A Trip to McDonald's

Last week, John and Naomi were planning a trip to the mall in Krasnodar and invited Marcia and myself along. It can be very difficult finding western food or quality products outside of Moscow. The mall in Krasnodar has an Ikea, a large grocery store, several electronics stores, and a McDonald's. It's a 3 hour drive, so you'd better make a day of it. The Musgraves had some specific things at Ikea that they wanted, I just wanted a hamburger. It's been months since I had a real burger. Cabbage and potatoes are nice, but they're not burgers. The drive to and from Krasnodar went smoothly, we weren't stopped by the police. The mall was OK, it had a little air conditioning. I got a Big Tasty and McChicken burger for lunch. Yum. In the states, I hardly ever go to McDonald's, but it's great here. The menu is very similar to the American menu. It's kinda funny reading the menu items in Russian. I scored some tortilla chips at the grocery store and a lot of drinking water, also. I got some cheap movies, also. I got shafted on the Wolverine movie, though. The box clearly said it had English language, but the disc only had Russian language. It was fun watching Wolverine in Russian, but I missed most of the dialog. We stopped at a roadside market on the way back. Marcia had fun taking pictures. It was a good day.

Building a Tree House

John has been building a tree house over at the House of Grace. While he may be secretly indulging some sort of mid-life crisis, the stated reason for the tree house is to give the children of visiting pastors a place to play. I think it's a great idea. Some of the sunday school classes at Crossroads Bible Church raised the funds for the materials. I've helped out a little with the construction work, which has been fun. Fortunately, hammers and saws have a simple UI. The tree house is coming along very nicely, I want to play on it.

New Sign for Church

The church in Anapa just recently put a sign out above the front door. Previously, there was none. This is a big step for the church, they're taking more of a public stance.

Church Work Party

A young couple at church are expecting very soon and a friend of theirs offered them a house to live in rent free for the summer. The house is in a good spot, near the center of town and right off the main road. Trouble is, the house isn't completed yet: unfinished concrete walls and floors, no windows, and a lot of miscellaneous junk lying around. It's very common for people here to build a house over a period of years (as they get the money) and move in before it's complete. My neighbors down the street finally moved in a couple weeks ago, before the roof was put on. They were bumming when a thunderstorm dumped an inch of rain (the roof was completed two days later). Anyways, there was a lot of work to be done to make the house live-able and not much time until baby arrives so a group of people from church came to help. 8 of us spent 4 hours cleaning construction junk out of the first floor, moving stuff out of the way upstairs, sweeping out the dirt, burning scrap lumber (filled with nails), moving a Soviet era sofa, and shoveling rocks. Good fun. The house was much better off when we left. It was great to see the people from church helping each other out like this.

My Nemesis

This guy can usually be found lurking in the shrubs near my door. If I leave the door open for any length of time he runs in, eats all of my cat's food, pees on something, and runs back outside. He's done this a number of times. My patience is wearing thin. If I could just get him and the neighbor's rooster together, somehow, I might stage an "accident" of some sort...

Marcia's Coming to Visit

She arrives tomorrow, actually. If all is going according to plan, she's already arrived in Moscow and is looking forward to a nights stay at the lovely Sheremyetevo Terminal 2 (the hotels near the airport are very, very expensive). She'll catch the first flight to Anapa in the morning. I'm very excited to have her here, for 4 weeks. Taking the busy back and forth to the Musgrave's house, where she's staying, will take some time but that's OK. It's going to be a lot of fun showing her around, introducing her to people, and having her nearby.

Bass Guitar

Somehow, I got press-ganged into playing bass guitar in the worship band at church. It's pretty simple, really: Roman kept asking until I said "yes". I don't have a bass guitar, so we need to find a bass somewhere. Roman put a request out at church, I think one will turn up eventually. Once we secure the bass, I need to learn to play it. I played guitar a little in high school and have played the bass part in Rock Band, so hopefully I'll pick it up quick. Anybody know of any bass tutorials available online?

Baseball Club

Friday night we had our second meeting of baseball club at school #6 in Anapa. It was a warm and sunny evening, in the mid 80s (I think that's 230 degrees C). We had 8 players this time round and several supporters (family and children) who watched. We threw the ball around for a little while and then practiced batting. This time, we made sure to point the batters away from the parking lot :) After a quick review of the rules, we decided to play a short game. It was mayhem, but it was a lot of fun. With 4 people per team, the batting team had a definite advantage. A few bystanders were almost hit by fly balls (they don't know what the crack of the bat means, yet, but they'll learn). Various toddlers would also wander through the base paths or walk up to home plate while daddy was batting, stopping game play. All in all, things went pretty well. We made it through 3 innings.

Teaching in Novorossiysk

My friend Anya is an English teacher at a small private school in Novorossiysk. Anya invited me to come visit the school and drop in on two of her classes. "It will be good for the students to listen to an American speak.", she told me, and I agreed to come by. Novorossiysk is perhaps 50 km from Anapa. I don't own a car, here, so that means taking the bus. I haven't traveled by public bus between cities by myself and I prepared myself mentally for a mini-adventure.

Early Monday afternoon I went downtown and purchased a bus ticket at the station. I was swarmed by taxi drivers before I got the ticket window. "No, thanks, I don't want a taxi ride to Krasnodar..." Ticket booths (bus station, airport, movie theatre, where ever...) in Russia are built like armored pill boxes. The attendant lady sits securely behind a plate glass window, dispensing tickets and irritation through a tiny slot. Sometimes there are holes drilled in the plate glass for speaking (usually 4.5 feet high), sometimes not (and you speak through the money slot). Either way, it's almost impossible to understand the lady behind the glass. This particular ticket lady was relatively friendly and only smirked at me once when I gave her a 500 ruble note for a 66 ruble fare (they like exact change). $2.14 is a good price for traveling 50 km to another city.

The bus ride was pretty uneventful. I actually had an idea of where the bus station in Novorossiysk was, so I didn't feel too apprehensive about getting off at the wrong stop. The driver chain-smoked the entire ride. I was a little hoarse and irritable when I finally got off the bus, since I had been breathing second hand smoke and b.o. the whole time. Anya met me at the bus station and we went off to the school. The evening's lessons centered around clothing and appearance. The first class was beginner level. We spent a while on vocabulary and pronunciation. One of the other teachers at the school sat in on class to practice her pronunciation, also. The second group was intermediate level. We started off with the clothing and appearance lesson, but got side tracked on hobbies. We eventually ditched the lesson completely and the students asked me questions (in English, mostly). I did my best to answer in Russian, but had to fall back on English a number of times :) I mentioned that I had worked in the computer industry for 8 years before coming to Russia to visit friends and help out at the church in Anapa.

When class got out, the other teacher and two of the students stayed behind to talk with me more. They commented that leaving a career to come live in Russia was a big change and wanted to know more about why in the world I would do something like that. I think I managed to convince them that I was of reasonably sound mind and that I hadn't been fired from work. One student said she knew some church people who had done something similar because they were following God and asked me if I was doing the same. What a great lead :) We had a good conversation for about 30 minutes and I got to share with them what God had done in my life. They had some good questions, "Did I come to Russia because i wanted to or because I felt I had to? If you're following God, are you really free?" Anya helped out a lot with translation through all this, for which I was grateful (the level of discussion had moved a little above clothing and colors). We had to break off the conversation at 9pm, so Anya and I could run back to the bus station for the last bus back to Anapa. We made it with a few minutes to spare and I finally got back to Su-Pseh around 11 pm. Long day.

Loitering by the Corner Store

I went running one evening last week. Very few people around here go running, so I felt a little conspicuous as I jogged along the main road and out to the vineyards and back. Sure enough, two guys hanging out at the magazine (corner store) took note of my strange activity and stopped me to talk on the way back into town. They wanted to know how long I'd been running and where I'd gone to. Both seemed pretty impressed that I was actually running. Both guys were pretty friendly, they shared their sunflower seeds with me. One was Georgian and the other Armenian. We had a friendly chat for about 30 minutes. The Georgian guy (Artur) has family living in Los Angeles. He went to visit them, once, and wanted to talk with me about America. He wanted to see some photos of America, so I agreed to come back to the store the following evening and show him. This conversation was almost exclusively in Russian. I was able to follow about 80% of it, which made me pretty happy.

I returned to the store the following evening at 6 pm. Well, 6:10 pm, to be honest. I was preparing for English Club and was running a little behind. There was nobody else standing outside the store, so I stood and waited a little while. I had been waiting 10 minutes or so when an older fellow walked up to me and started talking to me. He looked familiar, I think i had been introduced to him the night before at the store. This guy was very friendly, really wanted to talk to me, and had exactly 0 teeth (I checked when he wasn't looking). He spoke in all vowels and I could hardly understand anything he said. Nice guy, though. He kept shaking my hand a lot. He offered me his hankie, since I'd been standing in the warm sun and was sweating a bit. He also went in the store and bought me a beer. Drinking in public seems to be legal in Russia, or at least completely un-enforced, but I felt a little strange strange standing on the sidewalk knocking back a beer. I drank a little and gave the rest back to my new friend, since I was going to be teaching in 30 minutes. We "talked" for about 20 minutes. Or rather, he kept talking, I kept saying "Sorry, I don't understand", and he kept shaking my hand. In our entire conversation, all I got was that he was Tatarstani, something about "women and children", and "America" and "good" were also mentioned in the same sentence. After 20 minutes I decided it was time to go. Artur was a no-show (or i'd missed him), the current conversation wasn't really going anywhere, and I had to get to English Club, anyways. Good times. Meeting new people is always fun, and sometimes you get free beer.

Knock-knock Jokes

Anybody know any good knock-knock jokes? I was trying to explain knock-knock jokes to Pastor Victor the other day, while we were walking one morning. I couldn't remember very many, it's been a while since I told any (5th grade, probably). So, anyone got any good ones?