest I’m getting to seeing the Pyramids now is on Google maps via satellite.