Kazakhstan

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  Moscow, Central Russia, Russian Federation
Thursday, August 21, 2008

Kazakhstan improved drastically for us after I wrote my last blog.  We had been stuck in a hotel that was actually costing over ten dollars a night and didn't have any hot water.  Actually, I think that they refrigerated the water, because it gave us brain freezes.   Alban e-mailed local Adventists to see if we could stay in a church.  We finally got an answer Thursday evening, and met some Adventist on Friday.  The name sounded familiar to me, and they claimed to be WWU graduates.  Sure enough, I recognized the guy as soon as he walked to our meeting spot.  David and Gina Hebley graduated about a year ago from Walla Walla, and had come out to my church several times.  It was so neat to see friends in a place so bizarre to us. 
Friday night, David took us to help him teach English at the English school.  It was fun, but I don't think that I am teacher material.  Alban, however, may be.  He lead out Sabbath school Sabbath afternoon (they do late churches) and did a great job with it.  I was asked to do a mission spotlight, but fortunately they found someone else.  The church service was nice.  Both English and Russian were used and Gina gave a good sermon.  We had some delicious gluten steaks in the evening, and then sang hymns for hours.  I never realized how nice hymns were, until I realized how deprived I had been over the last ten weeks.  Sunday morning we climbed some hills behind Almaty for some great views.  Then we caught our train to Novosibirsk.
On the train, our first class seats turned out to be second class, and the stewardess gave us no chance of catching any train to Moscow, this made us worried.   Upon arrival to Novosibirsk, however, we actually caught a train to Moscow leaving only two hours later.  On the train, we met three young comrades who were training for luge.  One of them had already competed in the World Cup and had nine medals.  The other two were a team, with one riding atop the other.  We had a lot of fun with them and we told them that we would be rooting for them in 2014 when the Olympics come to Sochi, Russia--they won't be the minimum age of 18 by the time of the Vancouver Olympics. 
This morning, we finally arrived in Moscow and had little trouble finding our hostel, which was actually a little cheaper than expected.  We spent the morning at the Red Square and St. Basil's Cathedral, it was incredible!  Anyway, Russia has been a pleasure for me so far.  Everyone-ish seems to be very friendly.

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