Cindy didn’t have to be at school early today and so we planned on sleeping until 6:30 and yet at 5am we were up and couldn’t get back to sleep so she took the normal bus. It was far too light for me to try and go back to bed - plus I had stripped the bed linens so that I could wash them - so I was condemned to staying awake. I did several loads of laundry in preparation for our house cleaner to iron. I cleaned all the jars of spices, the spice racks, the spice corner, and several hard to reach places in the kitchen. By that time the bed linens were ready so I remade the bed. I couldn’t believe it was still only 9:45 and I was pooped. The cleaner finally came at 10:45 and I exited the apartment and walked for two and a half hours and did a little shopping before returning to the clean apartment. The Russian equivalent of cottonwood trees are all tossing out their little white fluffy seeds and it looks like it is snowing in some parts of the city. You have to be careful walking through that stuff since it can get into your nose and mouth, and man does it suck the moisture out of your system. If I had had a camera there was a great shot of all of this tree ‘snow’ with fully blossomed lilacs and chestnuts in the immediate background. Quite lovely.
Yesterday must have been a Vietnamese holiday of some sort since there were scores of them, half kids and half adults, yelling and partying well past 10 pm right under our bedroom window. Right now there are about fifteen kids between the ages of one and seven yelling and crying and screaming, right under my office window. I shall not miss this part of international living.
Cindy has been trying to get the powers that be at AAS to give us an inventory list of what was in the apartment when we arrived. We had purchased a lot of items from the people who lived here before us but we can’t find the list and we don’t want to sell anything that was provided by AAS. So far no one has given her the list, but today someone in the admin office wrote to her to say that it looks like we are trying to sell a fan and room heater that belongs to the school. They can’t give us an inventory list but they can tell us what belongs to them!! It is infuriating to say the least. The last thing we want is for anyone to think we are trying to take advantage of the school.
Since we had a late lunch yesterday our dinner was rather meager. I made chicken sandwiches with some fantastic bread we purchased at a bakery. Nothing fancy, just wonderful sandwiches, a few pickles, some Fritos and sliced avocado. Since everything is nice and clean in the kitchen, we’ll go to some neighborhood restaurant for dinner tonight. The temperatures stay well into the seventies and the sun stays high until at least nine-thirty. If we were staying I would certainly purchase some blackout curtains to keep the sun out of our rooms in the afternoon and evening.
Best wishes, Cindy and Wm
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