April picnic

What can you do on a beautifully sunny day, when the kids are on holidays and everyone's at home? Go on a picnic, of course!
(Australian style)


Luke guarding the fire

Pete and Luke hard at work Roma collecting the firewood. For a ...small blaze


Step a mm off the path and you'll be knee-deep in snow.
Jake standing on the path
Bec taking a swing - Pete taught her to hit the ball 5 minutes before!
Jake the great bowler Trac fielding

The mountains have been clear lately

We live in a basin. To the north: mountains. The the south? Well... the ocean. Japan. The east: mountains . The west: mountains.

They are beautiful, and sometimes very clear.


Looking out of the window to see mountains in the distance further confirms the fairytale feeling I have about living here. When I'm in the forest, it's Narnia. When I see the mountains, it's Mordor.

Birthdays

Jenya’s birthday was February 13^th. We asked him what he’d like to do. He’s one for staying at home and hanging around, so we weren’t surprised when he asked if he could invite his brother to have a family dinner with us.

Sasha, Jenya's brother, and Jenya

He didn’t want any other friends, just us and the boys who live here.

Sasha, jenya, Anton 2, Sasha, Anton 1

He turned 20. This year was the first time he’d celebrated his birthday on his birthday, and had a family celebration for it. Cake. Presents.

I wish I’d been able to get a better picture of his smile.

Jenya and Anton

The building

Ever since Pete and Trac first came to Sakhalin, they’ve had long-term vision for a building- a building that will be big and centrally located, that will suit our needs and be a place where a future full-time team of 10 can live and work!! (Currently we are a full-time team of three; Pete, Trac and myself).

Well… there is a building we’re interested in at the moment. It used to be a bakery, but has been empty for 3 years. It’s one block from the school that Luke, Jake and Becky go to; it’s smack in the middle of 3 student hostels that most of our young people live in; it’s about 10 minutes walk to the centre of town.

It’s big. It is built in a U shape, and the back wing can be separated from the main hall area- perfect for live-in team members and family. We want it.

Here are some pictures. Becky and the others at the back of the building Rome at the front of the house the front gates to the courtyard Behind the building- the windows could be our bedrooms

Rome and I in the courtyard

To obtain this building in any way will be a miracle: we haven’t more than a few cents to our collective names! To renovate it in a style that will suit our purposes will be a huge challenge: namely, if this building is for us, God will give it to us.

We’ve met with the owner, we’ve discussed it with our Russian and Australian pastors, we’re discussing it amongst ourselves, and … we’re waiting. For a miracle.

Some scenes from around town

Bec and I taking a stroll on a footpath
lenin's face still graces our town
In the park (Gagarin Park, named after the first Russian dude in space!)
The day someone stole the rubbish bins
Luke, Kat and Jake walking on a footpath
Buying fish... Pete tried ice fishing actually. I'll have to wait til next year!
Eating at our favourite cafeteria, Goloboks!
Kat from NSW, hip-deep in snow

Snowboarding

I’ve been learning to snow board. Now, I am not heavily into sports and I have no clue when it comes to winter sports! But who could pass up the chance to learn? And make good use of the snow we have so abundantly.

It’s changed my point of view completely- now I’m cheering when we have a blizzard and I’m so disappointed that the sun is warmer and staying longer every day… LoL

Roma has boots and he bought a board at the beginning of the season. I’d sometimes go outside with him and watch as he tried to board down the gentle incline at the top of our street.

Those days are far behind us. Since then he’s taken me, and Luke and Jake a couple of times too, to the slope in the park. It’s a short bus ride away, and we usually walk home. LOVE living next to a ski slope!!

At first Rome and Maxim (when he was here on winter holidays) held me up and showed me how to turn, how to stop, how to turn over and (most importantly) how to fall.

Then Ryan bought a new board and boots, so I used his extra pair…

He and Rome, Dina from Ryan’s church and I went snowboarding one Saturday in February, at Gorny Vostok. Dina and I stayed on the beginners’ slope where we belong, while the boys went up the mountain on the real slope ;-) Dina and I on the beginner's slope Ryan, Felicity, Roma, Dina

Time out for Roma after tackling the big slope

But the real adventure was coming home. We’d caught a taxi up the slope, but Ryan knew of a track through the forest that we could board down to get back to the city.

The snow was more than knee deep, which was deeper still for petite Dina!! We slid down on our boards, crawled through unchartered snowfall on our hands and knees, and boarded as much as we could. Several hours later we arrived home, laughing, wet, and exhausted. Thanks for being so patient, boys!!

Ryan and Dina, at the top of the forest track

Finally, at the end of the season, I have bought my own boots.

I’m hoping I get a chance to use them before December!! LoL In any case next time I go snowboarding it will be so much better. Because my boots fit me really well. The board will have to wait for next season.

Anniversaries

Yesterday was Pete and Trac’s 14^th wedding anniversary!

So Monday they took off- they hired a fully furnished flat about 10 minutes walk from our house!! It even has a Jacuzzi… and they’ve been there for the last two nights, enjoying having time to themselves, privacy, and a real bedroom to sleep in! (Usually they sleep on a divan in the lounge room).

Congratulations Pete and Trac!!

... an entry I wrote in February

House Bound

February so far has been very quiet. We’ve all been pretty much house-bound for the last two weeks with the flu and colds etc. Fortunately I didn’t suffer the flu (I did my time with it in December!) so for me the weather has been perfect for snowboarding, ice-skating and just getting outside in the crisp air for a bit. Now that it’s really quiet I do actually have time to study Russian, read some of my many books, write long emails and etc but with the quietness comes unmotivated lethargy to do anything but sleep!

And I don’t want to sleep because I’ll just lay there and think, and I’m sick of my own thoughts
*sigh*
Part of being house bound with 3 kids for two weeks I guess…

The kids go back to school on Monday. They’ve had almost two weeks off school for quarantine- excellent idea, this quarantine. Some of the unis have closed this week for the same reason. If a bad flu or sickness is going around the schools and colleges will just close!

Russian kids have heaps more opportunities to get of school than I ever did! Besides quarantine, our kids have enjoyed snow days (blizzards). I have yet to find what joys await us in the warmer months ;-)

Bec and Jake hamming it up in the girls' room

snow

It's all disappearing- fast!
There are still some blizzarding motions to go through but temps are back up again- it was +6 degrees yesterday!! So the snow melts and then re-freezes on the ground during the night, as... ice. And walking the next day is a real challenge-

Unless the temp is in + degrees again, and then we skip through muddy puddles on the ground, keeping a SHARP eye on the passing cars, trying to dodge the most mud-be-splattered parts of the footpath so that our jeans and boots won't become camouflaged with the path. Lovely.

We call it Spring.

Remembering Becky's 10th birthday

Our cat, Begira

Out for pizza! Ryan and Luke Anton and Jenya
Becky and Jasmine

Becky's birthday cake
Kate and me!
Jenya, Roma and Felicity We all live here! Jenya, Luke, Pete, Jasmine, Jake, Trac,
Me, Becky, Roma and Anton

WOOHOOO

Hello

People

People, we are ONLINE!

On-Line.

After months. MONTHS of waiting. We have DSL.

We paid our connection fee on December 25th. And now, today, March 10th, we are, finally, connected.

Woooohooooo!

I will be keeping in much more frequent contact with you now.
Because-

We're connected!

Since I've been back

Finally, a chance to breathe!

It seems that I only have time to write emails when I’m in Japan, waiting for a Russian visa, waiting for a flight back to Sakhalin…

The last month has been so out of the ordinary that I’m actually looking forward to getting back into the daily grind of life in Sakhalin.

December saw our home inundated with people, both expected and unexpected! Christmas took us by surprise, so on Christmas Eve Trac and I set out on an 8-hour mission to the markets! Anton’s twin brother Maxim came back to Sakhalin for a holiday – he’s studying at uni in Khabarovsk, and will probably go back at the end of February. He’s one to keep the atmosphere lively! He and Anton love to practice their wrestling moves in the lounge room, keeping us all entertained!

Maxim and Olyessa

We’ve had military police knocking on the door looking for someone who doesn’t live here, and we met the owner of our home’s wife who let herself in without knocking, asked to have a shower and then asked Tracy to blow-dry her hair! The owner himself visited us on Christmas Day and asked for various documents so he could apply for DSL internet for us. We couldn’t actually go with him, as we had a Christmas party in full swing! He understood.

After Christmas, two girls from a city north of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk came to stay with us for 2 weeks, over the New Year period. We knew that Katya A’s (she visits us regularly) cousin Valya was coming, but we were surprised to meet 2 Valyas from the same school in the same city!! The other Valya is Sasha’s (who lives with us) sister, so of course she was welcome too. We weren’t too sure about it all at first, but looking back, we couldn’t have managed without them! They picked up a lot of the housework, freeing us to do other things.

Valya, Sasha's sister

Valya, Katya A's cousin

Even so, Pete, Trac and I shared some nervous glances as we sat down to plan where everyone would sleep- sometimes we had 16 people sleeping at our house! Our friend Janet, who runs a Wednesday night Bible study in her home, rocked up loaded to the hilt with sleeping bags, cutlery, a microwave, blankets- the very things we were desperate for!

But what really kept us busy were the winter teams. Every winter (and sometimes in summer!), KOI send teams of volunteers from Australia to Sakhalin, to stay in Children’s Homes in the city. The purpose of these teams are to build relationships with the children who live there, run programs for the kids to enjoy and, where possible, to teach the kids about their way of life.

Many team members come to Sakhalin every year! The kids we know were so excited to see them again, and often talk about what so-and-so did, said, wore etc, last time. This is the point at which we know that the teams are effective, and well worth the effort and expense.

Usually one team comes, but this time there were two. We’d just recently made contact with another Home just down the road from us, so one of the teams went there. Usually the teams live and do everything on site. But this year a young family with 2 children (a 2 year old and 6 month old baby) were a part of the team- hard enough to travel with small children, let alone live in one room with the rest of the team!! So they stayed with us for two weeks.

The team unloading at our place

One thing I noticed is that, no matter how many people were in our house, it never seemed crowded; even though there’s only one bathroom, there was no tension or long queues; no matter how many people were staying for dinner, there was always enough for everyone. How great is our God!

Two girls from Sydney stayed on with us after the rest of the team went back to Australia. They’re in Novo Sibirsk (New Siberia) at the moment, visiting friends for a couple of weeks, and will stay with us again in February, until just before uni starts in Australia!

It has been great having so many Australians around. It really has felt like a season of celebration with Weetbix, Vegemite, Milo and Peanut Butter floating around the kitchen (on waves of euphoria). The team members looked on with amusement as we gently lifted two bricks of Weetbix out of the fast-emptying box, smelled that card-boardy packed shredded wheat smell, caressed the rough surface and placed them, one at a time, into a bowl of milk…

The team left on Friday 12^th, and I left for Japan on Sunday 14^th. There’s a long story behind my departure- I had a lot of trouble leaving Sakhalin! Flights were cancelled due to a blizzard, forcing me to overstay my visa by a day, so I had to get an extension visa for several days until the next flight to Japan… but it worked out for the best! Because I was delayed by a week, I was in Hokkaido (the northern island of Japan) at the same time as my friend Ayumi, whom I used to work with at Shimizu High School! It was great to catch up with her, even though it was only for a few hours!

Now I have been to the Russian Consulate in Sapporo and obtained a new visa- it’s longer this time! 2 months and 2 weeks, so I won’t have to come back to Japan until March! But the word is that I can extend my visa for a year once I’m back in Sakhalin, because I’m not using a tourist visa anymore!!

We’ll see. If I can extend the visa to a year, I’ll only have to leave Russia again at the 6 month mark… about July.

* * * *

Back in Sakhalin, the freeze has begun- it isn’t snowing much, but the temperatures are hanging in the -10 to -20C range. Surprisingly, it’s not that cold! It seems that once the temperature is below -5C it’s all pretty much just… cold.

We get out and walk around and go snowboarding for hours at a time and my nose hasn’t fallen off yet, nor have my hands turned blue ;-)

And life goes on as usual. We’re busy shopping and getting supplies for the coming month, looking at buying some bunk beds and better quality mattresses (!!!) and enjoying the winter. It hasn’t snowed much at all for about a week now, the roads are getting quite icy (which means slippery!) and the snow on the ground is hard packed and getting dirty- terrible for making snow angels! Outside the wind is picking up and seems to be blowing in a circular movement… I wonder if we’re in for a blizzard?!

That would be good.

あゆみちゃん

Yesterday I went to Toya Lake. It's about 2 hours by train from Sapporo, right in the neck of Hokkaido.

(view from Ayumi's room)

Ayumi was the school nurse assistant at Akashi Shimizu High School, while I was working there. Now she works at Takasago High, hence her presence in Hokkaido- this week was the 2 nen sei ski trip, and Ayumi was on staff as the nurse.

I didn't intend to be in Hokkaido this week, but due to blizzards, sticky visa situations and flight availability, our paths crossed! SO yesterday i went to meet her.

I'd been worried about my rapidly-decreasing (and quite small to start with!) ability in Japanese, but once I met her I realised what the problem was- I can speak Kansai dialect much better than standard Japanese!! LoL

It was so good to see you Ayumi! Come visit me in Sakhalin soon!!

ice sculptures

They decorate the two town squares of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk from December 25th-ish until January 7th. If it's not too cold, you can spend hours there, watching the sculptors at work. Huge blocks of ice lay scattered around the area, ready to be chiseled and drilled and shaped into a beauty. Lenin Square is the most popular to visit.

The ice sculptures are just a part of the decorations.

The sculptures by night: Christmas night!