Party Time

As we are winding down and getting closer tot he end of our semester in Tomsk it seems that we are becoming busier than ever. People are realizing that we will be leaving soon and are trying to squeeze in their fun with us and their goodbyes. It is so fun to spend so much time with people we have come to know so well through our classes, English club, and church. It also turns out to be the holiday season which means that it is time to party!! A couple weeks ago we even had a Harvest Party on Halloween, we've been hosting more movies, we will celebrate Thanksgiving with some American friends, we're going to have a couple Christmas parties, and finally our Farewell Party. 

On Halloween we invited over some friends to join us in playing some fun games and eating lots of food involving pumpkin. Alissa and I cooked up some apple cobbler, pumpkin dump cake, and pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. We had our guests bob for apples (which was hilarious!), eat doughnut shaped crackers off of hanging strings, we played Halloween-themed  Heads-Up, and played charades. It was an evening filled with laughter! 

Last week we also got the opportunity to join the young people of the church here in Tomsk on a Fall Retreat to the village. We spent one night in a small village playing games, studying Scripture, and worshiping together. After playing some introductory games we were split into two teams and had to go around the village on a scavenger hunt. It happened to be way below freezing and we were not on any ordinary scavenger hunt! this hunt was to find the "pilot" of a fake plane that had "crashed" in the village. We were in a great hurry to find the pilot and save him from the bad guys; this required a lot of running. Once we warmed up and watched a movie they decided that it would be fun to hold a wrestling tournament at 1 in the morning. There was a boy's division and a girl's division. Somehow, all three American were randomly chosen to participate in the wrestling tournament. It was the first and last time I will ever wrestle anyone. 

Aside from all the fun it was a great time of relaxation and bonding. It is still amazing to me that God loves us all and can be our Heavenly Father regardless of the language that we speak. AND He has allowed us to be brothers and sisters through Jesus Christ our Savior. 

Aside from having tons of fun, I can see that I am still learning more about the Russian people and language. I am able to pick up on many more words in conversations and reading the Russian language is becoming easier, However, Russian is still a very humbling language because it is so difficult to learn to speak. There are multiple cases that effect literally every word in any given sentence. Just when you think you are getting the hang of talking about something you will no doubt be corrected because you are speaking int he wrong case. Russians even tell us that their native tongue is much more difficult than English. I agree. Just take a look at all the ways that the root word of "run" can be written in different cases and forms. These aren't even all of them!

I may be able to read all of these words but please don't ask me to translate! However, I can tell you all about the film, "Hot Rod" in Russian. I am obviously learning the most important things in Russian. Another exciting thing is that I realized on Sunday that there are some worship songs that we sing at church that I can sing along to. How cool is it that we can worship in so many different languages?! It is truly beautiful.