RUSSIA

ok, so there's 7 indians, 5 Africans and 1 American in a 12'x20' room at midnight...sounds like the beginning to a joke, huh? no, just dinner last night. sam's friend, Deepthi, invited us to come for dinner last night (apparently dinner is typically VERY late in the hostel). the food was great, prepared by a number of the people there. i am SO looking forward to having some cooking lessons with the Indians! This is also a fun little bit of knowledge: yesterday i was on Faisal's computer (Sam's roomate from last year, from Jordan) and his computer is all in Arabic, and then i open blogger and it automatically opens in Russian. so i was working in two languages, neither of which i understand! but thanks to the unviersal position of stuff in Windows XP, i could figure it out. (except that on an arabic computer, everything is backward from what i'm used to). fun.

THIS JUST IN:
Faisal just called to say that they talked to the Commendant of the hostel and she says she will give permission for me to stay here and put it on the books. THANK YOU, GOD! Tomorrow we get to move in to our own room! so this weekend will be filled with cleaning and moving and organizing and finally getting a space to ourselves...and FINALLY unpacking! I love travel, but living out of suitcases, and having to dig through them anytime you want to find something gets old very fast. only one more hurtle to go - my invitation letter for a longer term visa. thanks to so many of you who have been praying through this with us!

Sorry to those of you from Dayton who are jealous right now...but tonight a group of us are going to IKEA. I've kind of been held prisioner inside until we got the permissions we needed, so I'm really excited about getting to leave the Hostel!

Pictures later. I'm out.