Odessa bound...

I'm here in the office trying to get all of the media stuff ready before me and my co-worker, Marina, meander our way down to Odessa via an overnight train. I'm sure it sounds exciting to everyone, but let me assure you that it smells much worse than you are imagining. I'm not looking forward to the train ride.
We are in 3rd class...I've never ridden anything else...and its all open cabins and smelly bathrooms that flush directly on the tracks. Not exactly as civilized as one would hope, my good man.

I'll have to write more about the trains here as time goes on. I'll try to take some pics on this ride down so that you can see what I'm talking about.

So I'm tired, and not exactly looking forward to this 12 hr. train ride. But whatever, i'm feeling young and adventurous all of a sudden as I type. It beats being in the office. Plus I'll get to take a few days off since I'm working over the weekend.

When we get back Mon. morning, our director, Jason, from England should be here. He'll stay with me in my flat. He's cool we should have some fun. I enjoy talking with him and see a lot I can learn in terms of leadership. He'll be here till friday, and then on the following Mon. my good college friend Leslie comes in for a few days from sunny San Diego.

We outta have some fun going around the city, doing all the touristy things I haven't done yet. It's always good to be with old friends who just get you. I'm looking forward to it...eeeeeemensly.

Anecdote from today:
So i went out into the market area with a couple of stores and lots of kiosks. I stopped in at this little food shop and asked for a hot dog. I saw a couple of guys with some hot dogs from there and they look decent, so i decided to try. So I ordered them, and the lady looks at me like I am an idiot for saying "hot dog" the way that I just did. I guess my american accent was really showing through, since I was pronouncing an american word.

Anyway, she then procedes to ask my if I want one dog or two (they were kinda small)...but she asked if I wanted it "with 1 or with 2". Believe it or not, this is a phrase that I have never before heard in Russian. When you use the preposition "with" you then have to put the nouns in a different case...the instrumental case. But the thing with russian is that you always have to change the vowels so that they are in the right case. And usually, the vowels can sound completely different from one case to the next.

For example: 2 is normally "dva"....but when you put it in the instrumental case it becomes (sss dvoo-ma) or something like that. I'm still not sure what she said. I just nodded and said "dva" like a complete idiot.

Stuff like this happens a lot. But I'm learning not to care about looking and sounding stupid. I still care...but facing that sad fact everyday is helping me come to terms with it.

So I'm outta time, gotta get going to catch my train. Much love from here.

If you would, right now pray for our travels down there and back. Pray for the kids that are going to be at this retreat. Pray that the technical stuff would go over without a hitch. Pray that these students would see Jesus and fall in love with him.

Jerry-boy out.