I’m already in America. The flight happened to coincide with Gazprom’s shareholders’ general meeting, which I really regret missing. It’s a wonderful event, and it’s a shame to have missed it. Still, no matter—there will be more meetings, and Gazprom isn’t going anywhere. From now on, I’ll be periodically posting notes on the theme of “our people at Yale University.” For now, the whole family is trying to get over the jet lag, and our neighbors are clearly aware of it—our kids wake up at three in the morning and start raising hell. Yesterday we managed to rent a car and drive to Walmart for groceries (my wife said that almost everything costs half as much as it does in Moscow). First impressions: absolute squirrel madness. An unimaginable number of squirrels. They sit on every branch and stare at you with their little bead-like eyes. Zakhar is trying to catch them, but so far without success.
I grabbed the picture from Yandex, but it really does look exactly like that. And yesterday we spotted an actual owl—it was sitting on our roof. New Haven doesn’t seem like such a small city, and yet it’s like a zoo all around us. I’m anxiously awaiting the appearance of raccoons and skunks.