Making Things Up As I Go

After 27hours of being in transit I finally made it to Kursk!

The flying part of the trip went very smoothly, no missed connections or delays. 

I was blessed that there was no one sitting next to me on the 10hour flight from Atlanta to Moscow, but even then sleeping didn't work. You really cant sleep if the top of the chair is at the base of your neck. I love being tall, but sometimes being 6' 4'' is just a pain in the neck... literally!

I arrived in Moscow with no problems, got through immigration just fine, found my luggage and was out to the real Russia. I was met by a man with a sign saying "Joel to Kursk" and I correctly assumed that he was waiting for me. We went out to his car which was actually being driven by his little brother (who spoke zero english and my russian is growing from zero, but very slowly) since his car was "how do amerikanz say, kaput?"

Then it straight to bumper to bumper, not-going-anywhere traffic for about an hour trying to get out of Moscow. I love how even though there are lines on the road, they don't mean anything. In Russia, if your car looks like it can fit in

 a space between two other cars it probably will and if it doesn't ... then just get really close until they move for you. I could've reached out my window and touched at least 3 other cars at any given moment. Ok, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but at least 1 other car is the simple truth. 

After we finally got outside Moscow, we were just driving through the countryside and while beautiful, I couldn't keep my eyes open for the life of me. I was so tired my eyes hurt so I dozed off.

Now Moscow to Kursk is only about 500km (approx. 310mi) and would only take about 5hours if I was driving in America. But in Russia we had a car that was at least 20years old and at one point we all had to get out and shift everything around  because evidently too much weight was on one side and was influencing how the car drove ... I don't really know. All this to say 500km took just about 9/10hours hald of which I slept. But in between the many naps I got to see a good many things including my first dead person

, which was an experience. It was on the freeway where we were moving quite fast and then all the sudden traffic slowed down drastically. As far as we could tell there had been an accident up ahead. In response, cars started driving over the thick grass median and on the other side of the 4land highway (it turns out they were actually told to do this by the police on the scene). But as we were driving past the accident I was looking and I noticed a guy lying on the side of the road ... I looked closer and he was most definitely dead, I won't go into detail but it was obvious. I guess he had been killed in the accident and they just loaded him up on a stretcher and took him to the side of the road and left him there, uncovered, until an ambulance (?) came to pick him up. This was pretty shocking to me and I was pretty disturbed there for a little (don't worry Mom, my driver was very safe and skilled. I'm alright and

 there weren't even any close calls!), but it just goes to help illustrate the many differences between Russia and the USA. 

Other than that the trip was rather uneventful until we got 50km from Kursk and we pull off the road by this shabby white car. The guy who picked me up gets out, points to the car and says "haha, my car, electic system kaput." Evidently he had started driving to Moscow to pick me up when his car died, so he called his brother to come pick him up and they just left the car there. So we all got out, pulled some 'tow ropes' from the boot of the car and hooked the two together. The last 50km were spent going around 40km/hr 

(25mph) while pulling a car behind us (with the guy who picked me up steering it). We took the car to their parents house because they had a garage there and then headed to the seminary where I'm staying. 

By the time we got there it was about 9pm and still as bright as day outside! Night doesn't fall until 10pm here. As soon as I got in I was shown my room, which is actually an apartment I have all to my self. I have a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom all to myself! It's pretty sweet!

 If you couldn't tell this is my bedroom

Yeah, I've got a pretty sweet bathroom

kitchen, part one

kitchen, part 2

 Then out of nowhere a nice lady named Anna came and started cooking me dinner. While I was pretty hungry there is no way anyone could ever be as hungry for the amount of food this woman made! I was made 2eggs, an entire bowl of ravioli type noodles, a plate full of egg roll looking fried pastries as well as half a load of bread. I looked around to see who was joining, but I was expected to eat it all myself. I made a valiant effort, but there was no way I could do it!

After she left I made it to my room and finally collapsed around 11pm. I slept soundly until 6.30am when I just couldn't sleep any more, curse jet lag! I was able to catch up on some reading and cleaning (myself, sorry for that image haha) before 8.30 came around and I met Vitaly Petrov. 

Vitaly gave me a introduction to the ministry they are doing and what it is going to be like living there. I also got to meet many of the other staff members here. Many speak english, but many do not also. So I am trying my best to learn Russian, I am sure I will be laughed at many times, but I will get it! I was given pronunciation advice by Vitaly, he basically said that in Russian you do not articulate the different syllables like we do in english. I'm taking that as advice to mumble the words!

Vitaly then gave me a tour of the building and while it doesn't look like much from the outside, it is gorgeous inside! He made the comment, "Many christians look good on the outside, but are bad inside. Here we are the opposite. Dirty on the outside, but very nice inside."

This is the new home.

And there studio has top notch video equipment! I was very impressed!

After Vitaly was done, I was handed off to his brother Igor who assigned me my projects. This is the part I was most nervous about, but it's all good now! I guess a while back Igor had filmed two courses at Trinity in Chicago. Each lecture is about 2hours long with two cameras filming it. I believe here are about 11lectures for each course. So my job is to digitize each DVtape, which can only capture in real time meaning I have to sit through each lecture twice as it is capturing, and then edit the two angles together. The work is tedious (read it takes a looooooong time) but I know what I am doing. I was able to learn their editing program within minutes as it is very similar to Final Cut Pro, which is a huge blessing!

So most of today was spent digitizing tapes. Since there is not much to do while they are capturing I did a lot of reading and trying to learn russian. I've got some basic phrases down as well as numbers and I'm starting to understand their alphabet a little more. For those who don't know, the Russian alphabet is nothing like you've ever seen before, unless you've seen the Russian alphabet that is. Check it out ( http://www.friends-partners.org/oldfriends/language/russian-alphabet.html )

So it's going slow, but I've got a while. I work in a room with the rest of their tech staff, the hardware, software, and designer guys. None of them speak english, but they're pretty hysterical so I should be entertained. Igor and Vitaly stop by every now and again to check on me and give me some people to talk english to. I hope I pick up on Russian pretty quickly as it would be really nice to be able to talk to anyone I wanted!

In an effort to beat jet lag I'm trying to stay up until a relatively normal bedtime, but it's only 7.30 now and I'm about to pass out. I'm 8 hours ahead of you all. To give you a reference, when you're waking up around 10am it's already 6pm here.

Thank you for your prayers and God has blessed me so far. I feel very comfortable in the seminary and I'm sure as the days go on and I venture outside I'll have many more grand adventures!