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.

Fishing Lesson

Another Saturday afternoon and another English club at church. We had 8 people this week, which is a good sized group. Many more people than that and you lose the free conversations that make things so much fun. This past week's lesson was on fishing. The astute reader will recall that I did a lesson on fishing a while back. It was my very first English lesson here, in fact. I wasn't feeling so hot Saturday morning and decided to bring out an old lesson instead of creating a new one. Most of the regular attenders now would've missed that lesson and I thought it would be new to them. Of course, two people who have only attended the very first lesson decided to come last Saturday... I hope it was a good review for them. We all had a lively discussion about fishing (the bobber was an interesting subject) and also the Bible passage (Luke 5). Jesus was one heck of a fisherman, among other things.

Stone Age Technology

Sergei and I were working on the house Wednesday afternoon when Pasha came by with something he wanted to show me. It was an old, removable hard disk. Very old, made in the 70s, maybe. Maybe it holds some cold-war secrets. It was made in Buglaria, has 12 sectors, and stores 700 kb I was told. The plastic flip handle was a nice feature. Pasha took the thing apart later, he says he's going to use the disk to make a TV antenna. I'm not sure how that's going to work, but Russians are nothing if not resourceful.

Update on English club

English club has been going well since I got back. Tonight is the fifth lesson of the autumn. So far, we have had lessons centered on summer, occupations, and home. We also had one game/activity day. Class size typically ranges from two to ten people. There are five people who are regular attenders, four of whom do not attend the church. It's been a lot of fun getting to know the people in class and learning more about Russia. Did you know that seasons in Russia start on the first days of December, March, June, and September? I didn't. I've also been incorporating Bible passages into the lessons (Matt 20, Psalm 19, Psalm 32, Matt 7) and we've had some great discussions. Last week, I was very impressed that three of the advanced students were able to put into correct order the first half of Psalm 19 (the verses had been scrambled).

Holding an informal English club has also been a little challenging for me since, due to it's informal nature, I have no idea who is going to show up any given Saturday. It's been difficult trying to create lessons that won't totally bore the advanced students or totally mystify the beginners. Unfortunately, we haven't had large enough groups to break them out by skill level. Tonights lesson is a grammar lesson (present continuous), don't tell the students :) Sounds like most of the regular attenders are sick or working today, so who knows be coming tonight.

Still Building a House

Well, the wall I built hasn't fallen down yet. Good thing. I've gone back to help Sergei a couple times, now, and I think we're making good progress. This shot is from the middle of my day three at the job site. Sergei and Pasha are in the background. The day before, Sergei and I had worked well past dark. I wasn't quite sure why, but he really wanted to get that wall done for the next day. Something about putting a "belt" on the wall. It was fun laying blocks and concrete in the dark. Sergei used his cell phone display to light my work. The next day I found out about the "belt" and why the wall had to be completed. We're building some concrete forms at the tops of the walls. We'll lay down a ring a steel rods and then pour concrete over it, making a "belt' to hold the walls together.

Building a House

My friend Sergei is building a house on the south side of Anapa. He and his wife Alicia are currently sharing an apartment with another couple from church and are looking to have their own place. I have plenty of free time and, not really knowing jack-squat about building houses, asked him if he wanted any help. He actually said yes, so I met him at the construction site Monday morning. I hadn't seen his place before I arrived. He's building a second story on top of an existing concrete garage with large steel doors. This seems to be a common arrangement in Russia. Pasha from church has been helping out, also, and they started a week before I did. After a 3 minute tutorial on building a cinder block wall I was put to work building a wall. It took me a minute to figure out which end of the trowel to hold, but it went well after that. 5 rows of blocks later things looked alright, but what do I know? I'm just a programmer and tech writer. Sergei and Pasha said the wall looked good, so I was happy. Mixing concrete by hand and hauling it around in buckets is hard work.

Sunday Lunch

Sunday afternoon Marcia and I decided to host a church lunch at my place. No particular reason, other than that I hadn't had a bunch of people over, yet. I think we had 14 people from church over, a good number. We cooked up some stir fry veggies and pasta and home-fried potatoes. The Russians seem amazed that I know of a way to cook potatoes that they don't know about. Everyone had a good time, I think, sitting around chatting. The chinese food was a big hit (they don't get chinese food here).

Summer Marshrutka

Summer has arrived in Anapa and so have the tourists. Anapa is one of the large resort cities on the Black Sea coast and has a long, sandy beach. 3 million of people (if you believe the locals) come to Anapa during the summer and they all ride the marshrutka. It is usually standing room only on the mini-bus. Standing up with your shoulders on the ceiling and your face buried in somebodies back can make for a some uncomfortable rides. People seem pretty good-natured about the crowded conditions and seated people will often offer a lap for small children or excess baggage. My personal record is 20 people, a baby, and a baby carriage stuffed into a 13 passenger mini-bus. The temperature is consistently in the 80s and 90s during the day, now, and some of the marshrutka don't have windows that open. I managed to grab this picture from my seat in the back of a marginally full bus (there was room for another 3 or 4 people, I think).

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.

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.

English Club

English Club is up and running at the church and we will be meeting Saturday evenings. We've had 2 meetings so far, with our third this evening. We had 7 students the first night and 9 the second. We might get a few more people tonight, since many people from church were at a conference in Moscow last week. The first lesson was centered around fishing and used Luke 5 as the reading passage (fishing with Jesus). The second lesson centered around travel and used Genesis 45,46 for the reading (traveling with Jacob). Tonight, we will have a grammar lesson (don't tell my students :) ). So far, we have only had people from church. I hope that people from outside church will start to attend. I've invited a couple people, we'll see if they come. I'm really glad I got a TESL certificate last summer, that course has been very helpful. I feel like I actually have a clue what I'm doing :) So far so good, we'll see how many people show up tonight.

English Club and Softball

This weekend I'm finally starting the English Club at the church. I'm excited and a little nervous. I'm not sure how many people are going to show up, but there has been a lot of interest at church. There will likely be people of all skill levels and a wide range in age, also. It will be a challenge to come up with activities that will be interesting and helpful to everyone. Roman and I will also be starting our softball club this Friday evening. Earlier this week we drove around the city and picked out a field at one of the elementary schools. The field is surrounded by several large apartment buildings and was pretty busy when we drove by earlier. Softball club should be a good way for the church to interact with people in the city. A big thanks to the people at Crossroads Bible Church who donated the balls and gloves. We'll see how things go, I'll keep you informed.

Getting Registered

In Russia, foreigners are required to register at a post office or police station within 3 days of moving to a city. I arrived in Russia last Saturday, which meant I had to register by Tuesday. Sunday morning my landlord Nikolai and I ran down to the post office to get me registered. The post office isn't usually open on Sunday, but Monday was a holiday and the post office was open Sunday morning. We filled out the appropriate forms but also needed to photocopy my passport and visa. The grouchy lady behind counter informed us that the xerox machine in the back room wasn't available to us. That section of the post office wasn't open that morning, I guess, and, no, the grouchy lady wasn't going to help us. Not her job, I suppose. We took off to find a shop in the city with a copy machine, Nikolai muttering under his breath. 40 minutes and 5 stops later, we finally found a shop that was open that had a copy machine. Sunday morning on a holiday isn't the best time to do business. We got back to the post office 20 minutes before closing, to find that the grouchy registration lady was now gone. The other lady didn't know where to, perhaps she was on break. We waited a little while, then left.

Turns out the post office was open Monday morning, despite the holiday. Nikolai offered to take care of the registration for me before he and Galina left for the day. Should only take a moment, he said. When they returned that evening, I found out that the lady at the post office had refused to register me. There was a problem with the dates on my immigration card. In a jet-lagged haze I had apparently written the wrong entry date on my immigration card. My bad. The woman at the post office refused to have anything to do with it, even though the customs stamp in my passport showed what day I had really arrived. She didn't feel like helping and that was that, I was out of luck. In Russia, the person holding the rubber stamp holds a great deal of power over you.

Tuesday morning, Nikolai and I went to another location to try to register. Nikolai asked me to bring my plane tickets with me to prove what day I had really arrived in country. Thank God I tend to use boarding passes as bookmarks, I hadn't thrown them out. We arrived at this other office, which was tucked away in an apartment building, at 8:40 am. A "line" had already formed outside the door. We put ourselves down on the waiting list which was circulating. The officials showed up at 9:15 am (late) to open up the office and the crowd moved from the steps outside to the cramped hallway inside. It was pretty packed and chaotic waiting in the hallway. Periodically someone new would push through the people and walk directly into one of the offices, only to be immediately ejected by the busy official. Someone in the hall would then berate the person for cutting in line and then they'd put their name on the list.

Around 9:45 am Nikolai and I finally made it into office #1, where the official promptly informed us that passport registration was taken care of in office #2. We'd been waiting in the wrong line. Fortunately, it was a short wait for office #2. Nikolai explained the mistake on the migration card to the official, who told us that was fine but we needed to start the registration paperwork again with blank paperwork. No, they didn't have blank copies of the paper work there, but there was another location a few blocks away that ought to have the paperwork. So, we walked over to the other office and got in line. This place looked like an army recruitment center, I'm not sure why they would have registration paperwork there. If I understood the lady behind the counter, she wasn't sure why they would have the registration paperwork, either. We returned to office #2, empty handed. This time, we walked directly into office #2 (Nikolai didn't feel like waiting in line anymore). The first guy we'd talked to was nowhere to be seen, so we had to start over with the new official. This guy was more easy-going and said we didn't need to start with blank paperwork. He had just started scribbling some changes on the registration paperwork when the power went out. After sitting in the dark for a minute we went out into the hallway, where some light from the door was shining through. The official finished scribbling on the paper work and then we waited. The power came back on after another 5 minutes, I got the blue stamp on the migration card, and I got my info entered into the computer. After 4 hours of work spread over 3 days, I was now legally registered in Anapa. Thank God for Nikolai, it would have been difficult for me to get this done.

Sunday Afternoon with Igor and Vladimir

I was riding the marshrutka to church Sunday morning when I got a call from Igor. Igor, if you recall, helped me shop for modems a while back (see Internet Access in Russia). It had been a couple weeks since I'd talked to him, he's been busy. Turns out he and a friend of his were going to be at church that morning, also. I think Igor was there to talk to the Musgraves about Skylink interaccess (Igor is a salesman) and Vladimir decided to tag along. Igor had mentioned Vladimir in the past, saying that he'd be interested in meeting me and practicing his English. As it happens, I had randomly bumped into Vladimir in town a few weeks before. He overheard me trying to buy a phone card and helped out. Funny.

The weather was actually nice (it's been raining for weeks), so the three of us decided to wander down to the waterfront. We also planned to see if one of the museums was open. The museum plans were cut short, though, when I slipped on the muddy slope by the old German bunker and fell on my butt. I got cleaned up in the bathroom in a nearby hotel lobby, but Vladimir and Igor decided that walking around with a soggy bottom would be the death of me. They were very empahatic, so we headed back to Igors house. Igor washed my pants (which was very kind of him) and also cooked up some lunch. We hung out at Igor's house until evening. This morning was the first time that either of them had attended an evangelical service before, so they had some questions about protestant churches and churches in America. The both said they enjoyed the service, especially that they were allowed to sing and pray. In Orthodox services, the priests perform the service and the people are mostly spectators. Being able to participate in the service was very different for them. While Igor was cooking lunch, Vladimir asked me how I came to find God so I briefly shared my testimony with him. We had a good talk while lunch was cooking. Vladimir also came to the Bible study Wednesday night and seems interested in growing closer to God. I had a great time with both of the guys. I was pretty annoyed about the soggy bottom at first, but it ended up providing a good opportunity to hang out with Igor and Vladimir. Funny how these things work out.

Happy Birthday, Russian Guy!

I was walking into Anapa to visit my favorite English speaking ATM when I spotted this billboard. The caption says Happy Birthday, in Russian. Obviously, somebodies friends are helping him celebrate his special day by taking out a 15'x20' (I think that's 80m by 150m) billboard ad. I think it's funny. I wonder if his friends told him, first? Probably not, I wouldn't. Happy birthday, Russian Guy!
As I've mentioned before, the road between Anapa and Su-Pseh is never boring. I got chased a little ways by two German shepherds from a car lot not too long ago. Weddings are pretty common events on the weekend. The friends and family of the bride and groom will often decorate their own cars with ribbons and flags and follow the couples car, forming a carvavan on the road. I was walking home from the ATM when I saw one such caravan. The bride and groom were in a heavily decorated stretch limo accompanied by 5 other decorated cars, one of which was flying a huge Russian flag. All the cars were flashing their lights and honking their horns. As they passed me, the limo was flanked by two other cars. On a two lane road, they had formed a line 3 cars abreast. The two outer cars were half driving on the dirt shoulder and they were all moving fast. A little ways on, the car in the left lane hit the brakes and pulled behind the limo to let oncoming traffic by. He didn't leave much room for error. Never a dull moment on this road. I should memorize a few emergency related phrases in Russian. I spend a lot of time on this road and see some crazy stuff. Some day I may have to call for an ambulance. I usually pray for the drivers as I walk into town.

Ryan in Russia

I'm on a blogging rampage, today... Marcia asked for a picture of me in Russia, so here's a picture. Mom probably wants a picture, too, so here's a picture. Yup, alive and well. Don't worry, Mom, I'm not eating SPAM anymore. A friend took this shot of me when we were down by the Black Sea, feeding the swans.

Ask the American, he knows...

While walking around several people have stopped me to ask questions. I must stick out somehow (probably the running shoes). Several weeks ago a driver pulled off the road onto the sidewalk (almost hitting me) to ask me directions to somewhere. I think he was asking directions, I couldn't understand a word he said. I wasn't much help. Judging by the look on his face, he seemed both annoyed and amused that of the hundreds of people walking around he had picked the ignorant American to ask directions of. I had another biker looking guy (I didn't know Russia had bikers) ask me for a cigarette or a light or something smoking related. Again, this guy seemed to think it funny that he had found an American. Just two days ago another man stopped me to ask the time. This time I both understood the question and was able to answer in Russian. The fellow went on his way none the wiser. Less the wiser, perhaps, since I gave him a very inexact time. I rounded up 17 minutes to the next hour because 3 pm is easier to say than 2:43 pm (don't tell my Russian teacher). No biggie, both of us walked away happy. Ryan-1, Inquisitive Russian People-2.

The Road to Anapa

My house is 4 or 5 kilometers (how far is that in miles?) from the church in Anapa. I don't have a car, so I often end up wallking or taking the marshutka (small buses). It's a 50 minute walk, depending on snow and dogs. It's a good walk, I enjoy it. Between Anapa and Su-Pseh there is a 2km section of flat, straight road that runs across a grassy field and past some vineyards. This stretch of road is pretty dangerous. I see people speeding all the time and passing 2 sometimes 3 cars at a time (the tractors and old military trucks can cause a real backup) and zipping back into their lane just in the nick of time. Sadly, not every driver is as skillful as they would like to believe. There are several memorials along the way. The sidewalk isn't completely safe, either, though is separated from the road. I almost got pegged by a guy riding a motorcyle on the sidewalk one day. I can appreciate his not wanting to drive on the road, but he could have slowed down a little... In these pictures, Su-Pseh is the town with the radar domes on the hill and Anapa is the city with the red/white smokestack.

A Visit to the Technical College

I got to visit the local technical college, today. My landlord, Nikolai, is a professor of economics there. The college has an English program and Nikolai arranged for me to come in and speak to 2 different classes. It was a lot of fun. The teacher seemed pretty happy to have me there. I don't think she's had an opportunity to bring in a native English speaker, before. The students were all in the management program, training to work in the hotel and tourism industry in Anapa. Anapa is a resort city that receives many visitors from Europe and the management program has a foreign language requirement (English or German). It was a question/answer session for both classes, I didn't present a lesson or anything. Apparantly, I'm the first American person that the students had ever met. The students had prepared questions in advance: where was I born, what did I study in school, what do I like about Russia, what's the average salary of a manager in America, am I married, why live in Russia, why live in Su-Pseh, etc. It was a fun time. I got to ask the students some questions, also, and they wanted to hear me speak in Russian, also. It was also a good opportunity to tell the students about why I moved to Russia and to share a little about the church in Anapa. Perhaps I might be able to get a job at the technical college. I don't know, I'd have to ask Nikolai about it. Nikolai seemed pretty happy that I was able to come and speak at his school and I was happy to oblige. Nikolai, and his wife Galina, have been incredibly helpful to me and are wonderful people. I hope to coninue developing my relationship with them.