Retreat!

After a whirlwind two days, we are back from IA's second annual spiritual retreat.

Now that we've had a few hours to unwind without a group of high school and junior high kids, take a much needed shower and sort out our laundry, I thought I'd tell a bit about our experience and post some pictures!

The retreat was a great experience and a lot of fun. It was two and a half days of pretty much constant activity involving plenty of games and food and (for most of the students anyway) very little sleep. I have a whole new appreciation for anyone who has ever been in charge of or in involved in planning an event with a large group of teenagers. All things considered, our group is very well behaved and gets along well with one another, so I tip my hat to those who have worked with groups both larger and more unruly than our 40 some junior and senior highers.

For the retreat we went to the campus of a Finnish Lutheran seminary that is a few kilometers outside of the city. Thanks to St. Petersburg traffic it took about an hour and a quarter to get there but geographically it isn't that far away. Even though we were quite close to the city, it really did feel like a retreat. The ever present suburbs that ring every urban area in the United States are pretty much non-existent in St. Petersburg, so driving out of the city makes for a rather dramatic change. You literally leave the city, go a few kilometers on a highway and then the highway quickly shifts to two lanes and you are in dacha country and it looks as if you may as well be 100 miles from the next town. Once you get outside the city you get a better feel of how far North we really are. The vegetation, in particular the tall, thin birch trees, is a reminder that we live on the edge of Scandinavia.

The seminary is small and consists of a few buildings that makes the place look like a little Finnish village. There is a dining hall, a main multi-story building, a two-wing building that has dormitory rooms, and another building that is actually a home for elderly people (don't worry, there will be pictures below:-) ). Our worship and meeting times were all in one building where about half of the students stayed, while Amanda and I were in the other building along with the remaining half.

Our speaker for the retreat was Ken Rudolph and he did a great job of communicating with the students. He was an extremely engaging speaker full of hilarious stories and the students all responded well and were enthusiastic about it. More importantly, Ken stressed the need to have a deeper understanding of who God is, why we need Him, and how to do great things for Him. These aren't new topics for anyone who has been a believer for a while, but this retreat was a reminder that being reminded of truth is equally if not more important, than learning something new. We also had small group times with each of us teachers leading a small group where we talked about things we had heard and prayed together.

In addition to times of worshiping together and hearing Ken speak, we had lots of fun playing games and hanging out with our kids. Our students are so enthusiastic and willing to participate! Amanda and I were in charge of games and we had a great time leading them (for which Amanda deserves about 99.8% of the credit since she found all of the games and planned them). I've never seen students so quick to play along and have fun without whining, being sarcastic, or acting like they were too cool to do whatever the rest of the group was doing. These are a special group of students and its easy to forget that the problems that do arise with them are usually things that most teachers elsewhere would kill to have to deal with.

Amanda and I actually got our own room to ourselves, so we manage to sleep well during the retreat:-) Anytime I would ask a student how much sleep he or she got, I would usually hear things like "2 hours" or "we talked all night," so we seem to have been the minority in this respect. It was refreshing to spend time with our students outside of school and get to know and see them in a whole new light. We learned so much about them (including that Korean students take FOREVER to brush their teeth!!!), and we hope that they got to know us better as well too.

Unfortunately, the way our schedule works out is such that tomorrow (Friday) we do have school so everyone has to turn around from our time retreating outside the city to get up early and head off to class again. I somehow suspect that focus and interest levels may be a bit low tomorrow:-P

There is so much more that we could share about the retreat, but this post is already dragging on and we haven't even gotten to the pictures, so without further ado, please enjoy these photographs:-)


Amanda and I stayed in this building along with two other teachers and approximately 2/3rds of our students.


This building housed the rest of the students and was also the site of our worship and speaking times.


This courtyard was next to the building we stayed in.


This is to help give a sense of the lay of the land. I took this photo at the fence marking the edge of the seminary's property looking out towards some nearby houses.


Amanda in our lovely orange room.


A group of our students leading worship.


Game time! This particular game involved correctly following instructions on stacking chairs:-)


Amanda hanging out with one of our 9th graders.


Last year's retreat started a tradition of bobbing for apples which we continued this year. Who knew it could be so much fun to watch people soak themselves while trying to catch fruit with their teeth while on all fours?







Even the teachers got in on the action:






Mr. K and Mr. Z (Jarod, one of our science teachers) show off the fruits of our labor.


This is almost too priceless for words:-P


A beautiful sunrise greeted us to start day two of the retreat


One of our three seniors, models our t-shirt for the retreat.


Mr. Moore, our other science teacher, led us on a nature walk through the surrounding woods.


Group photo! Grades 7-12 from the International Academy. I have all but around 10 of these students in my various history classes.


Merry go round at night! We had a bonfire the last night and some of us (including Amanda! look closely!) piled onto the merry go round at the nearby playground for a late night spin.


We made a fire and roasted hot dogs and made s'mores. Its a little harder to find some of the ingredients for these things in Russia, so we had to make do with strawberry flavored marshmallows that were about 1/3 of the size of the kind of jumbo jet puffed ones you would want to make a good s'more.


This is a little difficult to make out because of the lighting, but I took this at the bonfire at around 11 at night. The light in the distance is the city of St. Petersburg, lighting up the otherwise pitch black sky in the night.

And as a final parting gift to all of our readers, here is a short video of the students playing a game at the retreat. This way you can see that I'm telling the truth when I wrote that they are very enthusiastic!



That's all for now,

Matt

Soon to be Retreating

Hello!

It has been a while since we updated and especially been a while since I updated!

Things are finally calming down for me so I have some time to sit down and update this!

Teaching has been going really well. Matthew and I are settling into a routine and our students are generally doing well and improving. This week was a little sad for some students because it is progress report time, but overall all is well.

I had a student lose a tooth during the day last week and that was a bit stunning! I A) have never had anyone I knew lose a tooth in years B) don't have any kids so forgot about all of that and C) frequently forget my class is young enough they still lose teeth and such!

Today my 6th graders had a class party for a student's birthday. I made lemon bars and we all brought food and played games. I've never done a birthday party for a student before, but everything went very well!

Matthew and I have been trying to be deliberate about getting out on the weekends. It is easy to get sucked in to lesson planning and grading and such. Last week we went to Nevsky and saw a man wearing an Indy Colts sweater. That was a big surprise and I took a picture of him.

Here are some other pictures from our time there! It was cool outside and the sun was setting.

This last picture goes with the old tradition of chopping the front off of ships you beat in battle and posting them on a column so that other ships could see them. There are two and the figures at the base are figures representing the major rivers. They are called Rostral columns.

The past two Saturdays we have also been helping with the worship band practices for the upcoming high school/junior high retreat. Matthew and I will be heading out tomorrow with the high school and junior high groups (minus the 6th grade, so I have a sub) to a wooded conference center outside the city for a spiritual retreat. Hopefully God will be working in the lives of our students while we are there! But anyway! Matthew has been letting everyone in and out (since we live the closest) and I have been giving pointers to the bands as they practice. So that has been exciting as well!

We were able to meet with the other World Partner people here last week as well. It was a really fun time and it was very relaxing to spend time with others from our group. The family that hosts it has a son in my class so I feel bad that he gets stuck seeing me on those nights too! :-)

Matthew and I successfully picked up our packages that each of our families sent us and that was a lot of fun. It's always just nice to get something and open something!

If you would like to send us a package, we can give you our mailing address (just email us and ask for it at amandaandmattk@yahoo.com). We do have one request. Because of my visa being in my maiden name, if you send us anything just send it to Matthew. Don't put my name on it at all. They can be very picky so if you put Amanda K or Amanda and Matthew K they may or may not actually give it to us. This is not unusual even in the States though so just keep this in mind!

Well that is everything I can think of!

Please pray that retreat will be a growing timefor our students and that things will go smoothly! We will take tons of pictures and will post them over the weekend

Greetings and a few more photos

Hello again!

Life goes on in St. Petersburg. As I write this, we have cloudy skies and a light rain falling. Pretty typical weather for this time of year here. We've completed yet another week of school. It doesn't seem like we are already three weeks into the school year and have been here in the city for a month and a half. Time seems to be racing by. Teaching continues to be challenging and rewarding. Considering that I'm not really qualified to be teaching at all, I am relieved that the students here are generally good kids and well behaved so that I haven't had to deal with any major class management issues.

Today was filled with running a few errands like getting photos taken for Amanda for her visa and some grocery shopping. Nothing too terribly exciting, but things that needed to be done. Today IA hosted a seminar for parents and students dealing with raising children in an international setting and also focusing on preparing older students for the college application process and reentry into their home culture. Amanda and I came in at the very end because we were needed to stick around afterward while some of the students had a worship band rehearsal.

The week after this coming week IA has a spiritual retreat for secondary students. Amanda and I will be going, along with most of the rest of the teachers of the older students. I'm sure we will have an accompanying post with pictures afterwards:-D Student-led worship is part of the retreat so today the group that will be doing that had a rehearsal. Since we live so close to the school, we were enlisted to lock up the building afterwards:-)

Since we were at the school today and actually remembered the camera, we have a few photos of the inside of the building and of our classrooms! One of these days we will actually have some photos of our students to post, but for now you'll have to be content with the rooms themselves.

As always, just click on a picture if you want to enlarge it.


This is Amanda's room, looking out from behind her desk.
(An addition from Amanda: If you look closely you can see that the middle bookshelves are made out of chairs! I had these chairs in my room blocking my shelves so I got sick of them and made shelves. The students bring their own art supplies to art class so I organized them in my make shift shelves! So far so good!)


Here are the desks in Amanda's room where 10 high energy 6th graders sit each day.


And here is the front of Amanda's classroom. The person whose back is to the camera is Deb Siegel, who taught the 6th grade class last year and was instrumental in helping us find our apartment. She didn't realize that Amanda was taking a photo:-)


Moving up from Amanda's room on the second floor, we have the landing between the second and third floor where we have a variety of flags representing the countries of our students (past and present).


The main staircase at the end of the building opposite the main entrance.


Here is my classroom! As you can see, the ceilings are HIGH! There is at least a good 6 feet more than what I could get in the photo. My two U.S. History classes meet in this room. Those of you with sharp eyes will note that I have a large photograph of former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in my room (it came with the building).


This is the room that my Russian History class meets in. Normally there are chairs around the table, but they were conscripted for the seminar today.


This is the open space on the third floor. As you can see, high ceilings abound! These are some of the parents of our students following the seminar. My two classrooms are to the left side of the photo.

Hopefully this can help you better visualize the space where we spend most of our time during the week!

-Matt

St. Isaac's

Greetings once more from the beautiful land of St. Petersburg!

We have successfully finished our second week of teaching at IA and are feeling very good about the experience so far. Classes seem to be going well and we are doing well. The students seem to be happy (although that might change after they take the U.S. History test that I've written for Tuesday:-P) and are a good group.

This weekend Amanda and I have been taking advantage of the nice, fall-like weather that we've been experiencing. Yesterday we enjoyed a long leisurely walk down to the Neva and today we went to St. Isaac's Cathedral. St. Isaac's is the largest church in the city and the second tallest Orthodox Church in the world at a height of 101.5 meters(second only to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow). Wikipedia has a nice list of the tallest Orthodox Churches in the world that you can check out here since there are quite a few on the list that are in St. Petersburg! Unlike some of these other cathedrals, St. Isaac's lets visitors take advantage of its height by letting you take stairs up to the colonnade that circles the dome and walk around it. The view of the city is spectacular and is a great place to take photos of the rest of St. Petersburg.

The church was completed in 1858 and is the classicist style, making its appearance unusual for an Eastern Orthodox Church. During the Soviet period, St. Isaac's was used as the location of the state anti-religion museum for a number of years before being turned into a museum, which is the function that it serves today. It is a museum only in the loose sense that it is no longer a functioning church, although there is a corner of the church that is still set aside for religious devotion where people can come and light candles and venerate icons.

Reflecting the Western architecture of the building, the interior is covered in marble and all of the iconography follows Western European painting conventions, making the interior appear more like what one might find in a Roman Catholic Church. In having a more Western appearance than a traditional Eastern Orthodox one, St. Isaac's follows after other prominent churches in the city like the Peter and Paul Cathedral or the Kazan Cathedral and fits in well in this city that was built to be a "window to the West."

But enough details about architecture. Let's get to the pictures!
(You can click on all of these pictures to see bigger versions of them)


Here is the famous Bronze Horseman. This statue of Peter the Great was erected in the reign of Catherine the Great and has become an iconic image of the city. It stands near the banks of the Neva not far from St. Isaac's.


St. Isaac's Cathedral, rising up from behind the trees of a park that stands in front of it.


A closer shot of the exterior of the church. The base of the columns that circle the golden dome is where the walkway for visitors to look out over the city is.


The gorgeous, marble covered, gilded interior.


Taken standing directly underneath the dome. The height of St. Isaac's is higher than the U.S. Capitol building which has a similar dome.


The iconostasis.


This is the portion of the cathedral that is still in use for religious purposes.


I stood with my back straight against a marble column and held the camera above my head to take this picture of a portion of the ceiling.


This photo fails to do justice to the incredible size of these doors. This is one of the sets of doors that stand on each of the sides of the building. They are made of wood and cast in bronze and weigh over 20 tons.


The people in this picture help give a sense of the size of the interior.


Another glimpse at the richly decorate ceiling of the cathedral.


A relief of a pieta on the exterior of the cathedral.


We walked up these stairs to get to the colonnade. We both felt a bit dizzy by the end:-)


The colonnade around the golden dome.


Our city!


In this picture, you can see the top of the Spilled Blood on the left side and on the right you can see the dome of the Kazan Cathedral.


Looking down on the square with the statue of Nicholas I on a horse. We posted a picture of that statue in an earlier entry. This shot is looking down on the side of the cathedral opposite the river and the Bronze Horseman statue.


It's us! We tried to take a photo of ourselves that would capture some of the city behind us, but unfortunately were unable to do so. This means that you have to be content with just gazing upon our faces.


Across the Neva lies Vasilievsky Island. Here you can see one of the many cruise ships that come to the city. In the background you can see two office buildings that stand out above all of the other buildings. Between these two buildings is a park that is only about a ten minute walk from our apartment. Those of you with sharp eyes will note that this photo is a close up of the area of the city shown in the photo four above this one.

That's all for now. Keep checking back!

-Matt