To Russia with Love: Captain's log: Mission date: 04/28/2010

Today, gentle reader, I thought it good to give a detailed description of my day’s activities, here in the fair city of Tyumen.

I wake up at 5:45. I am in a strange bed; cigarettes litter the floor, and the vodka of the night before makes my head feel like that volcano in Iceland must have felt, just before it exploded. Okay, just kidding. But I really didn’t want to wake up that early.

Actually, I don’t have to wake up that early. My head knows this, but it is apparently not talking to my body. Not sure if it is the jet lag or what, but, even though I am WAY behind on sleep, and even though I am still snug as the proverbial bug in the proverbial rug, I know I will not sleep anymore.

So I rise, and pop into the shower. Breakfast consists of a fiber bar and some amazing Russian yogurt. I spend the next hour thinking about my lessons, checking witty comments on facebook, answering some emails, and admiring the face in the mirror.

At eight, the Calvinist and I leave the apartment and head to the Cultural Center. It is about an hour walk, but we catch all the lights and make it in under 50 minutes. The Calvinist does most all the talking, since I am not a talkative man in the morning.

At nine the Calvinist begins his teaching. His class is on the “Doctrine of Man”, and I’m not sure why he needs two weeks to say, “YOU’RE ALL COMPLETELY DEPRAVED”, but apparently he does.

I slide into a side room to work on my lessons. For the next four hours I study and pray over three Psalms. It is difficult to teach for four hours and still maintain interest, and I noticed spirits flagging by the end of the day yesterday. I am asking God to help me in this. (The students generally attend both classes, so for them I am the last part of a nine-hour day). Sometimes I feel ready after three hours of prep or so, but today I could have used ten.

At one o’ clock we all break for lunch. It has actually been pretty good (with the exception that Russians have the nasty habit of slipping mayonnaise into almost everything, and I feel about mayonnaise the way Sean Hannity feels about Obama; they even bake mayonnaise into pizza sometimes. No wonder we had that whole cold-war thing).

At two o’ clock I enter the room to teach, and the shine of joy on the student’s faces needs no interpretation (“AT LAST! SAVE US FROM THE CALVINIST!”). Hmmm, I guess I did interpret that. Oh well.

I write the first Psalm on the left half of the board, and Zhanna writes the Russian on the right side. I go line-by-line, trying to explain what I think is the meaning. Russians often have longer words than we do, and often I find this phenomenon: I give a ten second snippet, and Zhanna then translates that for, oh, I don’t know, about a half-hour. Okay, I am exaggerating. But I do wonder if she is trying (and probably succeeding) to improve my exegesis. Oh, the trust we place in our translators!

After this we have a break, and we prepare the board for the next lesson. The students endure four hours of this (after putting up with four hours from the Calvinist) yet still seemed surprisingly engaged. And while today is better than yesterday in this regard, I have been surprised all week at the length of the student’s patience, and the depth of their insight.

I end the class by playing, as I occasionally do, a Psalm that an American has put to music (the translator speaks the words in Russian while it is playing). Not sure if this goes over too well or not.

After class, one of the students has a number of questions, in this case not about the Psalms but about life in America. We talk for a while, then I wait as my hosts take care of a number of details around the cultural center. It is seven o’ clock by the time we leave and take a car over to Irina’s apartment for a Russian dinner. Irina is the director of the Cultural Center, and, I am told, an excellent cook. I am praying for not too much mayo.

In fact the meal was both elegant and delicious. We had borsh, (a Russian soup), and seasoned ground beef rolled up in something like a tortilla (Irina, if you are reading this, I am sorry for this terrible and un-Russian description; but it was wonderful). My favorite part was compote (think fruit juice) that she had made from cherries. She had saved a bit of cherries in her freezer from last summer, and she broke them out for us!

Irina was formerly a teacher of Russian literature, so after dinner we had a fine discussion of Dostoyevsky. If you know me, then you realize that my getting to discuss Dostoyevsky with a Russian literature teacher is like an aspiring high school quarterback being tutored by Peyton Manning. I was in heaven.

We walked back to our apartment well after 10, and I quickly made my way to my room. I fell asleep in my prayer time, and, all things considered, did not feel a bit guilty.

Pics below:

One of the better lunches (no mayo!)