Our school year is off to a good start, and we are enjoying fall-like weather here in St. Petersburg. It already feels like summer was something that happened ages ago, and it feels normal to be back at school. Our classes this year have been going very well, and it has been great to see old students again and to get to know the many new ones we have this year as well!
This past week also marked the start of drama for this year. This year drama is an after-school elective program, and not a required class as it has been in years past. Amanda is once again directing the play, and is also working with Natalie, one of our new teachers this year. Natalie has done theater before in her previous teaching job in the U.S., so it will be good to have two people to help with rehearsals. Since drama is not required, Amanda was a bit nervous that not enough people would turn out, but thankfully there was an excellent group of students who showed up. Casting was made difficult by the fact that we had so many students who were capable of doing the roles, which is always a good problem to have. I'm sure we will have more about theatre as preparations for the play continue.
While Amanda has been working with the drama, I have been involved in our after-school tutoring program and continuing my Russian language lessons. Both of those things are going well, and its good to be having formal lessons again after a summer of self-study.
This week is going to be a bit shorter class wise, because we are having spiritual retreat starting on Wednesday! We have decided to schedule the annual high school and middle school retreats for earlier in the year (usually they have been towards the end of September). Amanda will be going with the high school students to the Finnish Lutheran seminary just outside of the city where we have had retreat in past years, while I will be helping out in St. Petersburg for the one day junior high retreat this year.
This will be the first time either of us has had the chance to participate in the junior high retreat, which should be a good experience. This year Amanda and I are the veterans since most of the teachers who will be going on the retreats have never done one before.
Please be in prayer for these retreats and in the days leading up to them. The high school leaves from school on Wednesday afternoon and returns on Friday, while the middle school will have its retreat on Thursday. Spiritual retreat has been such a blessing every time we have been on it, and God has consistently used this time to work in our students' hearts. We have had students accept Christ as part of the retreat, and many more deepen their walks with God. In addition, the retreat has been a great way to build up a sense of friendship and community, and we believe that God will work in a similar way this year.
Outside of school, we had the chance last weekend to enjoy one of our favorite annual events: Agro-Rus! Agro-Rus is an annual farmers' market held at the convention center near our apartment in which hundreds of vendors come to sell honey, meat, produce, honey, clothes, gardening accessories, and honey. (Seriously, over half of the vendors are selling honey. There are literally over a hundred different stalls selling different kinds of honey). It was a lot of fun, and we enjoyed seeing the livestock, eating delicious food, and buying some interesting honey (it has pine nuts in it!).
Below are a few recent pictures that show what we've been up to:
Just one of the many rows of tents for vendors selling things at Agro-Rus. This was the part of the exhibition that was mostly selling clothing.
Some of the produce stalls selling delicious looking vegetables:-)
The yellow stall with the bears is the honey vendor that we bought our honey from. The woman working the tent was extremely nice and had us sample at least a half dozen different kinds of honey. They were all delicious!
This was the map of the exhibition. The areas in the dark golden/yellowish color (mostly on the right-hand side of the map) are the areas that were set aside for honey. As you can see, honey took up quite a lot of space!
This has nothing to do with Agro-Rus. Its just a picture of an enormous pepper that I bought at a store a week ago. I had two peppers on my grocery list, but for obvious reasons decided that one would be sufficient:-)
I can't really explain my fascination with Angry Birds. I don't even play the game, I just find the birds extremely amusing, so of course I couldn't pass up a chance to buy Angry Birds soda. The beverage was pretty mediocre, but seeing that big cardinal always brings a smile to my face.
Thanks for reading, and thank you for being in prayer about the upcoming retreats. We will post something soon afterwards to let everyone know how things went this year!
-Matt
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