Jay can sleep anywhere! Envy ya Jay! Only wish I had an mpeg of this ride.
Jay can sleep anywhere! Envy ya Jay! Only wish I had an mpeg of this ride.
All of a sudden, Rodney becomes the center of Russia ... who knew!?
Hey Gene, we don't pet the wild dogs!! (inside joke)
ARRRRRRRRRRRGHHHH! That is the last "illegal" pic I was able to shoot in Red Square next to the Kremlin and I ended up with a pic of my coat. Just behind my coat was supposed to be the burial place of Stalin (note to self: crop and merge in a bust of Stalin).
Here starts the second set of "illegal pics". We were going thru Lenin's tomb and you are not allowed to carry in a phone, camera, camcoder, nothin. But I figure, how much metal can there be in a 35mm film camera to set off the detectors, ehh? All I'm risk'n is a couple of years in a stalag ... right? So I stuff my camera way down into a pocket, cross my fingers, and head straight into a metal detector; hey, no problem! Only thing is, there were too many guards in the mausoleum to take any pics of Lenin. But this pic (also illegal I might add) is up against the Kremlin wall, so I got my "stalag" money's worth. :-P HEY Jay, HEY Gene, what's that on the right?!? (got ya)
On Saturday we got up early (really early) and flew to Moscow. At Moscow we checked into a hotel and set out to see some sites. Here is Kathy, Tim, Holly, and Phil waiting for their bags in Moscow (wake up Phil!!! Ohh. Lookout ... I didn't really mean it!).
Big party on the last day ... saying goodbyes and all. Pictured: Natasha (2003 student and language helper for 2004), Rodney, Natasha (2004 student), Nastya, and Ann.
English classes poses for a pic ... there's Phil, wonder who took the pic?
Sam is holding a football ... we usually take balls, frisbees, nerfs of all types to have fun with. Sometimes we would choose a student to answer questions by passing the ball at them ... great times!
The "School of Tomorrow" at school #13 (Bear's school). The "School of Tomorrow" is a semi-private school run inside a public school building. It is based on Dallas home-school Christian material. These kids are really great and polite. I hope it spreads all over Russia! Now back up a minute ... a Christian curriculum based school inside a Russian school ... wow!
Got it Jim ... sorry bud. Mads looked shocked and Phil looks amused.
Phil (second to left) was my week #2 co-teacher
IIRC: Tanya, Phil, Max, Rodney, and Nastya
Thursday student meeting for week #2. Notice the Christian song lyrics beside the hammer and sickle plaque. Also very cool.
A shot of the public transportation system we were using
This is the "internet cafe" where I did my "blogging". Notice that almost all of the computers are tied up with kids playing online/action games. Looks like this is replacing the arcade.
More of the same game
English classes, the students are practicing their English by combining phrases in as many different ways as they can ... but still constructing "valid" English phrases. We had to be lenient, if you know what I mean.
This picture is also from school #94. This teacher was cool. She really interacted with her students and made the time fun. During the "OK. Let's ___" lesson, I was called on to fill in the blank. My answer ... "sing a song". So to respond to "OK. Let's sing a song", the whole class sang me, Jay, and Christy a song in English. Very cute and very cool.
This is latter that night at the English classes. You've met all the students and Sam already. But you have not met Natasha on the left. Natasha is a student from 2003 who trusted Jesus as her savour during the past year. There were 3 (of 4) students from my 2003 class who trusted in Christ and were serving as language helpers and that is awesome!
This is the title pic from my index page.
Lunch after classes at school #94
Ok, this is week #2 and we are back to visiting classes. Pictured are Rodney, Tim, Phil, Russian teacher #1, Holly, Russian teacher #2, Chris, Mads, Gene, Kathy, Jim, and Jay (Mads and Gene you met during week #1).
Another momument (with some snow on the lense)
Another momument
Here starts a series of "unknown busts". Unknown to me that is, I'm positive the Russians must know who they are ... but I was alone when I took these.
Yekaterinburg was named Sverdlovsk during Communist rule after a Bolshevist leader. His title was chairman of All-Russian Central Executive Comittee (take that w/ a grain of salt). This is just outside of USU and Sverdlovsk is pointing towards USU.
USU (Ural State University) which we visted several times
And the (iirc) US Embassy
This is on Sunday of week #2. For this week's sight seeing tour (remember the Church on the Blood from last week?) we visited the top of a bank building's overlook platforms. We got some pretty cool shots of the city. This one is the outside of the Church on the Blood.
Mads and Sveta just can't get enough of each other. Hey girls, just step out of the phone booth!
Darin's lovely family
More hockey ... killin time btwn week #1 and #2 ...
This was taken at Alex's hockey practice on Saturday. We were "kickin it Ekat dot RU style" this weekend and went to hockey practice. These 12 year olds were good ... real good. Just 'bout any of them have a career waiting for them in the NHL (especially if they don't get that labor dispute settled, haha).
Darin's oldest ... Alex and Abbey
I see a lot more statues and momuments here. This one is near our hotel, outside a Polytechnic university building. (fwiw, this is where the kids mugged the snowman)
The snow and cold are starting to leave us. Here some Russian kids "mug" an ex-snowman.
Maxim and Sasha are giving us a skit. On the blackboard is a sample of the slang and idioms we taught the Russian students. The idioms and slang were a favorite of the students. New words they can get out of a ditionary ... new idioms and slang from native speakers is hard to find.
Back to English classes, Katya displays a match during a "memory/match" game. Nastya looks on and Ivan stares off camera.
Same day, but includes the teacher and her students
The teacher on the left wrote an essay for a contest for Russian teachers, and won. She got to go to a big awards ceremony and met Laura Bush and Cherie Blair (Tony Blair's wife ... notice the picture between the two teachers). She also won a lot of computer equipment for the room we were in. Very prestigious.
During the dance, the birthday boy gets to pick a friend to join him in the middle. I wonder what that signifies?
The students are doing a traditional birthday dance for the birthday boy
Oh yeah, and they gave us some gifts too. Guess what I got?
Visiting another school. They really put on the spread for us. I couldn't get it all in the pic, but there was coffee, tea, little cakes, cookies, pastries, etc...
A typical breakfast had eggs and ham, sometimes sausage, cucumber, yogurt (the real kind, aka. no non-fat stuff for us), tea, coffee, bread ~n butter, and juice
Mads and Danile at breakfast
Cityscape from my hotel room at night (trying to use some of my camera's nifty settings ... don't know what it would have looked like otherwise?)
Relaxing at a local resturant/hang out after the scavenger hunt
Daniel (Lauren's co-teacher) gives the Thursday night lesson
Ksenia, Debbie, and Dasha. Ksenia is a Compas (CCC) staffer located in St. Petersburg; I met her in 2003 when I taught the English classes and joined her support team. There are others needing support, if you would like to partner with them leave be a feeback telling me!
Kent and Lauren. Lauren was co-teacher w/ Daniel ... not pictured b/c he is getting ready to give tonight's lesson.
Eugene, Darin, and Debbie.
Co-teachers Kent (NBC's minister of international missions) and Mads. Kent joined us for week #1 (and for week #2 in 2003). He and Darin were "cooking up" plans for a stint team and a church plant in Ekat.
Gene and Myra were week #1 co-teachers (you will see Eugene, umh err Gene, in week #2)
Eugene (Compas staffer) playing the keyboard ... Spock is that you?
Hey Deborah, look over here!
Deborah and Mark were co-teachers during week #1
More of Thursday night (week #1). Snacks and drinks provided.
Debbie is "cataloging" the scavenger hunt finds. Oleg is preping the slide show from the cameras.
This is the meeting hall that Darin had, since then he lost the use of this theater but found another place ... God really does provide!
This was on Thursday. Every Thursday is when Darin and the Compas team have their weekly student meetings. So for the English classes, we took a break and did not have our regular session. Instead we had a "digital camera" scavenger hunt which lead us to the Compas meeting place. You'll see more of the hunt next. Pictured is (back row) Sasha, Sasha's friend, Alex, Max, (front row) Katya, Christy, Natasha behind Nastya, and another friend/vistor.
That's right Daniel ... zip it up!
Just a random guy shoveling snow ... do ya think he knows this guy? If I lived around this much snow, I'd be tempted to just let it be.
(Note the air conditioning unit above his head.)
You still have to scrape the windshield ... but those wipers won't be stuck
"I love you, I need you, I want you". "Hurry up and take the picture, he's running out of English!" (inside joke) This was a guy dressed up trying to get foot traffic into one of the Ekat businesses ... he had 6 hands which is kind of apropos to his English (lol). And you know we had to take a pic w/ him.
Just a shot of us in the snow. The "bundled up one" is Lauren, and then Madeline (mads) and Christy.
A (blury) picture of a class we meet with at USU. We had a lot of shy ones on this day.
Opened the shower curtain. But just like last year, it seems like the Russian people like the handheld shower head. Unfortunately the shower head wasn't installed on the vertical bar which means you have to hold it always or the water just hits the wall.
:-/
Just buring off a roll of film. My week #1 bathroom. Which was quite an improvement over last year.
This was my room during week #1. It was in a nice suite with an entryway, 2 rooms (mine had a wardrobe ... but no lions or witches), and a bathroom. During week #2 we had a married couple arrive (ahem Chris and Holly ... love ya! ... mean it) and we shifted rooms around and I moved into a smaller single room (w/ no wardrobe and still no lions or witches :o).
I just had to take this pic. During the snow days, this guy would get out every morning and sweep the sidewalk. The only thing is, he was using a straw broom. The kind we put out at Halloween for decoration ... and he was trying to clear snow with it! Maybe I should buy a snow blower and ship it to him? Ya think?
The same game, you can see the cheese on their finger (big G). I think Natasha is peeking.
This is a fun game. We had a lesson centered around food and taste. The game is everybody has to close their eyes and we give them something to taste. We started with little granules of green tea. The vocab word was bitter (very bitter). Then we switched to Nerds (sweet) which had about the same texture and feel (but would they trust us a second time?). Then beef jerky (spicy), and spreadable cheese which we "spread" onto their finger (gooey), etc... This game is a lot of fun, try it :o). Then we transitioned into the lesson which was "The Feeding of the 5000". In the background you will see Debbie, Darin's sister-in-law plus Compas staffer. Darin is the regional director for Compas (aka. Campus Crusade for Christ).
Not shown before on the left is Alex
Back to the English class. We had a great bunch of students.
Left to right are (half of) Sasha, Illya, Ivan, Anya, Tatiana, and Natasha.
There's the temp ... for those of you who only know fahrenheit, that's just below freezing (~30 degrees). That's not too bad, but this was the high for the day. It would get down to ~ 15 degrees fahrenheit for the high before we left.
Heading to the Polytechnic university ... oops meant to get the temp
Those little out buildings are garages that residents can rent (I guess that 1 guy didn't hear the forecast <g>)
It snowed for about 3 days during week #1 ... what fun! This is a shot out of my hotel window. There was a team member who said they had only seen snow 4 or 5 times growing up (and you know who you are), so this was a treat.
After visiting at a school, we would hang out with students. This is a student we meet in class. She was very upbeat and a lot of fun to talk to (I'm kicking myself right now for forgetting her name, I could swear I knew it about 1 mintue ago ... Christy HELP!).
Oh yeah, it was Alona.
During a typical day (if there was such a thing), we would visit a university or primary school. This was a class we visited at Ural State University. If you notice the scribbling on the chalkboard, most of the questions we got from students were: "What books/authors do you like to read", "What do you think about Russia (county and/or people)", stuff about politics, etc... We rarely got "Where do you work" or "What do you do". The Russian people are more interested in you than what you do. They are very relational. My co-teacher for week #1 was Christy (an intern at NBC), shown next to the Russian professor.
More of the game
First day of English classes. The students are playing a mixer game. They have a grid of questions they need to find names for. Questions like: "Have you ever been to America", "Has blue eyes", etc... This help to get to know everyone and to get them to "gell".
There were three pictures of the Tzar family. This is the last one I could take. The 3rd was of Nicholas II and his son Alexei (iirc).
I realized that my flash was going to show up, so I took the same pic from an angle
This is the first of my "illegal" pics. This is in the bottom of The Church On The Blood, the memorial to the Romanov family. I could only take 2 more before somebody came over and stopped me.
You can see the bags we are holding ... what you can't see are the bags on the floor and under our legs and in the other car!
That's only the beginning...
Meet Oleg, one of the Compas staffers.
Arrived at Ekaterinburg! Yeah. But wait till you see the van we have to pile into.
They're dropping like flies
Christy, Madeline, Lauren, Myra, and part of Deborah
Gene decides to do the same
Arrived at Frankfurt, Germany. Daniel takes a nap.
Rodney, Gene, Daniel, and Mark
Christy and Lauren
Christy, Lauren, and Myra
Heading out from DFW. Deborah, Daniel, and Mark
Merry Christmas Russia! I know I've been a slacker in getting this out ... sorry. But now you can see all of my pics from our mission trip to Russia. You can see comments and updates on my blog. The most relevant posts (that I made while in Russia) are from October.
Introductions: from left to right are Natasha, Katya, Rodney (yours truly), Natasha, Ivan, Illya, Nastya, and Sam. Below are Daniel, Moi, and Natasha (again). This Natasha is a student from my 2003 English class who trusted Jesus as her savour during the past year. There were 3 (of 4) students from my 2003 class who trusted in Christ and were serving as language helpers and that is awesome!
