|
| Saturday night I finally returned home to my apartment after quite some time away. I am way behind on my correspondence, but wanted to put out a quick update of the past few rather eventful months in the meantime. My second Russian shift on Sakhalin Island in July and August went well. I was banished to the office in the island's capital for the full shift and lived in a hotel playing musical rooms, but had an opportunity to see old friends and make some new ones. On the last week of my shift I had the chance to take a train to near the top of the pipeline and visit my Golder co-workers at the different camps down the line and see how different each site was. The island is amazingly beautiful. I also had an opportunity to see the salmon spawning, which is an impressive sight, and spot a Stellar Sea Eagle, which is an endangered species. Because of the insane overtime during the project, I was able to take 4 weeks off after the shift to use up time I had banked. I flew home via Moscow and London, and, for a small fee, was able to simply offset my arrival and departure from London to allow for a nice European holiday. For the first two weeks I was able to meet up with Vlad, my best friend-turned-significant other, in Turkey and visit Istanbul (which was once Constinople!), Cappedocia (think underground cities), and Ephesus (where I stood in the very amphitheatre featured in the book of Acts). One of the highlights of the trip was our hot air balloon ride over the amazing landscape of central Turkey. I then spent a week visiting sorely missed friends in Germany, staying with Daniela in Vaihingen and taking a few days to see Silvia, where she somehow managed to end us up in a cabin deep in the Black Forest with 15 troubled teenage boys of various nationalities, but that is a story of its own.  Calgarian Andy (now of Switzerland) popped over for the weekend for a visit to see the new Mercedes Museum and experience Stuttgart's Octoberfest. It was awesome to see someone from home (sort-of, I suppose he's been away longer than me!). My final week was spent visiting Elizabeth in the UK, where we went on a camping road trip through Devon and Cornwall to Land's End. Of course, we stopped off in Cheddar Gorge to visit a cheese factory . By then it was October, but the weather was thankfully very mild. I had Thanksgiving dinner with my sister Tracie in Reading, then headed back to Canada. After two days back in Calgary, I was shipped up to the oilsands for some field work. The weather up there was lovely, and the job involved an almost daily helicopter commute, so it wasn't as bad as it first sounds. 
| | |
| Yesterday, after more than 5 weeks, I had the opportunity to go to a church! The service was in Korean, with a formal translation in the front to Russian and an informal translation up in the balcony to English. The message was simple but hard-hitting, the choir off-key but fervent (which more than made up for any other deficiencies), the building a bit run down and musty-smelling but clean and functional, and the congregation small but devout and welcoming. We were pressed at the end of service to have some lunch of seaweed soup, rice, and Kim-Chi, which some of the ladies in the congregation had prepared. A few things really hit me about this church: - Serving. The choir was about 20 people. The pastor, deacons, translators, greeters, slide guy, sound guy, Sunday school teachers, etc… that I saw would have been another 15 or 20. The ladies in the kitchen were about 6 or 7. The total number of people at church that day, including kids and us would have been less than 150. Fully 1/3 of the congregation was actually part of running the service. Another 20 or so of the men who had been in the pews were part of a meeting afterwards to discuss various construction maintenance issues on the church building. And the announcements included a reminder of which bible study group was on the rota for church clean up next week. There was also a reminder to pray for the missionary teams that this small church has sent out to the Russian mainland. Nearly everyone in the church was serving the body in some capacity. And it wasn’t just involvement for the sake of involvement, or the idea that “I must do it or it won’t be done right (a.k.a. my way)”, which is actually a form of self-centredness leading to resentment and burn-out. No, it was serving from the heart. There was no room for “consumer” Christians. - Welcoming. The lady at the door greeted us sincerely with two hands, and somehow, despite us having no common language, made it known that we were very welcome. People who didn’t have any English gave us big, sincere welcoming smiles, which included their eyes, and people who could speak English made a point of coming over and pressing us to return next week. And they weren’t just saying it. They were actually rejoicing at the opportunity to meet other brothers and sisters in Christ. - Committed. For a large number of people at the service (perhaps everyone but us), they will spend their entire Sunday at the church. In a city where many people work 6-day weeks and Sunday is their only day off – that is quite a sacrifice. There are morning and afternoon prayer meetings, and bible studies, and small groups, and service teams, and youth meetings, etc… A missionary team from Korea is in town this week so the church will have special meetings every evening, in addition to their regular daily morning prayers and Wednesday night service. And most of that congregation will go, and most will be helping out in some way. And they don’t just live down the street. From what I can gather, this is the only Protestant church in the city. The parking lot was tiny, so most of them either walked relatively large distances, or took cabs. - Prayerful. The church family prayer was long and intense. It was about repentance and thanksgiving. The deacon hadn’t prepared it in advance - it was a prayer coming from his heart. They recognized that talking to God corporately isn’t something to check off the list of necessary items on an order of service, but is a main part of why we come together at all. There were only a few heartfelt and unselfconcious hymns (in Russian, so I don’t know what the words were) without a modern band or a professional sound, but they were really worshipping, without thinking about themseves at all. Why focus more on music than prayer anyways? After the family prayer there was a few minutes where people just prayed out loud themselves, “free-style”, again, unselfconciously. None of these things are really that unique. I’ve noticed them all at other churches, most intensely in Kenya and Romania, but also a little bit in Germany and Australia, and a bit at my mother’s church up in Cold Lake. It is a part of how churches are supposed to be, and it was so unbelievably refreshing! What a blessing, and an answered prayer, to have had the opportunity able to be a part of that. | | |
| A moment of silence for the office pet goldfish who, as one of the geotechs put it, went "to meet God". It was struggling through these last few days, and we were optimistic for a recovery after an emergency consultation with a fish biologist who happened to be on hand. But alas, he went belly-up. His mate appears to be handling it well, dealing with his grief through frantic activity. The catfish, on the other hand, seems quite lethargic. However, since he always has had a rather melancholic personality we aren't worried that his grief will overcome him. | | |
| I don’t have anything very profound to write today, but it has been a while since my last entry and I felt it was time to drop a line or two. I’ve been mildly sick for the last week or two with a cold (very odd in this intense heat) which has kept me close to the hotel during my free time.
Russia is still good. I had my first Russian shoe shopping experience last weekend and managed to survive! After weaving in and out of about 10 stores I found a pair that are almost my size, make my feet hurt only a little, lightened my wallet considerably, and are almost possible to balance on most of the time. The funny thing is, now that I’ve graduated from my broken sport sandals and wear the Russian shoes full time, I’m actually treated differently. At first I thought I was imagining it, but no, everyone from the doorman at my hotel to the ladies at work notice what are on my feet. What an interesting culture! I hadn’t realized how much of a cultural taboo I had been breaking before with my choice of footwear.
Yesterday the other Golderites from across the island, along with some other people for different companies doing similar work, were in Yuzhno for a meeting. The “ice breaker” I had created for the morning had been one of those typical games with a bingo card with different experiences, requiring the players to make their way around the room and find someone who has met a wild bear, or skydived, or been to South America, or speaks more than 3 languages, etc... The conversation at dinner returned to the different range of experiences we at the table had, leading to stories such as a guy having his vehicle charged at by a rhino in a safari park in the UK, and another describing a serious helicopter accident. The story which topped them all, however, was from a Siberian professor originally from near Magadan, in the far north of Russia. Now, I had never heard of Magadan before, but I have discovered that it is a region quite famous for its plethora of mammoth remains. In fact, mammoth remains are so plentiful that the local people let their dogs eat the freeze-dried pieces of carcasses. This professor apparently has a large part of mammoth tusk that he found sitting in his garage at home. And when a neighbour found a large piece of a mammoth leg, he took a piece out of curiousity and cooked it up to taste. Yes, I am not joking, this man has actually eaten mammoth. He clarified that it was a very small amount, mainly just to tell people afterwards that he had done it, and implied that it did nasty things to his stomach (no wonder, meat that was freezer burned thousands of years ago might do that), but he actually did consume meat from a mammoth. Needless to say, no one could top that.
I have no deep thoughts about that one. It does disturb me at some profound level, but I can’t really say why. | | |
| Dobre Dien!
I’ve been reminded that it is about time for another update.
Sweat, sweat, and more sweat. That is what life in about in Yuzhno. Heat and humidity. This has had the unexpected, but healthy, side effect of almost curing me of my coffee addiction. I am far too busy gulping down room temperature bottled water to give much thought to warmer beverages. As well, with my skin leaking like a sieve, diuretics are less tempting than they might otherwise be. The hotel rooms I’ve been shuttled around every 3 days or so all have small air conditioning units who try very hard, but are too overwhelmed to have much of an impact. Interestingly enough, the BBC always forecasts reasonable weather. Right now, for example, it is apparently only 21 C. Yet the office is lined with wilting ex-pats, hair sticking to our foreheads, embarrassing salty fluids dripping off our noses and upper lips and chins, carefully positioned electric fans, and litres and litres of water. And we’ve been that way since we arrived at 8:00am. So much for Sakhalin being like Siberia! If it wasn’t for the absence of beaches, cute lifeguards, palm trees, and girly umbrella drinks this could be the tropics!
As per usual with all of my travels, laundry once again came front and centre as an adventure this past week. Last shift, in the remote work camp further north on the island, laundry was interesting only in that 1) I never knew when I would get it back, and 2) I never knew what colour it would come back as. The actual process was a mystery. My laundry bag would regularly disappear, then reappear with magically clean clothes. Hotels are a bit of a different matter. This past week a study was released showing the most expensive cities in the world, with Oslo and London leading. Yuzhno could compete. My hotel does have a laundry service, but charges $2 US per pair of socks, and $5 US for jeans. One load would use up my entire per diem (a.k.a. day allowance). After expressing shock at this highway robbery to some colleagues, I discovered that mine was one of the cheapest rates in town. I toyed briefly with the idea of just buying new socks every day, but settled on picking up some detergent and using the sink.
Going to the supermarket I found several different options. Most were Korean with Russian translation stickers on them. And most had symbols that seemed to indicate the presence of bleach. In the end I settled on a very expensive German brand, justifying the purchase as being worth it simply because I could at least determine that it was indeed for clothes (dish soap powder and fabric softener seemed to be mixed in on the shelves at random). My good intentions lasted exactly 3 days before.
The summer student who I work with (for?) saved the day. Some of the other summer students in different departments had made it out of the hotel leapfrog game and into an apartment – with a washer! We stopped by the supermarket where he picked up his regular Russian detergent, from a different part of the store than I had been to, for 1/20 th the cost (no exaggeration) of my fancy German brand, which I discovered was on the special import-wall-o’-cleaning-supplies. He then led me through a few back roads to an unremarkable decaying stone box bordered with man-sized weeds. We approached the solid metal door and my companion typed in a complicated code, giving us entry into a dark, stagnant, reeking, and eroded concrete staircase with occasional flaking green paint on the walls. The air was thick and humid and urine-scented, of the sort where scent becomes taste and you almost need to chew to breathe. Up and up we went, past graffiti and vandalized walls of mailboxes, over superficially wiped off vomit, to the apartment entrance. Our arrival was anticipated, and the two metal doors (one behind the other) swung open to give us entry into… a perfectly normal apartment housing two tall, young, Dutch process-engineering students. The afternoon/evening of waiting for the washing machine went by pleasantly eating the picnic we had brought and watching Russian music videos on TV while playing cards.
After speaking to these friendly students about what a great foreign experience this is for them, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t really say that I’ve experienced “Russian” culture here. Moscow is 7 time zones away, and beside the little old grandmas selling strawberries, little old Korean ladies sell jars of Kim Chi. The most interesting building in Yuzhno and most of the bridges on the island are Japanese. Sakhalin is quite special, and Yuzhno is unique enough that the experiences I’ve had here can’t be used to comment on the nation as a whole. But they certainly are interesting.
I hope all is well in your part of the world!
Paka!
| | |
|
