Two years, three weeks later....my work here is done.
I have two more days of work left here at the Kupol Mine Site and on Wednesday I am flying out of here.  Looking back, I only thought I'd be in Russia for about two months, maybe around six months at the most, and now over two years later the project is coming to a close.  I've slacked off a lot on updating this blog with reports of what's going on around the site, mostly because it was just a lot of the same old crap, work work work.  But now a lot of things are actually finished or on the verge of being finished.  Many parts of the Mill building are already signed over to Kinross and they are in use.  The Assay Lab has been in full operation for months now, all the Administrative Offices (and there are a lot) are signed over and full of Kinross staff, there are classrooms upstairs by the offices where they are training all the people who will be running the mill, the Truckshop (where the roof was collapsed at this time last year) is fixed and signed over.  It's a different place than it was even a few months ago that's for sure.
The carpentry side of things is almost wrapped up, I was looking over a list of what is left to do and most of it was either painting or insulating that needed to be done in various areas, I have no problem being laid off if that's all that's left to do.  The Russians that are left can have fun with that.   In about two months the last people working for Orocon should be (ideally) just about finished on the site and heading home.
Other than that, another guy died in the past week.  A Russian who was jumping out of the passenger side of one of the big Kamaz trucks landed on the ice and slipped, went into a coma and was flown out of camp and died a couple days later.
And it was National Women's Day in Russia yesterday so we had fancier food for supper...and two weeks ago was another holiday, National Defenders of the Motherland Day, again all that meant was slightly above average food for supper.
And I just found out a few weeks ago that this one Chukchi named Wasa that we were working with last year killed a guy in Bilibino last summer when he was on his break and is now in jail for the next nine years.  I was wondering why he never came back to work, I guess that's a good enough reason.  Got drunk and knifed some guy in Bilibino.  Apparently he did four years for killing a guy in Anadyr some years ago as well.
And in less depressing and slightly more humorous news, I just heard today that this other Chukchi that works here with the camp maintenance guys (and has a glass eye) decided to take one of the trucks out for a joyride yesterday because he saw it sitting there and I guess he wanted to see if he could drive.  So then he dents up one side of the truck by hitting the gymnasium (I can understand that, I mean gymnasiums can be hard to miss) and then turns around and hits a container and dents up the other side.  And for that he didn't get fired.  But if the security guys had caught him drinking a beer on any night that isn't Saturday night, he could get fired for that.
I wonder how much I'll miss how retarded it is out here.