Fall Spiritual Retreat!

Hello! 

This past Monday through Wednesday was IA's fourth annual retreat and it was a really excellent experience. The high school is much smaller this year and so the theme was "Close Encounters" focusing on the idea of coming closer to God and closer to each other. The students were also really wonderful and this was the smoothest and most organized retreat yet for Matt and I so it was a lot of fun for us as well. :-)

This year we had most of a building to ourselves. We were back at the Finnish Lutheran seminary and we were able to have this nice big room to ourselves instead of sharing classrooms with the seminary students. It was really nice because the evening sessions had the sun setting on the room and gave it that really nice glow. :-)

Our speaker this year works through English camps for youth in the city. He approached relationships with God and others through the topics of giving, sacrifice, and forgiveness. It was a really thoughtful approach and I think it resonated with the students. 

Matt and I teamed up with one of the students for games. This particular game involved students fishing out their partner's shoes and putting them on their partner's feet. 

Later in the afternoon we had team building games (which was new this year and I think it was a lot of fun!). This one involved leading a blindfolded partner outside to the playground where the rest of the games took place. 

One of Matt and I's funniest students decided to just pull his hat over his head and then say he couldn't breathe. He also spent the weekend telling me when I asked him if he was warm enough in shorts that it was "for fashion." 

Matt and some guys on a cool swing sort of thing.

The climbing rope wall thing was used to the full for the group games. First the students just had to get through the holes. Then without touching the ground and then without touching any of the rope. The reason this particular photo is up is because this student actually got stuck to much hilarity and Matt and I swear that the face he's making in this picture is exactly what you would find in a baby album of his. :-) I laugh very hard every time I look at it. 

lifting students through to keep them from touching the rope.

A nice scenic picture with the changing leaves!

We then played Steal the Bacon, which actually got a bit violent after they got the hang of how to play! You line up and numbers are called and you try to get the object in the center over your line in your hands before you are tagged, so there is a lot of kicking and throwing and such. 

Matt and Coach J jumped in toward the end. :-)

Worship!

We ended with our traditional bonfire. This was a really good time as well because students had a chance to share anything that was on their minds or that they had felt from the past days and quiet times. A lot of students shared about how they had worried since the HS was so small this year but how they felt that the school was family. It was a really encouraging time for everyone. 

And then we headed off into the sunset and back to school for today and Friday! This was easily the best retreat Matt and I have been to and we were very blessed to be there!
Thank you for all of your prayers and continue to pray that the changes and decisions that were made will continue in the students' lives.

Pavlovsk

Fall weather has come to St. Petersburg. Temperatures have been falling (even after our rather cool summer) and the leaves have started changing.  Amanda and I wanted to take advantage of the nice weather we had this Saturday and get out of the city and spend some time in nature enjoying fall, so we decided to go to Pavlovsk yesterday.

Pavlovsk is the name of a small town which takes its name from the palace and park that are the main site in the area.  Pavlovsk is just a short distance from the town of Pushkin, which is home to the Catherine Palace. We took the elektrichka (electric train) from St. Petersburg. It was only about a twenty minute trip by train from the south of St. Petersburg and just the next train stop down from the Catherine Palace. I had been there once when I was here in St. Petersburg in college, but Amanda had never been there.  Pavlovsk's park is different from the parks at most of the other palaces in that it is much less manicured and much more natural.  It is also one of the largest which makes it a great place to go to get outside of the city and feel closer to the natural world.

The palace was built by Paul (Pavel), the son of Catherine the Great and briefly the Tsar of Russia (he was assassinated in 1801 after just five years on the throne).  In addition to the palace, there are a number of other buildings in the park, including several pavilions, statues, and imitation ruins (it was stylish in the 18th century to build structures that looked like Greco-Roman ruins). There is also a small river flowing through the center of the park and several ponds.

While not all of the leaves had started changing, there were still plenty of colors to be seen in the forests of Pavlovsk. It was also nice because there are hills in Pavlovsk which is a change from the completely flat ground of St. Petersburg. We had a gorgeous day with a beautiful blue sky.  While there were other people there, the crowds were not too bad and the size of the park means that it doesn't really feel crowded, which is a nice change of pace compared to other palaces/parks like Peterhof and the Catherine Palace.

Below are some photos that we took during the day.  Enjoy!

The famous Russian squirrel! The park even had special tables that sold a variety of nuts and seeds to use to feed the squirrels and birds. Everyone in the park loves the squirrels and is just as excited to see them as we are.

The ponds and river made for several good photos with reflections.

The Temple of Friendship- one of the buildings located throughout the park grounds

Me on a bridge:-)

Amanda standing next to one of the pillars on the Temple of Friendship

One side of the palace

The central part of the palace.

Amanda took this close up of a flower with dew on it.

A trellis with fragrant plants of some kind growing on it (I'm not much of a gardener:-))

The palace from the back.

With the trees arranged like this, it only seemed natural to do this.

A closer look at one of the ruins

Amanda showing off one of the fruits of fall:-)

Today it has been raining, so I'm glad that we were able to go yesterday.  Please don't forget to pray for our spiritual retreat which starts tomorrow after school and runs through Wednesday!  We will have pictures and a description of everything that happened later on.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

School in Session!

Hello!

School is officially in full swing for both of us and things are going really well. Our classes have a very different flavor than last year, but overall in a very positive direction! The quarter is super short (ends in mid October) so we are trying to cram in as much as we can to get balanced grades.

Our new extended day program has been amazing and we have both enjoyed our involvement in it. It's a much more organized and centrally directed after school program and students pay a flat fee to take as many classes as they want. Matt's doing a Russian history/vocab building class (odd combo, I know!) and I have been doing two Lit Circles and an ELL class.

My Lit Circles are one of the highlights of my life right now, which is a huge blessing. Essentially, they are a sort of reading club for High school and Junior high. The High school is reading Howl's Moving Castle, which I love very much, and the Junior high is reading The Dark is Rising. For our last HS Lit club I had them bring hats and we described what kind of person would wear each and then acted as that person, since the main character of the book is a hatter. Tomorrow, we will be eating bacon and listening to Welsh music. :-) So we're reading the book out loud and at home and just doing fun things in class! There will be pictures later! For ELL, we are doing vocab and grammar that I am taking from the book Among the Hidden. Using direct words and sentences from an actual book is my favorite way of doing grammar so this class is nice as well.

We had our first youth group last Friday and that was a lot of fun as well. With our teeny tiny high school almost everyone was there. We had a good message about new beginnings and then rounds of a game the students called Chinese swordfight. You link hands with someone else and try to poke them  with your first finger. Matt and I tried it; I use both hands but still lost. :-P

Chinese swordfight!

Another exciting time at our house: we had a tiny hole open up in our main pipe yesterday. It is amazing how much water can come out of a hole the size of a toothpick! So we tried to tape it but to no avail and called our wonderful landlord. About every hour we had to run the towels through the spin cycle because they were soaked and try to mop more water off of the floor. But, in an amazingly short stretch of time the emergency service people put a cuff on it and the leak is fixed! Today we even had a "master" (their phrasing for a professional at a certain service) come and look at it and he said the pipe would not need to be replaced or anything! Another huge blessing in all of this was the fact that the hole could have only occurred after we got home based on the amount of water, and so it hadn't been flooding while we were at school or anything.

One final fun "event" that I've been attempting to do this year is painting my nails to match a book once the class finishes it. I'm not doing it for every book and it depends on how busy we are, but so far I've done two books! The 9th grade was the first with The Old Man and the Sea.

Clockwise: the birds that the old man feels sorry for, the Portuguese man-o-war, the great Marlin, the turtles that the old man loves. 

And the 7th grade just finished Walk Two Moons tonight, so I did my nails this afternoon.

They say "Huzza, Huzza" which comes up a lot in the book and are the last two words, and they have blackberries growing out of the letters. 

Next week we have our annual spiritual retreat. Matt and I have been on the group that has been planning that and we are definitely excited about what is coming up. The theme is "Close Encounters" and will focus on how to become closer to God and to the others in the high school. Pray that this will be a good time for them to become closer as a group, especially since our numbers are so small and this is the perfect time for it!

Thank you everyone who has been praying for the school year and for Matt and I!