Week 6 in Review

I suppose I should title this post Thursday and Friday in review, since I really didn’t do much Sunday thru Wednesday. There was Sunday Mass, than 4 days of class. Hmm how interesting. Ok, but Thursday, we (our American group) went to the local planetarium. All I can really say is it was a planetarium, I think they are pretty much the same anywhere you go, although it was in Russian. It was interesting to see what they could do with some pretty old technology. I mean it was only lights and projections, run by an operator flicking switches. Still it looked a lot better than you (I) would have expected. Was it fun? Well it was something to do and really, anything can be fun when you are with friends. After the planetarium, I stopped home real quick and then it was off to daily Mass. This time I was actually able to follow the evening prayer and the Mass, so I enjoyed it as usually. The cool thing is that after Mass the Priest, Father Serge, gave me a book with the Mass parts in Russian to help me follow along. That was great. The book is also in German, Polish, and I think Swedish or Finnish. It also has a Latin part in the back. I likes it a lot. He also gave me a personal invitation to come to the Friday night prayer group, which I did and will post on next. So Thursday was a very good day.

Friday, our group went to a Kindergarten (Детский Сад, in Russian, Detsky means children and sad means garden). This was pretty fun. Little kids are always cute and they even put on a little show for us. The have a nice place to, every room was beds in it for naptime and they get little tables for meals, and plenty of toys, a music room, and a big playground outside. They said there are 180 kindergartens in Vladimir, that’s pretty amazing. After this, I bummed around one of the local markets for a while and took a walk in the big park we have here. Then I was off to the Soccer Match. The Torps played a good game but … Actually no they played a lousy game and despite having possession most of the game they blew several chances to score and the game ended in a 0-0 tie. It was disappointed, but I had no time to ponder this cause I had to get to daily Mass. Friday’s Mass was a special one because it was Our Lady of the Rosary, and the Mass was being offered for a sick member of the Parish. After Mass, we had a quick half hour of adoration, which was great. I had not been to adoration in like 4 months and I missed it. Then I went to the prayer group, which I will comment on next.

So this leads me up to now, 6 weeks into my first semester aboard and in a very good mood. I do hope that my Russia keeps improving, its gotten a lot better, but I still have trouble hearing what is said to me and my conversation skills are not where I want them to be, we’ll see I suppose.