randomness. because i've been falling behind on my posts...

ok, this will be a very random post. full of tidbits and odds n' ends of thoughts i've had of things to share with you.

a few weeks ago our fellowship group went to visit the Wycliffe Bible Translators center in St. Petersburg. A friend of ours who attends our fellowship (Tom, from the USA) works for Wycliffe, and had invited us to come to the center and see what they do. we had a great time of worship together with them, shared tea, coffee and some snacks, and then we watched a presentation about Wycliffe's history and the work they do, and more specifically about Russia and the work they do here. Here are some pics from the night:

i didn't get a picture of it but, as with just about every home in Russia, the Wycliffe center has a small mudroom area at the entrance, complete with a rack for shoes and house slippers for everyone to wear inside.

* I start teaching a new pre-intermediate class tonight.

* I am planning a trip to Tallinn, Estonia next weekend since i have to leave Russia for a few days so i can renew my registration on this visa.

* I think one of my students summed up the entirety of Russian-thinking in one statement a few weeks ago. It was my class at Lenta (grocery store) I was talking with my business-people students about customer service and why its important in business. I asked how it would effect a business if the customers aren't happy with their store, and the answer I got was this, "if they don't like it, they can just go somewhere else." Bingo. i think this pretty much sums up life here. (and believe me, once we can....in 2011...we will!)

* We've switched to daylight saving time now. and its eery, because now its still light out after 8pm. and its only going to get longer and longer, until the "White Nights" in June where the sun never really sets at all. Quite a contrast to the phenomenon of only getting 5 hours of daylight in the winter.

* Also, we've had unusually great weather this week. on Tuesday is was +9 C. which is 48.2 F!! and it's been hovering around there for the past 3 days. add that to the fact that it's been DRY and MOSTLY CLEAR...this equals GREAT WEATHER in St. Petersburg!

Ok, somehow I hit some keys on my keyboard, and I can only type in Blogger in Cyrillic now! When I type anything it looks like this:

црфн фьв Ш щтдн фиду ещ ензу шт Скнддшсю Ершы шы куфддн акгыекфештп!

and actually the keys are not even corresponding to the correct letters in the Cyrillic alphabet, for Russian at least, so I’m not sure what the deal is. Thank God it’s only doing this on my Blogger and its not affecting the whole computer, like Word and stuff. So I’m typing this in Word and cutting and pasting. So for now I will post this and hopefully I can get the whole language things squared away soon! Cheers.