Belarus Entry #2 - Tongue Twisters For All

One of the members of our Belarus team is a student in the Talbot School of Theology-Kyiv Extension M.A. program (website within months) that the rest of the members of our team are responsible for running. For a class coming up in December he has chosen to read the War Rule, a collection of Qumran texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Before our trip, I overheard this brother trying to name his assignment to another professor at our seminary. He first tried in Russian but the professor was unfamiliar with the texts. So the student then named the assignment in English, but the professor could not understand him. He tried about 5 times to say "War Rule," but that's really hard to say for someone whose main language has no "w" sound and rolls its "r"s instead of dragging them out. It was a tongue twister, for sure.

But while we were in Belarus, the four of us had an extended discussion about why "War Rule" is so difficult to say and decided to see how we could make it even more difficult. Granted, our final result is pretty meaningless, but it's pretty hard for even an English-speaking tongue. So, try this out 10 times fast ...

"The role of the real world rural war rule"

But so as not to pick solely on my Slavic-tongued fellows, I have to mention the name of the conference we were attending in Belarus. The organization is acronymed, "EAAA," which, conveniently works in both English and Russian. In English, it stands for the Euro-Asian Accreditation Association. Easy, right? In Russian it reads, "Евро-азиатская Аккредитационная Ассоциация." That likely doesn't mean much to you, so here's the transliteration ...

"Yevro-aziatskaya Akkreditatsionaya Associatsiya"

It's certainly not impossible to say but, in the middle of a sentence, combined with all of the necessary declensions and often surrounded by words that are just as difficult to say, it doesn't always roll off the tongue. Even one of the conference speakers mentioned how difficult it was to say, and he was a Russian-speaker! So, while I certainly topped the charts in mispronounced Russian words during our 5-day trip, I could pronounce sensical and nonsensical English words and phrases with relative ease. In the end, such discussions helped to balance out our respective embarrassment, as well as bringing some much needed levity to a conference whose main focus was that perennial thriller, academic institution accreditation standards.

Belarus Entry #1 - Where To Find Hot Chocolate

Earlier this week, I had a great opportunity with some friends/coworkers (emphasis on the former over the latter) to go to a conference in Minsk, Belarus. There are many, many stories of how repressive Belarus is toward Evangelical Christianity but, fear and trepidation notwithstanding, we had a tiring yet wonderful time and didn't feel any of the infamous repression. I'm sure that was due, in large part, to the fact that one of my coworkers is Belarusian and he made sure that we behaved ourselves. The other factor in play was that the conference was held at an Evangelical seminary and we were there for at least 12 hours a day. That didn't leave much time for shenanigans.

One of the things that we did try to do, when not knee deep in accreditation issues (more on that later), was to find hot chocolate. I had a hankerin' for some on Monday night and so we went searching. We stopped at 2 cafes with no luck (although we did stumble upon the Drama Theater of the Belarusian Army and had great fun imagining said army performing Romeo and Juliet or Swan Lake). That was enough for me. I was ready to settle for some tea. But whereas my desire waned as the night wore on, the hankerin' spread to my compatriots and they didn't want to give up so easily. We looked at 1 or 2 more places before settling on tea (or the wretched coffee for everyone but me) and dessert.

We hit the town the next night, as well, still with no success at finding hot chocolate. With each inquiry and negative reply, my hopes decreased. So, by Wednesday afternoon, just hours before we were to leave, my expectations were at 0%. But as we were leaving the super-huge-mega-market where we were buying our dinner and snacks for the train ride home, it started to pour. A 15-minute walk back to the seminary without umbrellas would have had us soaked until we arrived back in Kyiv the next morning. So we stayed inside for a while and moseyed on up to the cafe/kiosk of the super-huge-mega market. With 0% expectation, what do you think we found? Of course, we did. And it was really good. So, when in Belarus, don't look every imaginable place for the sweet, sweet nectar of the gods. Instead, find your way to the Hippo and enjoy.

Closing the Baseball Book

The New York Yankees won the World Series. I feel like I should either be more happy or more sad about that than I actually am. I could be happy that the Angels ended up losing to the World Champs rather than to the runners-up. Or I could be sad that the Phillies didn't give the Yanks the trouncin' that I'm usually happy to see. But I don't care all that much. Maybe it's because I'm too exhausted from a very busy month at KTS and from spending all of my baseball energy trying to root the Angels into the World Series (feeling extra tired because that energy was expended on behalf of a team that expended their energy trying hard to stay OUT of the World Series). Nonetheless, I have a lot of reasons to be happy about the Angels' '09 season (ALCS performance excluded) and can wait expectantly for things to start up again in April. And, if any Yankees were to shine, I'd want it to be Mariano Rivera and Hideki Matsui. And they did. Brightly. Now I can get back to posts about theology and apologetics.

Foreshadowing?

The Angels are up 2-0 against the Red Sox. Read that sentence again and let it sink in. I don't believe it half of the time myself. But whether I'm dreaming or wide awake, I wore my too-red-to-be-seen-in-the-Ukrainian-public Angel shirt today to celebrate. While walking down the street with the aforementioned shirt exposed, I saw Sergei, the Academic Dean of KTS, coming from the opposite direction. As he approached, I noticed that he was wearing his New York Yankees hat. As soon as he recognized me, he, without hesitation and with a look of trepidation, turned his hat backwards. Hmmm. Was it in jest, or are Yankee fans the world over shaking in their boots at the prospect of facing us in the ALCS?

With a Spring in My Step

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (still the dumbest decision in baseball naming history), won the American League Western Division by shutting out the hated Texas Rangers by a pleasant margin of 11-0. That makes 6 playoff appearances in the last 8 years. Awesome! The only problem is that, if the Angels happen to finally defeat the Red Sox this year, my busiest 3 weeks of the semester are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th weeks of October. I'll be extra sleep deprived if the Angels make it to the league championship. But I can sleep in November, right?

Bills, Banks and Benevolence

We've been back in Ukraine for a little over a month and I'm not quite used to all of the routines yet. For instance, bills are due on the 20th of the month. The bills come in the mail between the 5th and the 10th and then you have until the 20th to figure out how much you owe (you fill out the water and electricity bill yourself) and then get to a pay place and do so. You can pay at most banks, at the post office, at some automated bill pay machines and, allegedly, online. Obviously, paying online or at an automated machine is very modernized. It's too modernized for us, in fact; we go to the bank.

Anyway, as you could guess, if you pay your bills at a counter of some kind and do so on the 15th, the lines will be fairly short. If you wait until the 19th or the 20th, the lines are much longer. If the 20th falls on a Sunday, when the post office and all banks are closed, then all the people who wait until the 20th to pay are in line with all of the people who wait until the 19th to pay and it's torturously long. Our routine is to pay on the 16th or 17th but, since I'm not yet back into the routine, I didn't put 2 and 2 together until this morning and had to rush to arrange all the paperwork and get to the bank, with a myriad of others.

Now, we usually go to one particular bank that charges a very small fee for bill processing (25 cents or something like that). This guarantees a shorter line. Additionally, this bank will process our internet bill, which some banks and the post office will not process. Unfortunately, this bank isn't open on Saturdays like it was a year ago. So, I was forced to go to a bank with a longer line and, as far as I remembered, did not take our internet bill. However, as I was standing in line I noticed that other people were holding their internet bills in their hands from our very same internet company. How cool! I'd still be able to pay all the bills at once and, since I waited in a long line, I wouldn't have to pay extra to do so.

Or so I thought. As soon as I got to the counter and handed over the bills, the teller handed me back the internet bill and said something too quickly for me to understand but that communicated that I would not be paying that bill at that place today. I'd have to come back when there was a shorter line or go the internet company and get a new form or something. (When you don't understand, just about everything is a possibility. I wasn't feeling too proud of my language abilities at that point.) Then she said the total for the other bills that I needed to pay. It was clearly higher than it should have been but, with 20-25 people behind me I wasn't about to say anything. I just guessed that, due to the economic crisis or something, all bill pay stations were charging fees now. I gave her a round sum and, being short on change, she had to go get some from her coworker. That gave me time to think about how much more the bills were than they should have been. I was coming up with about $4.50 or so (35-40 hrv.); WAY too much for a processing fee. But again, I didn't want to feel the piercing stares of 20-25 people on they out, so I just exited.

When I got to work (Josie had taken Dietrich to the store; I was not abandoning my family), I messaged a friend to see if my bank-fees-for-all-bills theory was true. It was not. I also called the internet company and asked if they might know why the bank refused to process my bill. They said that I had likely taken the wrong bill to the wrong bank. And that solved a mystery. We received 2 internet bills that looked identical. We could not discern a difference between them and so I tossed one—like a dummy—and took the other with me to the bank. And, in fact, I had tried to pay the УкрСиббанк bill at Ощадбанк. I asked where the nearest УкрСиббанк was located and, on my way home from work I tried to pay the internet bill there but, of course, it was closed on Saturdays. So I went home with an unpaid bill and a $4.50 less than than I should have come home with. Telling myself that I was making a contribution to a struggling economy provided no real solace.

Josie got home a few minutes after I did and she could tell I was down. She asked what was wrong and I told her that I'd tell her in a minute, after I had finished catching up on her brother's Los Angeles Angels blog. I was trying to lighten my spirits but I was too disappointed with myself. I started to tell the story with even more boring details than you've just read.

And then it happened. The bank called, right in the middle of my story, and told me that they had charged me twice for one of the bills. If I could come back to the bank in the next 10 minutes (before they closed) then they'd give me my money back. Unbelievable. Not only did they stop my quick slide into depression, they showed me that they care enough about the hundreds of people that pour into their bank every day to follow up. If I were them, I MYSELF might have considered the mistake as a contribution to the struggling economy. But they not only caught the error; they corrected the error. I'm a much happier person now. I've got $4.50 in my pocket and more hope for Ukraine's business future. Happy Saturday.

If Your Last Name Starts With a P ...

... you might want to stay away from baseball altogether.

In the last few years, I've posted once (about Dustin Pedroia) or twice about bad character on the field. There was another incident last night involving Jorge Posada of the Yankees. And while I've not yet written about him, A.J. Pierzynski of the White Sox carries quite the negative reputation (in spite of the fact that he thinks that's cool).

Pierzynski, Pedroia, Posada. Not a good sign.

So I say to all of the young Johnny Pattersons and Nate Phillips out there, play dodgeball instead.