A side trip to Greece

Well with two children who spent their missions in Greece, we decided it would be good to take a trip there for our leave and meet them there. Jill, Christina, and her friend from her mission, Ben, Britain and his girlfriend of 4 years, Kelly joined us in Athens for two days. The first thing we did was drive up to the Acropolis and climb to the top. Just as we were settling in, Britain's old companions unexpectedly turned up. It was their last week on their missions so they were up visiting the Acropolis for one last time. They didn't even recognize Britain at first with all his long hair and scruffy beard. He got a kick out of it and especially enjoyed showing off his beautiful girlfriend. Then we took a ferry to Santorini for some amazing sunsets and beaches and pretty white hilltop towns. Ta Da, Britain proposed to Kelly there. Hurrah! Finally! They looked like they were floating. Such fun. We visited with our friends Dave and Patti Johansen and met up with Christina's convert baptism Anthy. We went to church with Britain and met his former missionary companions for lunch. Afterwards we drove to Meteora and climbed to the top of some very steep cliffs to visit the monastaries there. Beautiful! We drove to Thessaloniki and flew out from there to Saint Petersburg. It was a beautiful place and I hope to go back there again. We only spent 6 days there. Not long enough!

Valya

No pictures for this posting. Sorry. I thought I should send an update on Valya the orphanage graduate who I have pictures of on my blog. Some of you have asked. We took her to Ekaterinburg Friday to the oncologist. We picked her up at 5 am. She dressed her 15 month old in three layers of clothes with no diapers. We started the three hour journey to Ekat and the little one Anya began to get car sick, or something. She was gagging and looked pale. She whimpered frequently and clung to her Mom.
We got Valya to the hospital by 8 am but there were already 20 people in line to see the doctor before her. It is first come first serve and covers the whole Sverdlovsk region. She had to wait 5 hours for her apointment. We left her there and took the baby to the nearest store and bought diapers. I thought we had gambled long enough on that one. She was so frightened of us, but she didn't cry she just whimpered and put her head down against her chest and tried to pull her shoulders forward to protect herself from us. Then we bought her a banana and some juice and took her to play on the climbing toys at the mall. She seemed to perk up after that and began to warm up to Alexi and I. Shortly after the banana though it started. She had diahrea that went through the diaper, and two layers of clothes. I sent Alexi off to locate new tights and changed her at the mall children's toilet. I took her back to the car and she immediately pooped again. I carried her upstairs again to the toilet and changed her again. This happened four times. She began to spike a fever and collapsed in my arms into a deep troubled sleep. Alexi suggested we go get her some medicine so he did that while I held the baby in the car. We started her on the medicine and took turns running errands while one or the other held the baby and kept her sleeping in the car.
When we finally got the call from Valya that she had been seen and tested we picked her up at 4pm. She told us she had been diagnosed with cancer and will need to come back to the hospital in Ekat for another week in August. She was stoic. She has nowhere to leave the baby. We handed her back her baby and told her she was sick. She told us she was probably just teething. I gave her instructions on a good diet she should keep her on for a few days until her tummy settled. We gave her the medicine, but with in a few minutes she was sharing her bag of BBQ chips with the baby anyway. It started raining buckets and we inched home through rush hour traffic arriving back at her house about 8 pm. When we carried her things back into her apartment we opened the door and smoke literally poured out at us. Her apartment was black with smoke. My eyes started to burn and I looked at the baby. Her eyes were red too. I looked at Valyas face. I could tell it was the straw that broke the camels back. We had paid for this to get fixed three months ago and the man who fixed the problem swears he did it right and she just doesn't know how to start a fire. However, she wasn't even there to start a fire. It was the neighbors downstairs. I was speechless as to what to do next. Alexi tried to investigate while we opened the tiny window openings we could find in her windows. I told Alexi to call the head of the orphanage charity we work with. He said he would call the guy again and get it sorted. We asked her if there was somewhere she could go for the night. She said she had a neighbor she thought would take her in. So we left her walking away from her house in the direction of the neighbor in the rain with a sick baby over one arm. That baby looked over her shoulder at me as she walked away and with her eyes just spoke to me and distinctly said, well, here we go again. Another nightmare.
This place can make you crazy. Afterwards I went home, turned on my music full blast and listened to La Fortuna the first piece in Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. It seemed fitting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEllLECo4OM&feature=related

Ural Boeing Grand Opening

Wow, that was fun! I am so proud of Gary. He was so happy at the grand opening for UBM he was practically dancing. It was an amazingly complicated process to make sure that Russian protocol was observed correctly and the Moscow office could tap into the program via live feed. While we were cutting the ribbon here in Salda they were cutting another ribbon in Moscow. Then later in the day the Moscow office met with Putin and brought some completed Titanium parts to his office for him to handle. The venture was presented to Obama as a model that the Russians would like to see duplicated elsewhere in the country. The media were everywhere and it has been covered in all the russian newspapers and on the News. I am sure it will be the highlight of Gary's career. Today was his birthday and the team had a party for him at the office. They gave him a beautiful hand painted russian plate and thanked him for his service. They are all very proud to have been part of such a successful opening and have been floating on air ever since. Now the hard part comes, he actually has to start the business of machining the parts and shipping them out of here. It is completely different process but maybe now that the company is better known they will have fewer problems with shipping agents and customs. Such fun!

Another day at Karpinsk

The last place Julia and I visited before she left was the disabled orphanage in Karpinsk. We went there to take them some puzzles made by my Sister-in-laws youth group, some paint and art supplies donated by Julia's art teachers and friends and some stuffed animals donated by my English class. We also brought Candy Bars for the older children and Yogurt for the younger children donated by Desanagiving.org. I was excited to see some improvements at the orphanage. They have completed renovations on 4 classrooms and have children sitting in desks in the classrooms being taught. It was very nice to see the children doing something besides laying in bed! 8 apple computers have been donated to the school and a classroom is set up with the students working at the computers. Very cool! A few of the hallways have been freshly painted and decorated with murals. A room that was dreadfully smelly last time we went to visit has been renovated and painted with bright colors and a mural of a kitten on the wall. There are still tons of improvements needed, but it was nice to see progress and to see that funds that have been donated have been put to good use. They are currently working on rennovating a room for another bathroom for about 20 new children that have been sent there.
They asked for 300 dollars to repaint, and put murals on the ceiling of the Cerebral Palsy room where the children are so crippled they just lay in bed all day. I was pleased to have 150 dollars left from Patti Johansen to donate to that effort. My friend Elena had another 100 in her purse so we are hoping to see that happen next. Desanagiving.org has earmarked 12,000 dollars to renovate more rooms so I am excited about that. They seem to be doing good things with what they have been given so far. They keep their receipts so that Elena can see where the money has gone and they use the money carefully. They also mentioned that the state does not give them any funds for educational supplies so the students do not have notebooks or pencils in the classrooms. If you know of anyone looking for a service project, that would be a good one. They are short on new clothes for the students as well so Jula is working on that in her ward. It was a more hopeful day at Karpinsk than my last two visits so I came away not quite so depressed as usual. It was difficult for Julia to be there and also for my friend Elena's student Christina who came with us. Elena and Christina were taken to the graveyard where the children who don't survive are buried. We were not invited because we are foreigners. I was a bit relieved. Not a pleasant way to spend the day. Very sobering! If you are interested in this check out the Desana website. Very interesting letters there written by Christina and Elena.

Gary, Julia and I went to visit Nzhnyaya Sinyachikha. Don't ask me to pronounce that. It is a very old town with a beautiful Church and an exhibit of traditional wooden architecture. Nearby is the city of Alapaevsk. On the map it looked like about a 45 minute drive, but it is down a gravel road that is mostly used by loggers. Gary started getting nervous about 45 minutes into the journey with no end in sight and a low gas gage. We saw two men on the side of the road and stopped to ask them how much farther the town was. That just made him more nervous, since one of them was carrying an axe and they were coming out of the forest looking pretty rough! We were about half way there, we made it fine, but it does get a bit unnerving as the road shrinks and shrinks and the countryside gets wilder and wilder. It was bitter cold that day, but still well worth the drive. The church was beautiful and sat just above a river with fishermen fishing and cows milling around. The wooden architecture displayed was great! And when we drove to the next little town we realized that Tchaikovsky had lived there when he was about 10 years old. It was too late in the day to go to the museum there, so I look forward to another visit on a warmer day.

Last Bell

Julia and I were invited to two different graduation events. First we went to Elena's school and had a party with her graduating English class. They all took turns performing songs for each other in English. They had some lovely party food and then we played a game called Mafia. They were so funny. The language classes stay together for about 5 or 6 years so these kids know each other well and they really had a hard time fooling each other. They also just chose to murder the particular students who drive them crazy right away. They shouted and accused and were really fun. These kids are the cream of the crop and will probably all be accepted into the top schools of Russia. We had so much fun I lost track of the time and was quite late picking Gary up from work. oops!
The next day we were invited to the last bell ceremony for my graduating English class. The whole school lines up in the square and the graduating class comes in wearing slightly altered traditional Soviet era school clothes. Now there is no dress code. They only wear this costume for the last bell ceremony. Different classes give them gifts, and the teachers present them with awards. They give flowers and chocolates to their teachers. I left mine on the bench accidently.Darn. After the ceremony the students perform a concert for their school honoring their teachers by singing and dancing and saying goodbye. It was great to be included in the celebration and very interesting to see their traditions. Afterwards they asked to take a picture with Julia and I suddenly felt like a celeberty with tons of camera's flashing at me. It is unusual to have an American teaching in their schools and they tend to make a bit of a fuss over me. I try not to let them know how awkward it makes me feel to be the center of attention, but I truly do enjoy working with the students!

After we visited the schools we went to visit Valya again. The young orphanage graduate with a small child. She has been loaned a piece of land by her neighbor so we went to help her turn the soil over for a garden and plant some tomatos. We visited with her three times while Julia was here and it was nice to see her in the end taking the initiative to continue what we started with her. I had started several tomato plants in my window that my Mom's neighbor Alex had given me that are from different parts of the world. It was fun to share these with her and I hope they do well inspite of the short summers here. We walked with her down to where she draws the water from the well for her house. It is about 5 blocks from her little apartment. I don't know how she manages it all with a small baby. She seemed in good spirits though and was happy to have some company. My driver Alexei HoroHonof helped us turn over the soil for her. Now we are going to look for a new door for her apartment. Alexei has a small business selling doors in our town so he is looking for someone who is going to throw away a door that he could alter for her house.

Julia brought her art supplies with her and so we visited the orphanages and children's homes and a school to teach them a lesson and give them the supplies. We also took some puzzles to the children that my sister-in-law Ruthann had her Young Women's group make. They were a big hit with the children and we had fun being the ones to deliver them.
One of my favorite children, Edik is being adopted by Italians so the teachers cornered Julia and asked her to read to him from an Italian story book. He just looked at her like she was crazy and got distracted really fast! He will have a difficult adjustment but in the long run I am sure it will be a better situation for hm.
The children's home we visited is a couple who have 11 children they are fostering. It was nice to see the progress they have made on their home. They have added a small playground for the children and 3 new windows to keep the heat in better in the winter. They are pretty crowded there at the house, but all seem happy and well adjusted. I do think it is a better setting than the orphanages even if it is cramped!
We took Julia's art lesson to four classes in Nizhni Tagil as well and the students raved about their suprise guest and Engish art lesson. They treated us to lunch afterward in their teachers dining room and it was a beautiful room set up with tablecloths and formal china. The food they prepared was presented beautifully and was tasty as well.

village school

My driver used to work at a village school near our town. It is difficult for the villages to find teachers so the government has made a rule that if a man will go to a village and teach he can skip military service. So Alexei Moroso worked there until he was over the age of military service. I thought it would be interesting for Julia to see so we made arrangements and when we arrived the teachers had made a traditional loaf of welcome bread and the students were standing in the doorway singing and holding out the loaf of bread for us to taste. They were so excited to meet the Americans it was really cute. They took us on a tour of their little log cabin school house. It has two classrooms, a main hall, a kitchen dining area and a room for bringing in water and heating. The school is heated with coal and the teachers have to start the stove every morning and keep it going. There is no indoor plumbing so the students use an outhouse. The water is hauled from the local well. The village has one phone, a store that is open twice a week and a log cabin post office/ city hall. There is a bell in the center of the town to warn villagers in an emergency.
The students invited us to come back in August and go mushroom picking with them. They say their forest has the best mushroom picking of all. They offered to share their lunches with us and showed us their art work. I think Julia enjoyed seeing their lifestyle, but did make the comment she would like to go dunk them all in a bathtub for the afternoon. It is difficult to stay clean I am sure when you have to haul your own water and heat it!

Moscow and St Petersburg

On our way to and from Beijing we visited Moscow and St Petersburg. The Russians in Salda don't like Moscow. They say it is not the real Russia. After having visited there I understand. The amount of wealth in Moscow is ridiculous compared to the rest of Russia.Their priorities and values are very different. They are all in too much of a hurry to be polite. We did enjoy the Kremlin and went to the Ballet, we had some really high quality Russian food and saw some nice museums, but I am glad I don't live there because the people here are much friendlier and down to earth.
St Petersburg though was really nice. It is a university town full of young people. It is very vibrant and full of life. We went to the Hermitage museum and Julia really enjoyed that. We also went to the Russian Museum and to some of the really impressive churches. We took a day trip to Pushkin, a city of Palaces where you can find the Amber Room and Catherine's Palace. It was tricky to do without a tour guide, but fun to try to figure out. St Petersburg doesn't know how to cater to the non-tour-group visitors yet. They just figure everyone there is with a tour group and the operators organize everything for you. So there are a few signs in English, but not enough. We managed to use the Metro and the minibuses without any big problems but it was a bit frustrating. I got a chance to practice my horrible Russian and it was just enough to survive. That's all. It was a few days before Victory Day when they celebrate winning world war two so we were able to watch the rehearsals for the Parade in front of the Hermitage museum. It was very impressive with thousands of troups and a parade of their best artillery. A band and a welcome of the troups by the head of the military. Four days was not enough time to see all of St Petersburg. I look forward to going again with Jill and Britain and Kelly in August.