Settling In

It has been a few weeks since our last post, and what a busy time it has been. The new school year has consumed quite a bit of our time, and there have been several moments for each of us where we have felt fairly overwhelmed. With our new classes (and more of them for both of us than last year), it's taken a bit of time to feel like we really have a grip on what we are doing.

Thankfully, things have started to fall into place and we both feel comfortable and positive about how all of our classes are going. A new year and new classes always presents new challenges and for Amanda especially this year has been a chance to get to know a whole new group of students for the first time which always takes adjusting. This year I (Matt) am teaching World History for the 7th, 8th, and 10/11th graders (all of these are different courses with different textbooks, etc.), Geography for the 9th graders, a once a week fine arts class called Humanities for the 8th graders, and the same philosophy of science class I did last year for three of this year's seniors. Amanda has 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10/11th grade English literature/composition classes and is also teaching 6th grade Social Studies again this year.

Additionally, after school three days a week Amanda has been tutoring a student and I am taking Russian lessons with one our teachers twice a week after school. Between all of this, we haven't felt like we've had a lot of down time, but as we settle into a good rhythm of lesson planning and preparation we are doing a better job of finding time to relax. It's kind of scary to think that this is already the fourth week of classes for this year. It still seems like its just the beginning, but we are almost halfway through our first quarter!

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us during this past month since we returned to Russia. It has been busy and at times quite stressful, but we are doing well and know that God is sustaining us and working through your prayers! I'm sure this year will continue to have its share of challenges, but we believe it will be a good year for the school and that we will continue to grow and adapt as teachers. We continue to feel incredibly blessed to be able to be here.

One of the most important events of the first quarter is coming up quickly for us. Next week is IA's third annual spiritual retreat for the High School students. Amanda and I will both be going on it again this year and it will be held at the same location outside of the city as last year. Look for a post sometime next week after it is over! The retreat will run from Monday to Wednesday of next week and we will have speakers flying in from the US to lead our sessions. This is a very important time for our school spiritually as we take time out from normal classes to spend time bonding as a school and focusing on knowing God better.

Please join with us in prayer for this year's retreat. We have many students who are not Christians and this is a great opportunity for them to experience His presence. Please pray that our students will have open hearts and be receptive to God's leading during this time. Pray also for our speakers and for us teachers that will be going along to supervise, lead small groups, and lead games that we would all have wisdom and do our part to make this time not just a fun time but a spiritually significant one.

On a different note, last weekend we managed to get out for a bit and pay a visit to New Holland, the formerly closed-off area of St. Petersburg that we posted a few photos of from our boat trip in the last blog entry. The island is finally open to the public regularly for the first time since the days of Peter the Great. In the past it has served as a military barracks, shipbuilding yard, prison, and radio station among other things. Now it is being redeveloped for public use and currently has a restaurant, art displays, a small garden and farmers market, and sports fields for public use. Below are some photos we took along with a few other photographic odds and ends we've accumulated in the past few weeks:-)


A view of the pond in the center of New Holland. It was a gorgeous clear day and the sky reflected wonderfully off of the surface of the water.


The garden area. Each of the small plots is sponsored by a local business and growing a variety of different plants.


Our more horticulturally savvy readers may know what this plant is, but I have no idea what it is. All I know is that it looks fascinating!


In the distance you can see part of the main gates that flank the waterway leading out of New Holland. We posted pictures of what the arch looks like from the water in our last post.


It's Amanda!


The white ship in this photo is the yacht of the Danish Royal Family. The Queen of Denmark was in St. Petersburg paying a state visit and staid on this yacht during her stay. The ship behind it is a Danish naval vessel that I assume came as an escort.


This is a mural that we walk past every night on our evening walk that Amanda is particular likes.


Night sets in on Maly Prospekt.


A giant inflatable character stationed outside of the exposition center near our apartment.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

-Matt

First Week of School!

Hello everyone!

Matt and I are currently looking back on our first full week of school at IA! Things are certainly different this year for many reasons. Our administration is changing and evolving this year so this is also a year of flux. Matt and I are also teaching all new classes and this is the first year I am with the high school.

Our first day was Bell Day and we didn't actually have classes. First students brought in flags for each of the countries that we have represented in our student body. This year we have a British family so that was a new addition.

Everybody gathered on the third floor.
Each teacher took a different group of students and talked to them about policy, etc. Then we were off for some fun!

Below: The old Singer sewing machine building currently houses Dom Kinigi, a bookstore.

We went with a group of teachers to get food. Then we went with our friends Jarrod and Christina on a boat tour of the city. Since the city is built over water you can see a lot of the major sites of the city by boat. This is something none of us had done before and it was a lot of fun. We found a less touristy area and had the boat almost to ourselves.

Below: A statue that people throw coins onto.
The Venice of the North!
Below: The building with the green roof is a famous school. The men who would go there wore distinct fur hats and there is a well known song about them.
Above and Below: the Anichkov Bridge. Each corner features a man with a horse in various poses. It runs over the Fontanka Canal, a major waterway through the city.
We found that being on the canals really makes it clear that the roads were never intended to be the main way of traffic. The canals are huge and give access to a lot of important things while the roads are narrow and there is next to no parking in the city.

Below: One of my favorite churches in the city. The domes are a deep blue with gold stars. Dostoevsky was married in this church.

above: The St Nicholas Cathedral
Above: This is one of my favorite buildings. It has no significance at all but all the sides are painted in this abstract geometric pattern. Christina told us it is a hostel.
These pictures are of New Holland. It was an old shipyard and the waterway gate here is super impressive!
Below: The Moika Palace. (Warning: the following story is not for the weak of heart) This is where Rasputin was killed. Personally I find this to be one of the creepiest stories I have ever heard. Rasputin was a "religious" figure who rose to power in the early 1900s. He claimed that he could cure Tsar Nicholas's son who had fits. He would threaten that some harm may come to the boy if anything happened to him and so gradually he was able to gain significance in the royal family. There had been attempts on his life before but he always survived. The story goes that finally some princes became worried about his negative control over the royal family and decided to kill him. They tried to poison him but it had no effect at all (his daughter later suggested he may have developed an immunity to it). He was then shot in the back, beaten, shot some more, and then tied and thrown in the river. At the time it was concluded that what killed him was drowning (though now this has been contested). He was one seriously scary guy!

A lovely read bridge. We saw several of many different colors on this. It is funny too because you never notice they are colored when you are going over them.

Yesterday, after school, we went to AgroRus. It was described to us as being like a county fair and it was held literally four blocks away from us.

Below: You place a piece of metal between the two huge pieces and then hit it with a hammer. You get an imprinted coin you made yourself!
Camel and pony rides! The saddle below has a cartoon character on it that Matt and I really like.
We also had the Russian equivalent of fair food. Fried dough with meat and cheese in it.

There were many plant stalls and this lovely rosebud.

This stall is selling samovars which are traditional Russian kettles (of a sort). They vary from smallish to gigantic.

Above: hot corn stands are very common at events and sports. They also sell lollipops shaped like roosters (I have no idea why). :-)
Above: Perogis can be just shaped like buns but more often they are decorated. The full pies can be very elaborate. These are pigs and bears!

Below: One of the ways we started off the school year was with Matthew burning his lip and chin fairly badly. He has a new thermos and we had no idea how hot it would keep things. So he went to take a drink and it burned him badly enough that his lip and chin turned white and then blistered. He's doing a lot better now but here's a picture. :-(

Above: A cafe I must eat at because I think it is so cute!

Below: This is the store we do 90% of our shopping at. There are ones that are a lot closer but this one is much bigger and has a meat counter in it and another next door. We realized as we were walking home that we had never put up a picture of it!

So there is our first week of school! Classes have been going well and we feel confident that this will be a good year. Pray for us and the school as we all have a lot to do and a lot of transitioning!

Pictures of the Apt

Hello! We have a new camera that I (Amanda) love playing with and it has been a while since we posted pictures of the apartment. It does look very different than when we first moved here since we have added things and filled it with our stuff. The first pictures were from when we first moved in and things looked a bit barren!
So here are some pictures of the apartment for your enjoyment!

Living room. The corner chair is "mine" and Matt generally works from the couch.

Bathroom. Toilet is in another tiny room next door. Note the teeny tiny washing machine under the sink. :-)
Kitchen. The thing above the mircowave is a water heater and has an open flame in it. We know a family whose heater is placed inside their shower so this is a pretty good place for ours!

Bedroom.

Quick additional prayer request for everyone: we are in need of about $600 more in monthly support. Please pray that this need will be met!

Back in Russia

Greetings once more from St. Petersburg!

After a wonderful month in the U.S., we have returned to Russia and are settling back in to life here. We arrived here Wednesday evening safely and with all of our baggage, so thank you to all of you who prayed for safe travels for us!

We've been trying to re-synchronize our body clocks and start preparing for classes for the coming year. So far jet lag hasn't been too bad- we've been sleeping well, but we feel tired a lot. It's good to be back, but it was definitely sad to say goodbye to everyone that we got to spend time with this summer.

Leaving people behind never gets any easier and in fact the opposite seems to hold. Its bittersweet knowing that we won't see many of our friends and family for at least a year if not longer, but we also recognize that this is simply normal life for most of our students here. Experiencing the ups and downs of living abroad helps us stay more in touch with the reality that has shaped the lives of most of the students in our classrooms, and I know that it will help us to teach and to care for them with greater depth and understanding.

We still have a week before our first teacher meetings begin and then school officially starts on August 22nd. We both have quite a bit to do in terms of preparation for our new classes before that day arrives, so most of our time will be spent working on lessons and brainstorming about how to structure our classes.

Before we turn our backs completely on our experiences from over the summer and zero in on our work here, we want to post some photos that highlight some of the best moments of our time in the States. Once again, thank you to everyone who prayed for our time there, who met with us and encouraged us, for the churches that gave us opportunities to share about what we do, and to all of the friends and family who made time for us. I know we couldn't meet with everyone we would have liked to, but we are so grateful for all of those that we could!


The park where we were married.


My dad practicing a percussion piece for an upcoming recital.


One of the world-famous Bethel College squirrels that we saw when we paid a quick stop to our old college:-)


This picture shows off our new camera's ability to make almost anyone look very athletic:-)


Miniature golfing with Amanda's side of the family.



The children's department at Grace Church in Mooresville threw us a special party since they have been praying for us during the Wednesday night service during the past year. It was a great time!


Me posing with one of the signs that the kids at Grace made for us.


A penguin at the Indianapolis Zoo. We went there with Amanda's family.


Once again the camera is deceptive. I threw that Frisbee about five feet and then straight into the ground half a second after that photo was taken:-)


We had the privilege of speaking with the youth group at Grace as well! We also had the joy of speaking briefly at services at St. Mark and at Grabill, but sadly we forgot to bring our camera on those days:-(


Amanda regales the crowd with stories of teaching in Russia.


Me in the middle of a long-winded explanation of our life in Russia:-)

There are more pictures that you can see here in our Facebook album.

Once again, thank you to everyone who made our brief trip back to the U.S. such a joy. We have returned to Russia refreshed and eager to continue our work at IA!

-Matt

Brief Update

Hello again!

It's been awhile since we've posted an update here and with good reason- we have been busy traveling in the U.S.! We arrived in America on July 5th and since then have been on a whirlwind tour to visit family, friends, and churches. We leave to return to St. Petersburg a week from today.

Once we get back in Russia and have a chance to think back over our time here, we'll have a bigger post with some of the pictures that we've taken in the past month. We finally got the new camera that we ordered awhile back, so look forward to crisper, more beautiful images in blog posts to come:-)

It's been so good to be able to see so many people and talk face to face after a year of only communicating via email and Skype. Technology is a wonderful thing, but so far it has yet to surpass the actual experience of physically being present with someone and having a conversation.

An important part of our time in the U.S. has been our work to raise additional support. As we have mentioned before, our financial needs for the coming year are somewhat higher than last year's due to the fact that we are now eligible for Russian taxes and our sending agency will begin deducting an administrative fee. So while our actual expenses to live in Russia are essentially unchanged, we have found ourselves in the position of needing to increase our funding between 1/4 and a 1/3 of what it was last year.

To that end, we have been speaking at the churches that currently support us and also had the opportunity to meet with another church as well. We had the privilege of being able to speak with a children's group, a youth group, and a retired persons group at churches, so we've gotten to experience a full spectrum of people:-) Everywhere we have gone we have been received warmly and graciously and have greatly enjoyed our chance to talk about our ministry and to meet many new people. We feel very blessed by the kind words, prayers, and encouragement we have received!

With just one week to go before we leave, it doesn't seem like we have been in the U.S. for only three weeks. With all that's taken place it seems like we've been here so much longer! I always say that a perfect trip is when you've had a wonderful time and when you come to the end of it you are ready to be back home. This trip is shaping up to be just that. We have loved every opportunity we have had to spend with family and friends and sharing about our experiences, but we also know it's time to start shifting gears and preparing for another year in Russia. A new school year will be starting soon and we both have a full slate of classes that we need to prepare for!

If you are someone we met over the summer and are reading this for the first time, please keep checking back. We'll have more to come in the future!

-Matt

Heading Back

... to the United States!

Just a reminder to everyone that we will be returning to America for a month-long trip before heading back for the new school year in St. Petersburg. We leave tomorrow, July 5th and arrive back in Russia on August 3rd. In between those dates, we will be BUSY visited friends and family and talking with churches!

We are excited to see many people who we have been missing over this past year and are also looking forward to meeting some new faces as we speak about our work in Russia. God has blessed in so many amazing ways during the past 11 months and we are eager to share about what He is doing in our lives and at our school. Please pray that this month will be a time of relaxation and fellowship as we reconnect with many people and that it will also be a productive time as we share about our work. We are still in need of some additional support for the coming year and we would truly appreciate your prayers that God would speak to the hearts of those whom He would have partner with us.

Returning to the U.S. fills us with mixed emotions. We are obviously very anxious to see those who we have only been able to communicate with via email and Skype. However, it also makes us realize that in many ways we lack a sense of "home." Moving to Russia after only being married for two months means that we have spent the vast majority of our married life (as admittedly short as that has been)in Russia. Still, it seems inappropriate to claim Russia as our "home." Every time we are asked a question in Russian that we don't understand or fail to catch on to something that everyone else around us seems to immediately grasp is a reminder that we are strangers and guests in a foreign land. At the same time, to call the U.S. "home" also seems wrong. We don't have a house or apartment in America and now that we have graduated from school and our married the places that we used to call home are now most definitely our parents' homes. Obviously we are Americans, but most of our "adult" life so far has transpired in Russia.

On some level it can be frustrating to feel kind of rootless and unsettled, but it is a powerful reminder that this is what life is like for all of our students. While it is not always fun, it allows to experience the world that is simply normal life for our students and helps to better comprehend their experience and relate to them. These are just some thoughts that I have been kicking around in my head for a while and this seemed like as good a place as any to express them:-)

Thanks again to everyone who has supported us through prayer, encouragement, and financial giving through this past year. God has blessed us through you!

-Matt