Men's Club

Every few weeks the men at church get together for some fun. The ladies get together, also, but I don't know what they do. Probably drink tea and chat. The guys usually consume ridiculous amounts of meat and pray and watch movies. Last Friday evening we got together at Victor's house in a town outside Anapa. There was a lot of food already prepared when me and some of the guys rolled in. The shashlik (grilled pork) was just getting started so we had a seat in the living room. A few other guys came in later, which brought us up to 7. We all hung out in the living room while the shashlik was cooking and talked about... stuff. I couldn't follow a lot of it (conversations between multiple people are still tough for me), but there was some talk about cell phones, computers, and movies. After a little while the shashlik was ready and we sat down to eat. This was a relief to me. Last time, we did prayer first and didn't start eating until 10 pm. I guess Russians don't like to be rushed through prayer time, even if the hamburgers are ready. We had a ton of food. Shashlik, fried potato patties, broiled potatoes, onions, dill, parsley, green onions, tomatoes, salad, and bread. We also had some fresh squeezed grape juice, which Victor had made by stomping on the grapes. Hope he washed his feet... After dinner we retired to the living room for prayer time (praying for each other). It took us over 2 hours to get through prayer requests for 7 guys. They were in no hurry and Pasha was playing around with a souvenir dagger from Holland, which distracted the others. We finally finished things up at about 11:30 pm. I thought we were going to ditch the movie and go home, but Pasha and Kolya started setting up the laptop and TV. By 11:40 pm the equipment was prepared and we started up Transformers 2. I don't think anyone looked at the clock when we started the movie and I know that no one asked "How long's the movie?" I missed Transformers 2 this past summer, so it was fun to watch (in Russian). I even understood what was happening (pictures help). Around 1:30 am someone finally checked the time and asked "how much longer?" We finished up at 2:20 am, grabbed some cold shashlik, and rolled out. I got to bed at 3 am. Good times.