Friday Feb.16th in Zheleznogorsk

Today was the first real day of work start to finish. Our normal day consists of getting up in the morning and showering (no shower curtain by the way), head down to the plush hotel restaurant for breakfast with the crew at 7:15 and then into the bus to work by 8:00.

We arrive at the second biggest iron ore facility in Russia. Very eerie to see. Looks like a scene from a movie. Every aspect of our day revolves around translators asking questions for us. Even this morning, our site safety orientation was translated sentence by sentence and we just had to smile and nod. Due to the fact that we only now speak 6 words of Russian, we are accompanied constantly by translators. Sergei is our young translator and doubles as a mining technologist of some sort. Stas is the other translator from Magadan (Ewan and Charlie anyone?) and we are inundated with Alexanders or Sergeis. Except for Yuri and Dmitri, everyone it seems is named Alexander or Sergei. 50/50 chance usually of getting names right.

So, that is where we are now. Without boring you with details of the job, we are getting our way through to get the power on to many things so that we can start setting it all up.

We are served lunch on site. Today’s meal consisted of beet sauerkraut dish, a fish in gelatin dish, sweet water, roast beef, rice, pickles, bread, cheese, grapes and then tea. I was a little confused as to which bowl was what, so I mistakenly put salt in my tea. At first I thought the tea was different, then realized I was actually an idiot. We asked the translator to get me a new cup, but when he asked for me, he dropped the idiot part from the translation. We obviously don’t leave the lunch room hungry.

At 4:00 today, we left the site by the same bus we arrived in. It is about a 20 minute drive from the hotel to the site. We have been doing everything as a group, so the time I get to myself before dinner is when I document my day here. Because we only have internet connection on site, I type in advance and then just cut and paste the post for the blog.

Tonight we had planned on going for pizza. The hotel restaurant is very nice, but we are overwhelmed by the very rich food and were feeling like a familiar meal. So, we crossed town by cab and went to the Pronto pizza place. One of our translators was leaving for Moscow for a few days, so this doubled as a kind of dinner to see him off. We had many beer and many pizzas and just talked for a few hours. Eventually my slang English became a curiosity of our young translator, so I had to teach him some good old Canadian slang. I like to think of myself as a goodwill ambassador of sorts. Unfortunately, I will not disclose here what I taught him  Those that know me can well imagine the new words our friend has is in English arsenal.

We made our way back to the hotel for night cap. The hotel restaurant is a multi-use facility and we went there for some Armenian cognac and beer. There is a dance floor and DJ adjacent to the restaurant, but we did not venture to go dancing. Laughter is universal so with help of translators, we made a point of sharing our jokes and stories.

Another day is done and is one day closer to being home... Mar 10th I have to leave Moscow. We will have some long days ahead. Lots to do.

Talk to you all soon.