Speaking English

I just finished my second session of conversational English classes. I have four teenagers, two 14 year olds and two 15 year olds that come to my apartment once a week to practice their English. Most of them have been taking extra English courses outside of school for years but have never heard a native speaker so my moms really good friend (she teaches them English grammar in her home) thought it would be a good idea to send her students to me for some practice. Today the topic was travel so we talked about different trips we have taken and what happened while we were there. I am still trying to get the hang of planning ideas but this week was better than last week. Next week will be the last week before Clint and I head to the states therefore the topic will be Christmas vs. New Year; the traditions, similarities and differences. I am hoping to do some Christmas cooking baking this next week to give the teens a taste of American Christmas tradition. The class will be a fun opportunity to share traditions and most importantly the true meaning of Christmas and why it is important.

In Russia New Year is the big holiday that is celebrated like our Christmas is celebrated in the states. They have Christmas trees, presents, and food like we do in America but instead of Santa and his reindeer bringing gifts to the children, Uncle Frost and his niece Snegurichka bring the gifts. There is always a program planned with tricks and games under the town Christmas tree to make the children laugh and that is where they get their gifts.  Russian Christmas is celebrated on January 7^th but it is a much smaller event. Because of the closeness of those two holidays everything is put on hold for almost two weeks in Russia. Everything for the farms has to be ordered early and all tickets have to be bought early because nothing is open for that entire period of time.

These are my four students with my mom. They are highly energetic and a lot of fun. I am really enjoying getting to know them. One boy has a four-wheeler and Clint suggests that we move our class from 4PM to 6PM when he gets home from work so he can keep an eye on the four-wheeler so it doesn't get stolen. 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Happy Thanksgiving to all our wonderful friends and family! We are so thankful for you all. We are missing the fall season and thanksgiving in America. 

I have gotten messages from readers wondering if we are still alive over here. We are, alive and well but it has been a really busy last couple of weeks. I will tell you the big news in this post and then write another post sharing pictures and stories of other events that took place in the past three weeks.

We went to Moscow three weekends ago to get some of Clint’s paperwork done for his job and while we were there we were informed that we had to move from our village to Penza. The apartment that we have lived in since we got here was needed. There is another American couple here; he works as the farm manager in Norovchat. Since Clint travels all over the region to do his job and they stay there to work with the cows it made much more sense for us to move to Penza then have them commute.

After a two or so week search, broken down car, and lots of work requirements/deadlines that Clint had to make we are now moved from our quiet little village to the big city. I know everyone can picture it now; Clint (especially) and Haeli living in a two-room apartment in a city of over a half a million people. Clint the country/cowboy/lumberjack/huntsman/mountain man dressing up in button downs, picking up his brief case and coffee and heading to his office job every morning is defiantly something I never thought I would see in this lifetime. Those of you who know Clint probably think I am lying about this so I will have to get a picture of him in his office looking all official to prove it to you. His mug is camouflage and he wears his Carhartt stocking hat and cowboy boots to work so he is defiantly adding his own flare to this city life.

This winter he is working with his bosses on the plans for the next planting and harvesting season. Because Clint is now working in an office I don’t go to work with him nearly as much as I used to so I am working on becoming a better wife and home-away-from-home homemaker. Also, being here in the city I will be able to work more consistently on getting my permission to practice nursing, be more involved in a bigger church and therefore make lots of friends and relearn my Russian faster.  We have walked around the city together quite a bit discovering places to shop, eat and do things (shoot pool, ice skate, movies, etc). City life isn’t for us forever but I think we are going to have fun while it lasts. It makes us both all the more thankful for our country farm upbringings.  That is all for now. Clint is on his way home for our first Thanksgiving as a married couple so I am going to put the finishing touches on dinner before he arrives. His drive is 5-7 minutes depending on traffic and stop lights so I don’t have much time.

Thank you all for reading my updates. I love to hear what’s new in your life and any other comments. Keep Clint in your prayers because this office job/city life might get to him eventually. 

Hot Dogs = Risky Business

Clint took off a few hours early from work on Saturday, which was a nice much needed surprise. We talked for a while trying to decide what we were going to spend our afternoon doing, he remembered the hot dogs that had been in the fridge for quite some time and suggested we go have a bon fire in the forest behind our village. Clint mentioned that he liked hot dogs at one point a couple of weeks ago so I decided to get some Russian ones to try. It was a little early for supper so we decided to do some exploring before we built our fire. We walked through the beautiful forest and sat by the river to talk a while. It was very relaxing, so nice to spend some time with my man outside of work. I didn’t capture the beauty of the forest while we were out there so I’ll have to post pictures of that later. But I do have a picture of the fire my mountain man built for us to enjoy. That was the whole reason for this post, just to brag about his awesome lumberjack skills.

My Lumberjack. ;-)

The fire he built. 

PS. The hot dogs passed his taste test. They weren’t Oscar Mayer for sure but they weren’t bad. 

Our Church

“Even if we only come to this church once we will see these people again” was my husband’s comment after we left our church the first Sunday we visited. It is amazing to me that we can find family anywhere we go on this globe. The community of Christians spreads across boarders, countries, governments and languages. We are like-minded and that bonds us together even if we don’t speak the same language.

It took us a while but we have found a church near our house. The first few Sundays we were here in Russia we went to the church my parents go to in Penza. There we talked to the pastors to see if they knew of a church closer to us since Penza is a bit of a drive. They gave me the home phone number (not his cell phone) of the pastor and the address of the church. Most of you know that I have somewhat of a fear of talking on the phone, that fear is just magnified when it comes to talking on the phone in Russian to someone I have never met, therefore we decided to put the address in the GPS on Sunday. We left home an hour earlier then necessary to account for getting lost but we had the GPS so that wasn’t going to be a problem. Ha, think again, the machine was telling us to turn where there were no roads and drive through buildings. We still had time so we parked along the road and started walking around to see if we could find this place. We found the right street and walked both ways on it but never found what we were looking for.  I then came to the sad realization that I was going to have to swallow my pride and call the pastor.

I don’t know what I was afraid of because he was a nice man that was patient when I didn’t understand him or couldn’t hear him. The next Sunday he met us by the police station (that Clint got taken to when he was arrested, but that’s a story for another day) and showed us the way to the church.

Our church, Dom Molitva (House of Prayer), meets in a small old house. There are 24 members total; one young couple with a three year old son, a Dad with three kids whose wife doesn’t come because she goes to a Russian Orthodox church but the majority of the members are elderly women some of which cant come to the Sunday services because of bad health. So an average Sunday has between ten and fifteen people. Each service lasts a minimum of two hours and we have had lunch and tea after each service so far. Over lunch they told us that their church was founded in the 1930’s. They had more members when it was illegal to practice religion in the Soviet Union. They had as many as seventy-five members but averaged fifty throughout communist times. There were also other churches in the area that no longer exist. Every so often all of the old believers would gather together in the woods for a worship service, two hundred or more would be there. They even loaded a piano into a dump truck so they would have music. It was incredible to hear about their faithfulness during persecution. The people are very welcoming and we are so thankful to have found some brothers and sisters in Christ close to home.

Our Church. 

The entry way. 

This is the area where the Sunday service is held, but after the service we bring in the tables and tea for a good time of fellowship. 

The road less traveled...

is less traveled for a reason!!!

All of the highways in Russia lead to or from Moscow. The ONE that goes through our Penza region is called M5. It is a two-lane road similar to any 55 mile per hour road in the states. We can get on this road about 20 minutes from our house and take it to Penza and all the way to Mega Farm. But that is not the road I want to spend my time talking about here. I want to talk about the roads in our village and the roads to get to the other farms. In other words the roads that we spend 90% of our time on. 

Our small village of Potodeevo has one main road that goes into the village center where the post office, school, our apartment complex and grocery stores are. It may have been paved at one point in time but it seems to be a dirt road now.  This road is not too bad. We can still choose where to drive to avoid potholes. The rest of the roads in our village are mud trails that only pictures can explain. Every time it rains these roads get paralyzed. 

This is the main street in our village looking from our house heading out of town. 

This is the main street in our village looking from the edge of town towards our house. The pink building is one of the two grocery stores. The building at the end of the road houses the post office.

These three pictures are of roads that web off of the main street into Potodeevo. Rain makes them impassable. We have had rain here 4-5 out of 7 days every week since I arrived. 

Most of the roads we drive on to get to fields and other farms look like this one below. The only thing you can do is go slow and try to choose which potholes are going to hurt less. In some cases the main route has become so bad that the locals have made a driving path in the ditch or the field next to the road to have a smoother ride.

Because of these roads our car is always filthy. However we only wash it when we have to go to Penza and even then it may only be the license plate as to not get stopped by the police. Its not usually worth the trouble. Fifteen minutes down the road you can't tell that we even put the effort into scrubbing every inch.