Language proficiency

Alicia and I sat in class during our mid week study day to attend a seminar at the language school. It was a primer course on the ENGLISH language, to remind of us those things we should have been listening for during English class long ago. One must know the elements of his/her own language well enough before delving into another tongue-- at least it really helps. Howard Botterill conducted the seminar. One of the interesting pages was the following comparative chart for language proficiency. The goal of the 2 year SEND program is marked there at 2+.

Prayer #2-

Our heavenly Father,

Thank You! For Ukraine.

Thank you for our home.

Thank you for our church.

Thank you for the food.

God! You know and see all things

You know all our troubles

You know that we now are studying Russian language

Help us to speak and understand Russian well

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

We have been here one month today.

We're into our third week of school, things are going well. Our teacher Nedezhda is back and her husband is recovering well from his brain surgery and stroke.



This is me and Alicia studying hard in class, our substitute teacher Elena.



Kyiv is beautiful this time of year, the fall flowers blooming. Leaves are close to falling as well. We saw them on the ground in Sumy as early as September 10.



This week marks the anniversary of the day that I traveled down to Louisiana to go help with the relief work. Steps of faith always lead to a path you were never expecting.




In the city, on many of the main streets, they block off car traffic to make way for walkers. This is Alicia and I near Contractova Plosha.




Some random things:

When you have a washer without a built in drain, always put the drain hose away before you wash anything.

Fireworks are legal, purchaseable on the street-- and the big ones go off at night.

We are learning a little bit at a time, having a little more conversation at stores, on the street, at the doma (home). God bless ya'll and thanks for your prayers and looking in on us from time to time.

Weekend in Sumy

These are pictures from school Friday-- most of our classmates eating.

This room serves as our classroom from 9-11:30, our dining room from 11:30-noon. Alicia and I are on the right there and that's the director Howard Botterill in the foreground.



We rode the train to Sumy for the weekend. It was our first "solo" experience without Grady helping. We learned that 1- we need to leave more than an hour and half early to get there close to on time. 2- packing light is a good thing when you must drag your luggage through the streets of Kiev (and we are wondering how long the wheels are goin 3- that they actually put your seat number/car number on your ticket but they always write it in Russian!


I was reading in a book called CULTURE SHOCK UKRAINE by Meredith Dalton that said if you share a cabin with a Ukrainian, they will offer you food. Here is Brett and Luda eating some Ukrainian corn on the cob she offered us-- this was the second course after the chocolates, kleb (bread) and kilbasa (sausage).

I had never ridden in a train car like this before, but I have seen them in the Beatles movies.

IN SUMY:

Alicia, Lilly, Julia, Lena, and Nena in the guest room at the Sumy Church building where we stayed. They were vistiting us Saturday evening.

The Church was doing well; we had a good service conducted by brother Vova (right) and several of the ladies saw us off with tea and a snack before our Marshrutka ride back to Kiev. (This part Alicia DID NOT like. We both prefer the train now that we know the difference)

One of our lessons for the week was 1- not to buy a cutting board because it is cheapest and
2- do not try to wash said cheap cutting board in the dishwasher heat.

And lastly, our companion Lilly. She's been a point of contact for so many people-- and an added motivation to learn the language so we can talk to people! Alicia said at McDonald's tonight that the trash guy was trying to talk to Lilly-- and she said if she had known Russian, she would have sat him right down and started a conversation like, "Do you know who made this dog? ... well, he made you too..." and "I would have told him about Jesus!"

Lilly is fine... and so are we. Ya'll have a wonderful week-- thanks for checking in on us.

September 7,2006

School is going well so far. We are enjoying getting to know other students. There are many couples around our age; several of the ones we have met have small children. We plan on having people over often for fellowship. Once I get the grocery shopping and cooking down a little more, I will start cooking for others. Brett and I feel this is one way we want to serve others.

Speaking of shopping, Brett and I find it interesting how many varieties of ketchup there are. They are Ukrainian brands and when we choose one, we basically have to go by the picture on the package until we learn food words. The bad thing though is some foods have Ukranian writing instead of Russian, so we'll have to wing it. (We did find Heinz at a grocery store nearby, so we picked that up too :) I am getting good ideas from classmates. We are eating lunch at the school every day, so we get to hang out with people that are in other time slots and some are second year students, so they have lots of good advice. Today we found out which store has burritos and tacos and we also found out there is a movie theater that plays movies in English once a week. It's not too far from us; even if it is it will probably be worth it. I don't know if they are new movies, but we will definitely check into it.

Today, we had to combine classes with another first year class because our teacher's husband had to have emergency surgery. He apparently had a stroke a while ago and whatever happened yesterday has caused him to need brain surgery. I don't remember his name, but please pray for him and our teacher.

It's so weird to live in another country. I think we are slowly getting accumstomed to it. I think about my life a year ago and it strikes me as pretty amazing that I live across the world now. I know God has led us here to join Him in His work here in Ukraine. I miss my family, my friends, and my state, but He gives me strength to be here and not become overwhelmed by these longings.

I hope as we blog, it keeps you connected to us, despite the miles between us. We pray for our family and friends daily.
Love, Alicia

First week of school

This is the view from our apartment... actually it's the beautiul September sky-- the well worn football field (soccer field) is not this pretty!

That there is Russian language books on my lap.

This is Joel-- besides being the first guest in our flat, he is one of our classmates.

After we were back at the apartment after school the first day, we heard the most beautiful music coming outside. It was defiinitely real time horns, so we peeked out to investigate. The door beside our door on the same building were obviously having a wake of some sort... playing music, mourners, and all. Part of our view was obstructed by a tree for most of the time, but when the procession started moving, we saw a few women carrying what looked like a coffin away toward a Marshrutka looking bus. We thought it strange that there were so many able bodied men and the babushkas were carrying the coffin. When the next wave of the procession passed, we saw that what the ladies were carrying was the coffin lid, because there was the deceased lying open air in front of everybody!

It was an interesting thing to see.

School Day

Today we started class at SEND. It was a really good day.

Our teacher's name is Deszhenda, we have two fellow students, Joel and Tom. We started slow with the alphabet and will be moving on more quickly since all of us are ready to roll more steady.
The school has a family atmosphere-- we shared a meal with many of the students and teachers after class this morning.

We will be studying this afternoon, I'm glad we had the weekend to get the apartment more in order (still a little bit of settling to go). We are excited about hosting people very soon.

Thanks for checking up on us... we love ya'll back home.

Brett, with Alicia by my side.