The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

Last weekend Matthew and I were involved in the 4th through 6th grade production of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
Matthew had the honored roll of being Aslan and I was Queen Lucy very briefly though mostly I did logistical things throughout the process.
And it was a long process! We'd been working on this for 2 Quarters at least. Many of my 6th graders had lead roles and all of the students in both classes had some role.
We were honestly worried up until the performance because it always seems like there are still so many things left or so many things that still need to be done.
But the performance itself went very well! The students did a wonderful job and everything came together really well. The costumes were all done by the students and their parents and some of them were really amazing. The sets were done by our art teacher and were stunning!
So here are some pictures for you!
meeting Tumnus
White Witch

at the Beaver's house

In the frozen garden with Edmund and Maugrim

Father Christmas
the tea party
at Aslan's camp
Aslan and the White Witch talk
Queen's frozen garden with Aslan
the battle
Cair Paravel
the adult Pevensies
cast bow!
Tumnus and Lucy
the royals!
Aslan
Grumpskin
Lion
Susan (left), Peter (right), and Lucy (center back)
view from my side of the stage
Maugrim
unicorn and deer
Minotaur
Cair Paravel backdrop and our art teacher!

Easter Update!

Христос Воскрес! (Christ is Risen!)

Hello again and a happy Easter to everyone:-) We are in an especially jubilant mood this weekend as spring weather has finally arrived. The bright sunshine and warmer temperatures fittingly echo Jesus' resurrection as winter is finally behind us (although we have been warned on many occasions that snow may very well briefly return again before summer).

While technically we have five weeks remaining of school, in reality we have less time than that. The last two weeks of the semester are taken up with special activities- the second to last week for final exams for grades 7-12 and the last week for special events like awards day, field day, prom, and graduation. For me, that means only three weeks left of regular classes, which means I'm on a mad dash to fit in as much extra history as we can fit in before exams:-) To add to the mayhem, next Friday is the drama production of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the 4-6th graders. As always, this quarter promises to be jam-packed to the end.

Once its all done it will be nice to have a chance to sit back and reflect on our first year of teaching. It's hard to think that we'll have been doing this for a full (academic) year already. Its hard for me to go back mentally to what it felt like to walk into that first class in late August. By my very rough estimate, I'll have taught something on the order of 300-400 class periods by the time this first year is through. I'd like to think that I'm a better teacher for it, and I hope to take what I've learned this year and improve even more next year.

In addition to teaching, Amanda and I have been enjoying other events. Last weekend, the middle and high school band students put on a jazz cafe at our school. They did a great job playing a wide range of jazz standards and redecorated the third floor to look like a cafe, complete with students dressed as waiters and tables with candles. This weekend we enjoyed the nice weather by taking a walk through some of the islands in the center of the city. To top it off, we enjoyed taking in a roller coaster at Divo Ostrov, St. Petersburg's own amusement park. This morning was a lovely Easter service at our church, and tomorrow a new week dawns again!

Here are some recent photos:

The middle school band at Jazz Club.


The 4th-6th graders singing. Where else can you find American, Korean, Australian, Canadian, Swedish, and Japanese students join together to sing "Route 66"?


The high school band doing their thing.


The 1,000 ft. tall television tower that dominates the northern part of Petrogradsky Region of the city. The water is flowing in the Neva again! It is so nice to see running water again. All winter long the city looked like a desert as the frozen river was covered with an undisturbed blanket of snow.


One of the many very nice homes on Kamenny Island. If you think we should be living here, don't hesitate to give generously:-P


Decorations at the amusement park. A hut on chicken legs is an image from Russian folklore, namely the character Baba Yaga who lives in such a hut.


More fun amusement park decorations.


The roller coaster that we rode:-)

Keep checking back for more news and photos!
-Matt

Important News!

Hello Again!

We have some important news to update all of you on: we are going to be staying in Russia for two more years beyond our current commitment. World Partners gave us the approval to do this a few weeks ago, but we have held off making an announcement on our blog until we had a chance to prepare a letter to inform our supporters. A few of you may have heard this already, but with our latest update letter going out this week we felt it was time to post something about it here and explain why we decided to take this step.

Ever since we began the process of coming to Russia all the way back in January of 2009, we were committed to being open to the possibility of staying longer. With neither of us having more than four months of experience living overseas at a time, we were concerned about trying to commit to a long-range term of service in Russia. Because of this, we agreed to serve for two years with IA. We didn't know what exactly we were getting ourselves into, but we were ready for an adventure and were excited to see what God was doing in Russia:-)

It didn't take long after arriving here before we began to seriously think about staying beyond our two year commitment. Looking back in the journal I sporadically keep, I found an entry I wrote at the end of last October wondering about whether we should stay longer. Staying longer would raise a host of new questions: would the school want us to stay? Would our agency agree to let us stay on in our current volunteer capacity? Would we able to raise the extra support? And of course, just how much longer should we stay?

With these questions in mind, Amanda and I began to pray about the possibility of staying longer. We knew that last fall would be far too early to make a decision about staying longer, since we were still in the "honeymoon" phase of living overseas where things still seem novel and exciting. We continued to pray but deliberately chose to not make any decision until after the first semester and after we had experienced winter and the seasonal darkness here.

By about mid-February, we both felt a strong desire to continue to serve at IA and believed that God was leading us in this direction. At this point we talked with IA, and the school was very happy to hear that we wanted to serve longer. Next, we talked and prayed with our World Partners team here. The others here were also very happy and supportive to hear that we were interested in staying longer. Lastly, we wrote to our agency to explain our desire and ask if we could extend our service while still being part of the volunteer program. We were prepared for possible questions and concerns, but we heard back extremely quickly and were told that World Partners would expect us for another two years:-)

We were excited and a bit scared all at once. In many ways, it felt like it did back in the spring of 2009 when IA formally accepted us to teach. We were so excited and at the same time had to face all sorts of logistical questions. Suddenly things like raising support, getting visas/airline tickets, and finding a place to live became major concerns. In every one of those areas, God worked and blessed us tremendously. We prayed that we would not be accepted if God was not calling us to this and if He was not going to provide the things that we needed. We were accepted and God worked. We prayed this again as we considered staying longer. We have been accepted to stay longer, and now we are waiting to see just how God will work this time. We are trusting in Him to guide and provide just as He has done throughout this past year in so many ways!

The question you may be wondering about now is what happens when the remaining three years of our commitment runs up. At the moment, neither Amanda or I have felt that we are being called to a permanent ministry in St. Petersburg, so at the moment we are planning to return to the United States after our time is up. However, one thing that we both have been learning is the need to always be open to God's leading and to never say never. So while we don't plan to stay more than four years, we don't know if God has different ideas. We shall see what the future has in store:-)

In closing this, I want to say thank you again to everyone who has done so much for us. For the words of encouragement, prayers, and financial support that have sustained us here, we are immeasurably grateful. It has been a privilege to be here and to be supported and trusted by so many of you.

With thanks and gratitude,

Matt

Helsinki

Greetings once more, faithful readers:-)

As promised, here is a post about our recent trip to Finland. We left early on a Saturday morning along with our friends Sveyta and Kristina (also teachers at IA) and took a bus to Helsinki. Its approximately an 8 hour trip (but this includes a few stops along the way and the whole process of crossing the border). I always enjoy getting outside of the city and seeing the neighboring countries. Helsinki is the fourth European capital city we have visited in the past 8 months (Riga, Tallin, and Moscow being the others). I've added Vilnius and Stockholm to my wishlist for next capitals to visit, but we'll have to wait and see if we can manage those at some point:-)

Helsinki, like St. Petersburg is on the Gulf of Finland. The city also bears some traces of Russian influence on its appearance, which is understandable since Finland was a part of the Russian Empire from 1809 to 1917. In terms of size Helsinki is much smaller with about 1 million people living in the greater city area (about 600,000 live within its limits). However, since Finland's population is only 5.3 million people, Helsinki is far and away the largest city in the country.

We didn't have any specific plan in going there, other than to enjoy getting outside of Russia for a few days and finally putting the Christmas money we had been sitting on for three months to use. Our friends wanted to do some shopping, and we were just happy to see the city.

Our hotel was on the sixth floor of a building in the center of the city within easy walking distance of most of the points of interest. We spent our first night walking around by the harbor and enjoying the sites and taking in part of an Orthodox service at the Uspensky Cathedral. The next day I went off walking around the city for a few hours while Amanda, Sveyta, and Kristina did some shopping. I visited the Helsinki city history museum which at the moment is entirely dedicated to the subject of the history of women's rights in Finland. Not what I expected, but very interesting none the less! We also took the ferry to the nearby islands of Suomenlinna, home to an 18th century military fortress that is a major attraction for visitors and a UNESCO world heritage site. The wind on the island was absolutely unbelievable, but the view was beautiful even for a very cloudy day.

Part of the fun of being in Finland is the chance to take advantage of things that we can't find in St. Petersburg. For us that meant a stop at a Ben and Jerry's ice cream store and eating bagels at another restaurant. I also got to visit my favorite Finnish fast-food restaurant, Hesburger. I recommend their new pepperoni cheeseburger:-) Amanda and I also discovered and fell in love with Jaffa, a brand of Finnish softdrink. We even took a two liter bottle back with us of the delicious lime and red grapefruit flavored variety.

We took a night bus back to St. Petersburg which meant that we had a short night since our bus left at 11 and it was hard to sleep knowing that in two hours we would be awakened to go through the Finnish and Russian sides of the border. On the plus side, we did get to enjoy some delicious hotdogs right before going through the Finnish border at 2 a.m. at the last establishment before passport control.

We arrived early on Tuesday morning and promptly went to sleep:-) We had a little "excitement" upon return as we tried to sort out our registration situation. All foreigners (and Russians too) must be registered with the authorities in the country. This must be done again everytime you come into Russia. However, in mid-February a new law was passed that said that employers were no longer allowed to register their employees and that landlords must do it instead. For us, this meant having to talk with our landlord, get him to talk with our visa person at school, have a packet of necessary documents for registration ready, and be prepared to call our landlord as soon as we returned to the country.

However, a few weeks ago the law was repealed. Since the president had not yet signed it, we were told that we would have to have our landlord do it anyway. Upon returning we gave the documents to our landlord, only to be told the next day that he and his wife did not understand what needed to be done. This put us in a temporary panic since our visa manger was out of the country (a lot of people from school were travelling during the break) and we would only have one more day before we had to be registered or else we would need to leave the country and re-enter all over again. After some frantic late night phone calling, we found out that the law had in fact been repealed, and that under the new law the period you have to be registered in had been extended. This was welcome news indeed! Its things like this that remind us, lest we forget, that we are living in a foreign country and often do not understand what is going on. Dealing with documents and the labyrinthine process that staying legally in Russia is is just one of the perks of living here:-) It makes us extremely thankful for the people at IA who do so much to take care of 90% of the process!

Here are some photos of beautiful Helsinki. I promise we took them in late March, though the copious amounts of ice and snow might convince you otherwise.

This is the Helsinki Cathedral, one of the most prominent landmarks in the city. Originally called St. Nicholas' Church during the period of Russian rule, it is a functioning Lutheran Church. The statue in front of it is of Tsar Alexander II.


This is the Uspensky Cathedral, which is still a functioning Orthodox Church. The vast majority of Finns identify as Lutheran, but there is a small Orthodox presence in Finland. One of the enjoyable features for me of Helsinki was the fact that there are lots of hills. St. Petersburg is completely flat so seeing some variation in elevation was a nice change!


A street facing the water on the southeast portion of the city. The beautiful architecture of the city was another enjoyable site to take in.


All right, this building isn't anything important, just apartments. I just think that it looks really cool:-)


Another beautiful building that gives a taste of Helsinki's architecture.


The ferry that we took to Suomenlinna.


Part of the walls of the fortress.


Inside the walls of the fortress. Seen from behind is our friend Sveyta:-)


Me inside an opening in the wall!


And now we're both joining in on the fun:-)


Amanda, Sveyta, and Kristina. My apologies to Sveyta for catching her making a weird face in this photo.


I took this photo on top of a hill overlooking the sea on Suomenlinna. I have never felt such intense wind in my life and was afraid I was going to get blown over once I reached the top of the hill.


A view of Helsinki taken from the shore of Suomenlinna. You can see how much snow and ice is still present, even when I took this photo on March 27th.


Some lights on a street in Helsinki at night.

Well that's all for now!

-Matt

Much Ado About Nothing

Hello!
We are in the middle of spring break right now and heading into our last quarter of school! For the beginning of spring break we went to Helsinki, Finland and there will be a post and pictures about that soon.

But the very first day of Spring Break our high school put on the play Much Ado About Nothing! It is a Shakespeare play and ours was set in WWII era.

So here are pictures and an explanation of the general plot.

The play focuses on Don Pedro, Claudio, and Benedick (in order above). They arrive at Leanato's and Claudio falls for his daughter Hero. Benedick and Beatrice, Leanato's niece, have met before and they bicker whenever they are together.
Beatrice on the left and Hero on the right.
Don John has two spies, one on the bench, and is out to get Don Pedro, his brother.
Leanato warning Beatrice that she may want to get married some day while she jokes and teases men in general.

It is decided that Don Pedro will win Hero for Claudio and they are engaged later.

After a masked ball, Benedick goes on a rampage, insulting Beatrice, unaware that she is right behind him.
Don John's spy is told to make Hero seem "loose" to ruin Claudio's happiness and indirectly hurt Don Pedro. (The spy is played by one of our 7th graders who was very good and was pulled in at the last minute and memorized the lines in 10 days!)
The guys decide to set up Beatrice and Benedick and, when they know Benedick is hiding in a grove nearby, loudly make up stories of how love sick she is for him. :-)
The same is done by the girls to Beatrice. Both decide apart from each other that they do in fact love the other.

Benedick confesses to the men that he does have affection for Beatrice.

A side plot opens up with Dogberry, a bumbling and hilarious cop who is to put guards around Leanato's house. Dogberry was hilarious (very much like the police in Pirates of Penzance) and my 6th graders said any time she was on were the times they actually understood what was happening. :-)

Claudio and Don Pedro see the spy with someone else who looks like Hero and are understandably angry.
The guards hear Don John's men talking about how they have framed Hero and been paid by Don John and are arrested and tried. Dogberry begins to tell Leanato about this plot but he says he is busy and leaves.
At the wedding Claudio refuses to marry Hero for cheating on him and leaves. She faints and only wakes up after he is gone.
A plan is made to hide her and announce her death. Then Claudio will feel bad and hopefully come back for her when he discovers she is innocent.

After everyone leaves, Beatrice stays behind and Benedick tries to comfort her. They admit they love each other and she asks him to fight Claudio. He finally agrees to.
So Benedick challenges Claudio to a fight. At the time of the fight, Dogberry brings the spies by and tells of their plot to the whole group.

Claudio repents and asks what he can do to make up for Hero's death. Leanato tells him to marry his brother's daughter and Claudio agrees.

At the wedding it is revealed that Hero is not dead and they are married. Benedick and Beatrice are also married and all is happy! :-)

Benedick and Beatrice!
And this is our wonderful cast and crew (the whole high school and 2 junior high guys)! They did a fantastic job!

They made the play a lot of fun and easy to understand which is saying something indeed!

They even ended with a dance that I will put at the end of this!

So it was a ton of fun and I was very impressed. One of the best high school plays I have seen. :-)

Catching Up

Hello one and all!

A few weeks have passed since our last post, so it is about time to post an update of our goings on here. Mostly we have been wrapped up in things related to school. This past Monday was when our grades for the third quarter were due. That meant that last weekend was full of grading for both of us. For me it meant that I had two drafts of essays for two of my classes to go through in the previous week, so I spent quite a bit of time writing comments on essays for my 9/10 American History and 11/12 Russian History class. I am enjoying watching my students grow as writers and thinkers, but any time I get a nice thick stack of essays I begin to regret having assigned them:-P

Last Friday, Amanda and I got the chance to lead the youth group that we help out with. Most of the kids in the youth group are also IA students, but it provides a great chance to interact with them outside of school. The students took a survey at the beginning of the year that asked for topics that they would be interested in looking at this year, and one of the topics of interest was marriage. John, our fellow World Partners teammate who leads the youth group (among his myriad other responsibilities), asked Amanda and I if we wanted to take this topic since we are much closer in age to the students and would have more recent experience with the kind of questions they would be asking. With ten months of marriage under our belts, we felt exceedingly well qualified to be addressing such a topic:-)

We were able to get some good discussion going about questions like why should people get married? How do you know if someone is "the one"? Is there such a thing as "the one"? How old should be when you get married?, and a host of others. Its always fun to hear our students thoughts on things like what sort of characteristics each gender would like in a potential spouse. The girls managed to come up with a list that was easily twice as long as the guys:-) Who knew that having a husband with musical talent would be important to so many women? We also got to answer some of their questions about us, like how we met and got engaged. I'm always surprised when our students show any sort of interest in us as people, but its a good kind of surprise. We are always glad when we have a chance to invest time in the lives of our students and have the chance to share the wisdom (limited as it is) that we have.

With grades turned in, we get to look forward to Spring break next week! We are going to be spending part of our break in Helsinki, Finland. One of the benefits of living in St. Petersburg is that it is very close to a wide array of interesting places, and Amanda and I are eager to take in as many of them as we can. With that in mind, we saved most of the money our families gave us for Christmas so that we could travel somewhere over Spring Break. Two other teachers from our school asked to come as well, so Amanda and I will be joined by Svyeta and Kristina. I always enjoy traveling with other people, so it should be fun. I don't consider myself to be a very good traveler- I get stressed far to easily and can easily get caught up in ridiculous worries, so its always good to have a few other people around to help relieve any self-produced tension. I think there is a major distinction between people who are good travelers and people who are good at living in a foreign country/culture, but that's probably a subject for another post. It's always fun to get outside of the city, which we don't often have the chance to do, so we are both looking forward to it. I'm sure we will have pictures to post once we return!

It's hard to believe that 3/4 of the school year is already completed. I'm sure the next quarter will seem to fly by as well. Time keeps marching on, but we are reminded daily how blessed we are to be where we are with the people that God has blessed us with. Thanks to all of you for your prayers and gifts- this would not be possible without you!

-Matt

Spring and Visitors!

Hello and Happy Spring from Russia!

According to the Russian calendar system, the first day of Spring begins on March 1 rather than on the vernal equinox as it does in the United States, so we are technically enjoying spring right now in St. Petersburg. As I look outside and see the mountains of snow that are still with us I have a hard time accepting this, but the temperatures are beginning to get warmer and the amount of sunlight is increasing steadily. Winter has been fine, but I'm sure it will be nice for a change of pace once spring-like weather truly does in fact arrive.

Our lives have been rather busy these past few weeks, which is the main reason that we have not posted anything in a while. One of the most exciting things that happened was that we had our first visitors from the U.S. the week before last! Rachel and Analiese, two friends of ours from college, came and stayed with us for a little over a week. We had a great time showing them the sites of our city, catching up with what has been going on in their lives, and getting the chance to show off our hard-earned knowledge and experience. It really is nice for once to not be the people who know the least Russian:-) We showed them many beautiful churches, some significant graveyards, the apartment of Dostoevsky, the Hermitage, and a stunning variety of forms of public transportation, along with giving them ample opportunities to try different kinds of Russian food. We all had a great time, and we didn't kill each other as four people had to share our rather modestly sized apartment.

While it was wonderful to have friends visit us, it has meant that we have been playing catch-up for this past week and a half as we try to stay on top of everything for school. The end of our third grading quarter approaches rapidly, which means that Amanda and I each have a fair bit of grading to do. I have been working through various essays for my classes this past week. Before sitting down to write this post, I finished writing comments on the first draft of an essay for my 9/10 American History class (topic: identify what you believe to be the single greatest problem facing the United States during the Gilded Age and explain what was done to address it in the Progressive Era and how successful you believe the attempted reforms were. Good stuff:-)).

Happily for the catching up side of things, we have had a long weekend in honor of International Women's Day today. So while we have done quite a bit of school work, we also have had a chance to have some fun as well. We saw a performance of Alice in Wonderland on Ice Sunday afternoon (we had bought the tickets a month ago, but the event was rescheduled to this weekend), and enjoyed a trip to the State Russian Museum to take in significant works of Russian art, including a great new exhibition on the heroes and villains of Russian history in art, yesterday courtesy of some free tickets that another teacher at school gave us.

To make up for the long break in between posts, we have new photos:-) These photos are courtesy of our friend Rachel who took them while she was here.


Amanda teaching social studies in her 6th grade class. Our friends went to school and sat in our classes to see what exactly we do here, and the benefit is that we finally have some photos of us in action in the classroom! Here it is- genuine proof that we do in fact have students and are teaching:-)


Amanda reading aloud to her class.


Click on this to make it bigger: here I am with my 9th and 10th graders, explaining to them about Theodore Roosevelt's views on government and the economy.


Taking attendance in Russian history.


And here is a photo I took: Analiese, Rachel, and Amanda standing out on the Gulf of Finland. We were in the middle of a vicious cold snap when our friends visited, and took advantage of it to go exploring on the frozen water around us.


More ice-walking: this time its Amanda and I in the middle of the Neva, halfway between the end of our island and the Peter and Paul Fortress. We walked about 3/4ths of the way across the river before stopping because an icebreaker had cut a channel through the river.


What better thing to do when in the middle of a frozen river than to write your name in giant letters, which is precisely what Amanda did.


Inside a metro car as it speeds off into the underground worlds of the city.

That's all for now. Thank you to all of you for prayers and support!

-Matt