Time Passes

And so time passed. January became February and February became March. My days were spent going over to Zoya's for the afternoons and spending the rest of the day surviving: pumping water, dumping water, cooking, cleaning, loading the stove, you know. I grew to be better and better friends with Zoya and her family. Once people learned that we were connected with them, they breathed a sigh of relief. They were a well liked and respected family and people finally felt like they could call us their own. Most of the store owners now knew me and we would chat when I would stop in. Most remarked that they couldn't believe I was speaking their language and when they found out I was foreign, it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, although they don't have sliced bread. We began teaching English at a nearby village and everyone loved that. They felt like we had a legitimate job and were doing something worthwhile for the community.
But we were not without issues. We had the police, more like the FBI, following us everywhere. They visited our neighbors, the school we were working at, some of the shop owners asking about us. Why were we here? What did we say we were doing? The funniest question was to one of our neighbors: "We have seen them climbing that hill over there. Why are they climbing that hill?" Our neighbor responded that she had no idea and maybe they should ask us. We were using the hill for hiking and exercise purposes but I guess they thought we were spying on something...although there is nothing but the village for miles. We even got visited personally by the police. I forced them to find a translator from Russian to the local language. They thought that was SO weird and were slightly insulted (most police are Russian, not minorities). I guess we checked out because they never showed up again.
We continued having the owner's dad show up once a month, on average, to kick us out. We actually spent long hours cultivating relationships with the owner, her fiancee, and her sister and husband. They were the owners of the house and we didn't have a contract so we wanted to make sure that this place was ours. And we just loved hanging out with them. So, we would mention that their dad wanted us out again and they would roll their eyes assuring us that they didn't want the house and their dad was definitely not going to get it. But it was always stressful arguing with him. We soon learned that he was drunk almost daily now and his wife was kicking him out of the house and he needed a place to live. Of course A, the owner, and her sister, S, were livid. He would completely junk the place and have free reign to drink and they didn't want that in their house.
I was pulled into the village administration building (every single village has one. It's the base the police use to know what's going on everywhere) one day. The head lady was furious with me. Why hadn't I come by and declared we were living there? The regional police had come by demanding to know why there were Americans living in this village and she had no idea. I apologized over and over. When she was done scolding (as they love to do), she smiled, laughed that I only spoke the minority language and told me to come tomorrow with all my paperwork. I did and gave her the copies of the humanitarian aid organization we were partnering with and she felt like that would keep the police happy. We were the best of friends then.
In general, life was good.