Passport "Issues"
So, you know those things up there? Passports? Yeah, so, it turns out you can't live without them in another country.
I know you knew that already, but in case you were wondering, like, at all, it's 100% true. We can confirm it from personal experience.
You see, about three weeks ago, the lovely Bobbie was taking Matthew down to the clinic in T-land to get a certificate that he was better and could go back to school (if your kid's been sick, you have to have a doctor's permission for him to return). Anyway, to make a long story short, unfortunately, the passports were accidentally left behind inside the public transportation, and our many advertisements offering a reward for their return went unanswered.
So, we needed new passports for Matthew and Bobbie, which means going to the embassy and getting them. Unfortunately for us, the nearest embassy to T-land without crossing a border is here:
Yep. Moscow. Our wonderful capital city, only 4,700 km away. So, it was time for a trip. But first, a cute picture of Matthew wearing the colors of his favorite team (or, in honor of the fact that it's an English team, perhaps I should say "colours of his favourite team"), Liverpool:
Now, I must admit that I was loathe to leave the work at a very busy time for me to come here to get some new passports made, but there are some advantages. First of all, we can't get decent beef in T-land, so Bobbie bought some steaks and made them up with a squash salad thing that was super yummy.
We also got to visit our friends and coworkers here while we waited for the documents to be ready, and they gave us their old roller blades that their kids had outgrown. Steven and Matthew love them!
We also took the boys over to IKEA one day, where they got to play in the ball pit (always a popular destination):
Look at the wonders of the western world: shopping with carts!
And, since we had to be here anyway, of course I got to do a language check on our friends who have lived here and studied Russian for a couple of years. You might remember their daughter from pictures a year or two ago when I was here checking them then. The boys had such a great time playing with another kid who speaks English (though I don't think her baby sister provides quite the same level of energy as Matthew and Steven when they play together!).
Here the boys are playing train with friends while waiting for one of them to complete his Russian interview (which I've been listening to for the past two days to write up some recommendations to help them improve in the future).
