Grading Exams

I love my students.  I'm really enjoying their perspectives on the world and freely and openly expressing our cultures/values/beliefs in class.  This is an excerpt from one exam:

Question:
What is culture?  Please include at least 7 characteristics of culture as discussed in class.

Answer:
Culture is a mix of one nation/country's coisin, belief, the way of children's upbringing, attitude to guests (hostility), music and literature and also the way of greeting and gestures are important.  All these and many other characteristics make one culture uniq and special.

The best line is about attitude to guests... hospitality and hostility are so close sometimes.... aren't they?

New Christmas Traditions at HTPC

We started a new tradition this year at HTPC - Amy's idea!  We had families bring in a Christmas ornament to decorate the tree in the sanctuary!  Here you can see Jim [left] helping Daniil [center] hang an ornament.  Sergei [right] is hanging an ornament too!

What a cool tradition.  We prayed for families and individuals as they hung ornaments on the tree.

Teachers show

What?  Dancing as a part of a mission work?

 An American Boy...

So, I'm a bit confused that as an associate professor at one of the best universities in Russia... the teachers are expected to perform for the students...  But that's what came to pass...  

So each department at our university is expected to put together a performance for the students... our performance was about "an American boy" [which coincidentally is a really popular 80s song in Russia] (I played the American boy) as he tries to understand the academic traditions of a Russian university.  

He picks up things quickly and learns a traditional Russian dance (with an onstage costume change!) and then dances with the entire department [see below].  It was fun, but pretty unexpected to improve lines in Russian in front of our entire university!

Hopefully NOT 'lost in translation'

There's a pretty large evangelical church in Tyumen called, "Light to the World."  We work with them sometimes and on this particular weekend, there is a youth conference for teens all over our region.  Amy and I were there on Friday night to enjoy worship with the gang and to meet the three Americans who had come to Tyumen to speak for the conference.

I was really surprised and honored when they asked if I could help to translate from English into Russian for this morning's session.  Then the kicker happened.  Well,  the guys and girls are going to be separated for the morning session... and the Russian guy translators are a bit shy to translate this topic... that's right.  In our family we spell the topic S-R-X.   You get the picture.

Well, needless to say, I needed to brush up on some vocabulary last night to prepare myself for the talk today.  Thank you Tom Robinson and 10 years with Turning Point Youth Group at Knox Pres for preparing me for this!

It went great... I don't think I embarrassed myself or the speaker... but there were certainly some young men enlightened if not convicted.

Class in the hall!

We didn't have a classroom for about half of our class, so we made do with a discussion about the US election in the hallway...

Life is good!

Comfort foods

It's starting to get cooler outside...which means comfort food!




This is borscht!


I really love powdered chai... can't buy it here, but with a few key ingredients from America... you can make it happen (I still need to filter it when I make it, because I have real cardamon, not ground... but I'll fix that sometime.

English discussion club

This fall English discussion club is all about human character. We've been talking about persistence, forgiveness, courage, honesty, etc.
It's been really wonderful as we've been using the histories in the Bible to show good human character with God's help.
Long time attendees of discussion club are also doing short presentations about people they admit for these qualities.

Masha's birthday

Masha is one of our greatest friends here in Tyumen.  We first met her via English Discussion Club back in 2006, but in 2008 when Amy moved here it was an instant connection and they've been fast friends ever since!

Masha and her husband Vasya on her birthday... I think it was coincidence that they were dressed identically.

Our scores!  I rocked the house and actually got more than 100 points!

Moving

Here's a photo of Amy in one of the ministry garages. The former director of camp Ark sold her apartment with her brother and bought a new one. It won't be ready for two years, so she's moving in with a friend and needs to store a few things.  She was living in the fourth floor and there was no elevator!
It was a rainy day, but for the actual move, the rain stopped!

Russian discussion club

Amy and I continue to work on our language skills.  Because of our current work schedule we can't attend Russian lessons at the university, but we can still attend Russian discussion club once a month.
The topic this month was about the roles of women in society.Can they have both a career and a successful home life.  Perspectives were shared from China, Russia, Iraq, England, Mongolia, Georgia, and America.

Meet our new teammate: Sophia!

SURPRISE!

I was at the University, having just finished teaching for the day when I got a phone call from Jeff [our teammate].  He asked if I could get the ministry van and come over as quickly as possible.  Natasha needed to go to the hospital!  I has surprise, shocked and worried.

Then he said, she just had a baby!  He totally had me.  I quickly reviewed the date.  It is NOT April 1.  What kind of joke is this?!  No joke, it's a girl!

So we rushed over (which amounted to more like 40 minutes) and spent some time with Jeff, his father and law and AJ while Natasha and little Sophia headed off to the birthing house to make sure everything was A-OK.

Wow!  Blessings upon their family!!!

Dr. Pepper?!

The Pepper gets its own post!  Can you believe we found Dr. Pepper in Russia?!  In Tyumen!!!  Amy found it and bought us a few cans for a special treat... yeah, it was like $3 a can, but worth it!!!

Honoring our teachers!

It's the second year of a great tradition!  We have our Russian professor and her daughter [also a teacher] over to our house for dinner to honor the first day of school (university students too!)

[l to r -> Jeff, Tatiana, Amy, Regina]

First Day of School

The first day of school in Russia is a major rite of passage.  We were really fortunate to be included in this big family tradition along with our friend Tanya and her son Igor.  Igor is 7 years old and just starting school.  Children go to school VERY dressed up the first day and they bring flowers or other small gifts for their teachers.  Then, on the last day of school their final year they dress very similarly to school (girls do their hair like little girls etc.)

Here are a few pictures of this major life event!

 Igor walking to school (gift in hand)

Igor sitting at his desk for his first year of school

Window guards for the CEC screens

So football (um... soccer) has become quite popular after church of late with the lovely weather... but there are also two newly broken screens.

So...

a solution.

Gogol

Crazy interesting and hard Russian lessons this week. We actually read some Gogol in Russian. Pretty dang cool. But hard. I said every third word wrong (mostly stress in the wrong place, or then there's the soft and hard consonants.

Here's a funny example.

The word in Russian for soul is dooSHA (душа) Stress on the capital letters.
If you don't have a soul, you say soul like this dooSHE (души). But the plural of soul (souls) is spelled exactly the same way, but pronounced DOOshe (души). Well, needless to say our tutor, Irina, was super patient with me and I'm amazed she didn't break out in tears and how I was ruining some wonderful Russian literature.

You know, our Russian is really okay. People understand us and complement us. But, we make about .5 mistakes for every sentence we speak. Russian is just THAT hard. We're really thankful that we're doing as well as we are, that we're still making progress after FOUR years and that we were advised at Missionary Training International during our PILAT training that we should study as long as we live here. It's hard, but people really respect us for trying.

I woke up in the middle of the night a few weeks ago (after tent camp) and picked up Amy's arm. I said to her in Russian, "Who's there (кто это)?" and then, "Whose arm is this (чья рука)? Then I fell back asleep. I didn't remember a word. But Amy got a kick out of it.

A Wrinkle in Time

Last summer we had our first ever Book Club with our advanced speakers from English Discussion Club. Maybe you even remember that we read the book, "The Giver" by Lois Lowry (highly recommended). It won the Newbery Medal and is really in fashion right now as it's a Teen Dystopia novel (a la Hunger Games, only written earlier).

Well, this year we decided to read "A Wrinkle in Time." And what a wrinkle it was. Like time travel all the way back to 6th grade. I gotta tell you, it was awesome to read this book again. I think the third book in the series is really my biggest favorite, but I loved them all.

Well, the conversations that we had ranged from "What does it mean to be normal?" "Do you want to be normal or unique?" "Is there really such a thing as good and evil?" "What does it mean to love someone?" (meaning, are there different kinds of love besides just romantic love). We talked of angels, of heaven, of eternity, of fighting against evil and a host of other questions.

We had a great time and really began to bond together as a smaller group (in the summer our Discussion Club goes from a regular group of about 35 people to about 15).

Here are some photos from our closing picnic together:new topics for D-Club brainstorming game.

more of the brainstorming competition

what? Jeff telling a story?

the picnic had so much food, and it was delicious!

and the Epic conclusion of the Toilet Saga/Epic

Zhenya (the plumber) came back! And he brought a friend. Who said that they had improperly installed the toilet in the first place. The took the whole back end of it apart and fixed it!

I only scrubbed the rust stains (from our water) off for an hour. With lemons. It smelled (and still smells) lovely.

I can't believe it. We have a working toilet and a working bathtub! (THREE WEEKS). Still no hot water until August 18. That'll be a total of 14 weeks give or take.

And they just told us that we won't have hot or cold water from Friday - Monday.

um... Amy's special birthday dinner is on Saturday night. We'll have company who will need to flush the toilet and wash their hands.... not to mention that I'll need to cook and do dishes.

Well, we'll figure that one out later on this week.

The 2012 Toilet Epic... to be continued

Well, the plumber came today. Completely forgot about us. And he camp about 2 hours after I fixed the leaking in the bathtub MYSELF. I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I just used about 1/2 cup of silicon gel to fix it, but it worked. That's all he was going to do anyway.

When I asked Zhenya (the plumber) if he was going to stop the toilet (brand NEW toilet) from constantly running, he told me that most Russians wouldn't even worry about that. No big deal.

Well, I asked if we could change the guts anyway. He said we'd need to buy new guts, so I said, let's. But he said only a specialist would know which one to buy. He'd come back tomorrow and I could pay for new guts.

Well, see you tomorrow...

FIREWORKS!

I shot this with my new (well, March) camera. It's an ENTIRE fireworks presentation. This one by the city of Tyumen!

http://youtu.be/tC2-dfamNXI

so it sounds so cool that Amy is speaking to Tanya in Russian... and then I ask if it's Katy Perry... and it turns out to be Michael Jackson... well, I don't think either of them will mind.  PS this is my first embedded video.

Tyumen's birthday!!!!

Wow - Russian's know how to celebrate a city's birthday. Amy & I went with Tanya (from church) to the city's birthday. Video link.

Toilet Saga becomes an Epic

well, it's been an entire week since we've heard from our plumbers. We'll be calling again, it might be time to take things into our own hands...

Helping out with HTPC

One of the mom's from our church has these awesome little guys. And surprise! Now there's a fourth one. FOUR BOYS! Better get her a copy of "Bringing up Boys" right now! Well, she had a C-section and getting around from the fourth floor apartment to the first floor with no elevator and four boys, a bicycle, and a carriage isn't so easy. The boys are Dima (6 yrs old), Lyosha (4 yrs old), Slava (2 yrs old) and Roma (1 mnth). You may remember about a year ago, Slava fell from their fourth floor apartment to the ground. It was a miracle that he missed the pavement and only broke his arm. Well, he's a real handful now and loves to run around. Amy and I spent the day with the boys and took some pictures to make into photos for mom.

Lyosha IN the jungle gym. It's a complete sphere (really scared me when he went over the top!

Dima on TOP of the jungle gym. Yikes, but who thought of these crazy playground items?

Dima running races for time with Amy. He LOVED being timed.

Slava on his bicycle.

Lyosha spent about 40 minutes going up and sliding back down this curvy pole.

Dima wanted me to time how fast he could climb this, but he was a bit shaky,
so we just counted together.

Dima just had to show us that he knows how to somersault.

The 2012 Toilet saga

As we returned from camp we were notified that the gentle leak in our neighbor's toilet room had become more of a problem and we would be visited by some plumbers...

On Monday they called to let us know they would be coming.

They came on Tuesday. They needed to remove the stack (the huge pipe that takes gray water out of the building). Well, the way our landlord put together our toilet in the toilet (room), meant that they needed to remove the actual toilet. But the landlord had CEMENTED it to the floor. So they had to break it out with a hammer. (no joking).

original toilet

jackhammering the toilet & the wall

This took the entire day, but they were able to replace the pipes and others in our entrance had full access to water in both their toilet (rooms) and bathrooms. They even had to call in a welder to cut out the old stack! We had a big hole in our toilet (room) letting noxious fumes into the apartment. Nothing a plastic grocery bag can't fix.

cutting out the stack

On Tuesday night in a mad dash to buy a new toilet, I had the pleasure of selecting, transporting, and delivering our new pristine, white toilet to the apartment. This was it's own adventure as I ended up in Jim's old giguli (a Russian car) during rush hour and it had to break down because of the heat and waiting for a 100+ wagon train that stopped traffic. So 2.5-3 hours after the adventure began, the toilet was safely in our apartment.

On Wednesday, no plumbers showed up... at all. So we went 36 hours with a hole in the toilet (room).

the resulting destruction

Thursday they graced us with their presence all day and after nearly 11 hours we had a working toilet (brand new and already constantly running and stained from the metals in the water).

the new toilet

In the process of installing the toilet, the plumbers informed me that the landlord's poor building skills, led them to puncture a silicone covered hose under the bathtub. So the bathtub is off limits as it pours water unto the floor.

On Friday (after calling several times), Zhenya the plumber came over on his day off to fix the bathtub. One of the rubber gaskets was too old and is to blame for our continued leaking.

So after literally a week of plumbers, we have a new toilet that runs constantly and a bathtub that we cannot use. All of this with only cold water as our hot water has been turned off for nearly 3 months already!

We are smiling and absolutely thankful for the supernatural patience that God has given to us. It is really amazing that Jim and Sally's apartment is a five minute walk from ours. Otherwise, we'd be quite stinky.

Baptisms at HTPC

Dima praying at the start of the ceremony

Today we were all up bright and early for three baptisms. Here's a little bio about each of the ladies who were baptized today.

Vera - has been attending HTPC for several months having been invited by a church member. About 2 months ago she started attending the women's ministry meetings that Amy leads and has really started to understand and seek more and more. It's really cool to see her inquisitive mind and desire to know more.

Vera's baptism

Marina - is from one of the Eskimo tribes in the North. Her tribe is called Nentsi. She grew up in a chum (a cold weather teepee) and has been in Tyumen studying to be a doctor (she's an intensive care / anesthesiologist specialist). She came to faith through the Thursday evening home group led by Dima and wanted to be baptized before her job starts in the North. She leaves on Tuesday this week.

a special song in Nentsi for Marina (they used reindeer hooves for rhythm)

Dasha - is the daughter of one of the elders of our church and has attended our summer camps, English club and teen club. She has wanted to be baptized for over a year, and was really overwhelmed with emotion and joy at the events today.

from left to right: Marina, Vera, Dasha