Friday, 10 September 2010

Mailing Address

Timothy Gardner
Ul. Kalyaeva #167
Krasnodar, Russia
350047

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So this is what the internet looks like! It’s so big and…and red. I’d nearly forgotten; we’ve been without it for the last 5 weeks, which has meant no blogging, no Facebook, and no e-mail. If you’ve written to us sometime in the last month and a half, and haven’t heard back, that’s why. I confess I thought it was wonderful: sort of living way back in the golden age of the twentieth century again. From time to time while we were on the road, Tim was able to find a café with Wi-Fi and hook up long enough to pay bills and take care of the most pressing matters of business, but otherwise, we were back to the days of communicating by smoke signal and talking drums.

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In sixteen hours, we leave for Slovakia, to renew our visas. We're leaving at 2 in the morning in order to get to Kiev--a 20-hour drive--the first day.The next day, we'll time our journey through the second half of Ukraine--another 20-hour drive--so we can get to the Ukraine/Poland border before the line forms. (The Ukrainian mafia posts itself at the border and "sells" places in the front of the line: if you don't pay, you don't move. Last year, we crossed the border in the middle of the night on Christmas, and though they tried to get money from us, Tim was able to refuse since there was no line, and they had no leverage.) It should take us 2 long days of driving to cross Ukraine. This is the scariest part of the trip, since the roads are terrible and the police are everywhere, waiting to extort money on the thinnest of manufactured excuses. We hope to go through Poland and arrive in Vrbovce, Slovakia on Monday the 11th.

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Russian Orthodox Christmas is tomorrow, but we’ve already celebrated. One of the most exciting parts of our very busy Christmas season was getting to take boxes of gifts to kids at an internat—a boarding school for “social orphans.” Most of Russia’s so-called orphans actually have at least one living parent, but poverty, crime and drug- and alcohol abuse have rendered them unable to take care of their kids. Some have had their parental rights terminated or have given up their kids to orphanages, but in some cases their children live at boarding schools with other kids in similar situations, and go home to visit on weekends. It was to one of these schools that we went, with members of our church, on Christmas Eve.

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