Artificial Intelligence

Last week was fairly interesting. On Monday I was scheduled to teach at the State University of Artificial Intelligence, that is computer sciences. Victor, a professor from the University asked Laurie and I to teach his students about Canada. Laurie surprisingly, allowed me to do the majority of the talking. I thought it was a good experience. I taught two classes. The first had about twenty students while the second was closer to fifty. I shared some interesting facts about Canada but I mostly taught about my personal experiences and about my family.

They seemed very interested and many approached me afterwards to share their gratitude. The dean of the school appreciated our visit as well. After the classes she invited us to her office for tea and treats. We had a good visit and then they ask me when I will be available to teach again. I asked what they would like me to teach next time and they said I could teach whatever I like. Huh, I wasn't expecting that. I told them I would have to get back to them later because I am quite busy at the moment.

Right now I am trying to read a textbook, learn Russian, prepare an English class, and get involved with ministry opportunities. So far the ministry opportunities have not been too extensive. The latest one was sharing a message in Chapel last Friday. That was done through a translator, which is actually tricky since you have to pause after every sentence you say. This is good if you need to keep your place in your notes but it hinders your flow.
Tomorrow we are planning to join Dema on a trip to an orphanage he is involved with. I am not totally sure what he does with the kids but I do know he does special outings with them. I'll find out tomorrow.

I had the opportunity to go to the museum...twice last week. Once spontaneously and the other planned. The spontaneous outing was with the youth group we teach English to. They planned to go afterwards but I was unaware of this. The second time was planned with an American I met through our tutor. The museum though was worthy of two visits. It was almost completely in Russian but the themes and events were easy to figure out by the displays. Laurie and I found the World War II section to be the most interesting. I have a couple pictures on my cell phone but I haven't figured out yet how to get them on my computer.

Laurie shopped successfully on her own this week and we had company over for dinner on Saturday and today. On Saturday we had some of the UBI students over and served them stew and apple crisp. I think it was a different stew than they have had before and it was definitely the first time they had apple crisp. I really enjoyed it and some of them did as well. Tonight we had two of the guest teachers from the USA over for dinner. It was nice to have easy English conversations for a change.

This past Sunday was encouraging for Laurie and I. We went to a Church service where the preacher spoke slowly and we were able to understand about 20% of what he was saying, which was encouraging because we could figure out the gist of his message. Our Russian lessons seem to be paying off.

I don't really have any good pictures to show you this week. Except one...can you guess where I found this!!!

Benefits of being a groupie.

I have never thought of myself as a groupie before but that is pretty much what we were last Tuesday and it was bunches of fun. A choir from a Christian college in the USA came to Ukraine to perform at various functions. On Tuesday the choir planned some touristy events and our mentors asked to tag along and also asked us if we would like to join in. Of course we did. There was two stops on the agenda. First an ancient Orthodox Monastery called Святейшая гора (Holy Mountain in Russian) and next a salt mine that has been converted into a public attraction.

These two places are not too far from Donetsk. An early morning with a three hour drive gave us most of the day to explore both places. We first stopped at Святейшая гора. It is a beautiful area with lots of history. It was founded some time in the 9th Century by Orthodox monks who were trying get away from persecution. It is a very interesting place. The original monestary is literally carved into a mountain. The mountain is a huge chalk deposit so the monks just carved caves through the chalk. They eventually carved a temple in the mountain as well. The monestary now is an active place where people come to worship God. There is a huge church building there and it is well used. When we were there, there was no sitting room left and many people were standing. The placed was packed, and this was a Tuesday afternoon.

After a quick tour and lunch we headed to the salt mine. From the outside it looks like a typical mine but the inside is very interesting. As soon as you step off the elevator you walk into a tunnel that is completely surrounded by salt. The roof, ground and walls are all salt. We were given a tour which involves some lovely salt displays. Laurie got quite a giggle because our tour guide was a middle aged woman wearing a fancy fur coat and 3 inch stiletto boots. Fashion 600 feet below ground. The tour was really neat though. This palm tree is made completely from salt. At the end we were allowed to enjoy some free time in the 'Big Room' I was blown away. This room is around eight stories high and two football fields long. That is a lot of salt extracted. Our tour guide told us that the salt deposit there was 78 kilometers long. This is great for the people living in the area. Since almost everyone in the surrounding towns work at the mines.



The rest of the week was busy as well. I am working through a Ukrainian history textbook, continuing on our Russian Lessons, teaching English and working on other projects as well. So we are not bored. Laurie has been fighting a cold for the past four days and is now starting to feel better. My health has been good thus far. I thank God for that since sickness seems to be a common occurrence here. I am not sure if it just the changing of season but many people are fighting colds right now.

Funny story: Laure and I had our first 'creepy creature' encounter last night. We were in the bathroom getting ready for bed when all of a sudden Laurie says, “eww gross whats that?” I don't have my glasses on and can't see anything and say, “what, what is it.” Then Laurie starts to get excited, “ahhh it's moving...quick Babe kill it.” I leave to get my glasses and then Laurie cries, “Bruno you just let it out, now it's free in the kitchen!” I put my glasses on but don't see anything. “What did it look like” I ask. Laurie tells me it was a big rat looking thing. I'm thinking “oh my, this thing must be big...I better get the vacuum and get it that way.” So I get the vacuum and we begin our search. And then we find it...it's a yellow, 1.5 inch long insect that looks like a scorpion and centipede hybrid. I quickly vacuum it up and tell Laurie, “Wow honey, that sure was a BIG rat!” She didn't appreciate my teasing for the rest of the night.

Humbled...

Thats how I felt yesterday morning after I was rejected twice by a taxi company. Before that I was feeling really good about myself because last week I had successfully called the taxi company and gotten them to pick us up at our new place. Yesterday morning however the receptionist didn't have any patience for my sloppy Russian and just hung up on me...twice. I had to call one of the school translators to help us out.

Later that day we had the opportunity to go to a nice drama theater for a special worship service. It was a unique service because they had a choir made up from different congregations around Donetsk. This choir sang worship songs in Russian and then an American choir from Texas sang English songs. The Texas choir is in the Ukraine for a week performing at various Churches around the country. I brought my camera along since the drama theater is quite elegant. However, when I turned the camera on it told me 'no card' meaning no memory card. Doh...I forgot the card in my computer...there is another performance tonight so I will try and get pictures then.

This past week has been by far our busiest. Laurie had her hands full with entertaining Regena and Masha. Here is them enjoying lunch together.


They are two of the children of UBI staff members. Laurie was running the staff daycare as the regular caregiver had to return to Russia to be with her father who is very ill.

And here is me teaching with Alona. Alona was my translator and did a great job.



I have a new respect for teachers now...it takes a lot of work to adequately prepare. And answering questions is tricky as well, you never know what someone will ask. I found it to be a stressful experience but rewarding. Stressful mostly because we covered material a lot quicker than I anticipated. So I had to prepare quickly to fill the last class.

This week will be quite different from last week. So far the responsibilities we have taken on are to teach English on Saturday and have Russian lessons throughout the week. Here is the group we taught last Saturday...initially anyways, we had three other stragglers come in about an hour later.



I hope to have some time this week to catch up on 'homework.' I need to read a Ukrainian history text book and visit a museum and then do a write up on each. The potential to get busier thought is very present. I met a University teacher last week who asked me if I could teach his class all about Canada. Apparently they are very interested in Canada since Canada takes in lots of Ukrainian immigrants every year. So if you know any interesting facts about Canada please pass them my way.

Question: Does God care about little prayers, specifically ones that might be silly to another but important to you. I think so, let me share with you what happen today. Laurie and I have been planning for the past three days to go shopping at the Amctop for groceries. It takes planing cause you need 30 minutes to walk there and then at least an hour to find everything you need. We had no food in our place so we planned to get a lot of stuff. However we had a problem...to get a cart you need a fifty kopeky coin. We didn't have one. So this morning I asked God to allow us to find one so that we could use a cart to shop with.

On the walk there I was looking intensely at the edges of the sidewalks but to no avail. Then when we get to the Amctop I figure we'll just have to deal with carrying as much as we can but then Laurie says “we might as well go to where the carts are and see” I'm giving up already but as a good husband I listen and we go and check out the carts. And behold, hiding near the edge of the carts is a fifty kopeky...I was soooo happy. It's silly I know, but it's a big deal when you can only make that trip once a week and thats the only place you can find almost everything you need. Slava Bogoo! (Praise God!)

We Are Available ...

That is what we told everyone at UBI. We are available to help with whatever, and they have taken us up on that. This week I have been asked to teach a Christian Apologetics class and Laurie has been asked to take over the school daycare for the time being. The usual daycare worker needed to take a sudden leave of absence and so now Laurie gets to practice her Russian with a 1.5 year old and a 4 year old. She is quite thrilled to learn that she reads Russian at the same level as the 4 year old girl. They'll be study buddies, I guess. Also, we have been asked to teach a youth English class on Saturdays and currently we are studying Russian with a tutor three days a week so we are quite busy.

We have also learned recently that we need to plan and give ourselves plenty of time to shop and cook for ourselves. No longer can we rush home and have a quick dinner. This became apparent to us on Thursday when we had a Russian lesson from 4-6and we were starved afterwards. However, it took us 45 minutes to get home with the tram and walking so we realized then that we need to plan our time better.

We are now living in our new place. We can control the temperature inside...oooh that is such a luxury here. I believe almost all the apartments here share a hot water system but we have our own! Here are some pictures of our place. As you can see it is fairly nice. We looked at four different places here before we picked this one. For the price and location it was a no brainier. The other places available were closer to the school but their conditions were considerably less.




Here is a picture of our neighbor across the street.

Oh and here is the power plant that is basically in our back yard. That smoke stack is maybe five hundred feet from our front door. Our place though is still considered to be located downtown Donetsk. We have a twenty five minute walk to UBI from where we are at so downtown is a fairly large area.

This is a very interesting place to be. On one side of the street you see a beautiful modern commercial building and then on the other side there is a fifty year old building that has obviously been neglected. Laurie and I saw an extreme of this when we walked to the Amctop last Thursday. The Amstop is a large supermarket, the closest thing they have to a Walmart here. On the way there we came across huge, beautiful homes and right beside them were houses falling apart. We have been told that there are some here who are doing very well financially but the majority of the people are not. An American student we have visited with who studies economics tells us that the unemployment rate here is 25%...That is huge. He told us that the unemployment rate during the US Great Depression was only at 20%. There are definitely a lot of people in need here. We are looking forward to helping out where we can.

This last picture is of our neighborhood hoodlums. There are quite a few stray dogs here. These two are our roosters they bark quite a bit but our place is fairly sound proof. Every morning on our commute to school Laurie and I walk by a posse of homeless dogs. They look cute all cuddled together. There are about five of them but they are completely harmless

From chaos to praise

This past Friday, Laurie and I experienced an odd event. The event included driving with a friend of a friend who's driving habits I can only describe as...chaotic. I literally had motion sickness from the drive, but afterwards we experienced such a lovely worship service at our friend's house. What was interesting was our song leader, who was very passionate and good at leading the group, was also our driver. I am convinced that automobiles and roads/traffic change people. For, our ride home was just as adventurous as our trip there. This drive was the first time we experienced someone using the tram line as a passing lane and what was a wee bit nerve racking was being stuck on the tram line for awhile since we could not merge back into traffic. However, we did make great time. We had one of the students from UBI come with us to translate for us. We asked him if Ukrainians needed to take a test to be able to drive, he said yes, and that what we were experiencing was not the norm for Ukrainian drivers for they do get tickets for unsafe driving. I don't think that our friend of a friend has had one yet...

The house service we went to was very warm. It was centered on worship, prayer and the Word. Many congregations here in Ukraine do not have buildings so many gather in homes or rent rooms from universities and such. This afternoon we went to a service that took place in a classroom at Donetsk National University. It was a fairly signature C of C service. I had to use the washroom afterwards. If you have not seen a squatter toilet before here is one from the University.

Last Saturday we taught our first English lessons. We were told we would be leading an English Bible study so that some English conversation could be practiced. However the English level was fairly low among the group so we had to start from the beginning. Actually, we used one of our Russian learning books to teach from since we don't have much else to work with. Next week I think we will be more creative, maybe use uno cards to practice colours and numbers.

We have a new home now. It is a nicely renovated, quaint little house just a 25 minute walk from the school. We are currently waiting for our Internet to be installed there and then we will move in. We don't have any pictures of it yet, but they'll come soon as we will move in this week.

Here are some pictures of our friends. The guys here like to play table tennis in the student lounge. Here is Sergei returning a monster serve. You can see the fear in his expression.

Bogdon is arm wrestling me. I must admit he is a stronger man than I.


Lena and Vladimir took us home from church on a bus this morning. It was our first time on public transportation. Here is Laurie and them.


The students here are fun and want to get to know us. They are full of joy and even though we cannot communicate with most of them we can sense their warm hearts.

This last picture is a man made mountain. It is a mountain of coal mine waste. When the ore below is excavated they extract all the coal and whatever remains is placed in these huge mounds of dirt. There are several coal mines here in Donetsk and they cause some serious pollution. Everywhere you look around town there are tall smoke stacks. Some very big, some only thirty feet tall.


The pipe in the picture is actually a gas line. The most recently developed areas in Donetsk have their gas lines buried but everywhere else they are above ground. It is kinda weird. You look down a street and you can see the gas line running parallel with the street, going vertical at places to make sure a tall vehicle could clear it. It's functional, but not the most beautiful.

All in all Laurie and I starting to feel more comfortable with the culture here in Donetsk. We start Russian lessons tomorrow and are going to work hard on that. We feel that this is our biggest barrier right now. We so wish we could speak freely with everyone we meet. We want to get to know people better but for now charades is the best we can do.