10/9/07

Greetings all!

At the outset, we would like to say that this e-mail will be fairly long since we have not been able to send out an update yet. In the future we hope to send updates at least once a month.

We left the United States on August 28 and arrived in Moscow the afternoon of the 29 via Paris. We arrived safely, but our luggage didn’t! So that night at about 12:30AM we were awoken by airline representatives delivering our luggage to the hotel. At least we got our luggage before we left for Pyatigorsk the next morning (August 30) on the train! The train that we took to Pyatigorsk is a sleeper train with compartments that have four bunks each. We shared a compartment with another American girl who is studying here at Pyatigorsk State Linguistic University (PGLU). Her name is Jennifer and she is from Hastings College in Nebraska. Our 26-hour train ride was pretty uneventful. We mostly slept off our jet lag.

On the morning of August 31, we arrived in Pyatigorsk, where we were met by Marina, an assistant in Victor Mishin’s office (he is in charge of international students at PGLU). Victor, Marina, and Jane (the other person in his office) are wonderful and willing to help us with anything. Marina brought us to the dorm and showed us our rooms on the sixth floor. We are sharing a suite with Jennifer. Molly and I are in one room and Jennifer in the other, and we share a toilet and shower in our suite. Well, after unpacking and showering, we met with Victor and two other American girls, Jessica and Alison, who are also studying here. At this point we were told that we would be moving to the fourth floor, hopefully within a week. This year, PGLU has more internationals than usual, so they renovated the fourth floor of the dormitory to be another floor for international students (normally internationals only live on the sixth floor). This news was both exciting and a little frustrating since we had just unpacked! We were also told to wait to set up our internet accounts until we moved. Thus we were introduced to a key Russian concept – uncertainty. Fortunately, we met Jessica and Alison, who have been here in Pyatigorsk for a while, and they were able to show us around a little bit and help us to buy some starter groceries.

After spending the weekend exploring the town and markets, we began feel a little more at home. Monday brought the first day of classes and a continuation in our lesson of Russian uncertainty. For the first couple of weeks of school, we never knew exactly which classes we had. Our schedule kept changing, and once our classes were settled, our classrooms kept changing! But now we have a finalized schedule: on Mondays we have Oral Speech; Tuesdays we have Reading, Grammar, and Phonetics; Wednesday is our day off; Thursdays we have Grammar and Oral Speech; Fridays we have Oral Speech and Writing. We are both really enjoying classes and feel like we are learning a lot. We have professors who we really like, and they seem to believe that we are making progress with our language ability.

After a few weeks we moved to the fourth floor! We even participated in an opening ceremony for the floor. Television crews and photographers came to shoot photos of our reactions to the floor, and Molly was even interviewed! Unfortunately we missed the broadcast, but our teachers said that they saw us on television. The new room and hall is very nice. Everything is brand new and is so clean. The kitchen is amazing – two big refrigerators, two ovens with all 8 burners working, a microwave… We have definitely enjoyed cooking there. A few of our favorite meals are: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy; chicken fajitas; pizza, cake; biscuits, eggs, bacon, bacon gravy; rice and chicken stir-fry! Hopefully we will have pictures posted soon of our new living spaces.

We have also really enjoyed going to church. The congregation is small, only eight or so regular members, but they are truly dedicated to God and are hospitable. They not only made us feel very welcome, but also Jennifer, who attends with us, and a few other friends we’ve brought along. We are providing the music for the worship services, since their previous music director had to leave the church in order to make more money- Molly plays the flute, and Laura plays the keyboard. Some of the members enjoy singing and sing with gusto- we are considering trying to organize a choir of sorts. We also are finding that we can understand 50%-60% of what is said throughout the service – at least we can understand the main idea of Pastor Alexander’s sermon!

Another great joy here in Pyatigorsk has been the time we have spent at the local orphanage- two weeks ago, we began to volunteer there weekly. We work with all ages of children, primarily helping them with their English lessons.

Other triumphs and pitfalls from our time thus far:

1. City Day – Weekend celebration in honor of the founding of Pyatigorsk. Fireworks abounded and we enjoyed walking around the parks enjoying the general festive mood.
2. University Day and Teacher’s Day – Day celebrating PGLU’s birthday and a national holiday honoring teachers. We attended a concert put on by students, which included singing, dancing, skits, and speeches by the University President, Rector, and representatives of different groups.
3. Laura’s Birthday – Thank you to everyone who sent birthday wishes! They really helped to make my day wonderful. My friends here in Pyatigorsk threw me a surprise party and took me to get my ears pierced!
4. Making Friends – We have so far made a few good friends. Our closest is Nina, a graduate of PGLU and a teacher of English at an American-run business here called No Limits. We also just met two girls, Olya and Lena, who are in their second year (Russian students typically go to university 5 years) in the English-French departments.
5. Going to the bank – After three visits to the bank, obtaining a Russian translation of our passports, and going to the notary, we finally we able to open our bank accounts!
6. Internet – After living in our room for a few weeks and several trips to the IT guys Molly now has working internet and Laura has sporadically working internet. Prior to the move, we went to the internet café at No Limits.
7. Our blog- we are still in the process of setting up this site, but soon hope to update our blog bi-weekly. You can check it out at http://www.vaumcri.org/w-m-to-pyatigorsk.htm.
8. International Conference on Peace in the Northern Caucus- Victor Mishin (the person in charge of international students) organized this conference, and asked Molly to speak briefly at the opening session about the importance of learning foreign languages.

Upcoming Events:

• Next Saturday David brings a team of three others to Pyatigorsk for a week-long trip.
• On October 12-15 (Fri-Sun) the water in Pyatigorsk shuts off so they can get the pipes ready for winter! We’ve been storing up water in bottles and should have enough to make it through the water holiday. Hope everyone has lots of deodorant!

Prayer Concerns: Courage for us to continue to speak Russian and make friends; the upcoming team’s time here in Pyatigorsk; surviving the water holiday; patience; continued communication with friends and family and not feeling shut off from happenings at home.

God bless,

Laura and Molly