Spring is arriving along with our Finnish friends

Yesterday the temperature was +2. There was no wind and the sun was out. (The wind came today and the sun is hiding.) It was a beautiful warm day and certainly felt like the start of Spring, even if the Russians I mentioned this to told me that Spring doesn't come til March.

The day started out with the all important trek through the forest and up the hill to the main campus of the university. I had to go there to pay my fees for the semester at the International office. Tom kindly agreed to come for the walk with me. On the way a few cross country skiiers were making the most of the warm weather before the snow melts.


I have only been skiing a couple times in my life and found it quite hard both times. Somehow it feels a little hard to learn something this new at my stage in life. But I will tackle a few more languages though.

It's good for the soul to walk through the forest. Tom was good company as I shared my vision and desire to see reindeer taken from the Evenki people in Baikit to the Ket people in Kellog who have no reindeer any more. I will drip feed you some pieces of this story as it unfolds. I am still hoping that Yura the reindeer herder will come to Krasnoyarsk this week, and I hope to share my idea with him. I am also hoping that it might be possible for me to visit Baikit in March for the reindeer festival, if not the certainly in June.


After waiting a while for the ladies in the international office to write up an invoice for me, Tom and I headed over to the university cashier. A 45 minute wait in line to pay would have been annoying by myself, but it was a good chance for me to share the whole vision of ministry through reindeer husbandry with Tom.
The above picture is one of the halls in the main corpus of the university. The satellite looking contraption is a work of art made of solar panels.


Siberian Federal University
I don't actually have any of my classes at the main campus. Mine are all in a smaller institute, closer to home, with an easier walk.

After taking longer than I planned for, I was running a bit late to go with Melody to meet Merja and Veltsu at the train station. We ended up only getting there a few minutes late.

Melody, Merja and Velli-Pekka (Veltsu).

I suppose it is due to climate change that these days in southern Finland they have not seen any snow all Winter, even though Helsinki is at 60 degrees north. They do get the gulf stream weather pattern, but Merja and Veltsu grew up with snow all Winter. It is a difficult adjustment for them to have no snow in their lives normally. So they thoroughly enjoyed a visit to the ice sculptures and slide close to our place. Abigail also loves the slides and is getting more confident all the time. Yesterday she went on the big slide by herself for the first time. On the first slide she did really well and came running back for a second slide. On the second slide, she went down crooked and bumped her head a little. She was quite distraught and embarrassed. A little while later she was back on the small slides again and loving it. I hope she can get back on the big slide again before it melts. We were so proud of her taking a big step like that.

Velli-Pekka takes the plunge.


Merja must be remembering her snow filled child hood.


Abigail on her brave second attempt down the big dipper. I have confidence that she will get back on the horse.


I have shielded you of photos of me on the slides today. But here I am with Merja enjoying the warm weather, although my ear was getting a bit cold pressed against the ice, while I waited for Veltsu to take the photo.


As I mentioned, Spring, (aka the slush season) is arriving. I say arriving, because with +2 and sunshine the snow and ice was melting yesterday. But today it has been windy and +1, but with no sunshine, so the ice hasn't melted so much (it refroze overnight). I talked with an older man this morning who was trying to chip away at the ice. It's his job. I explained to him that if he waited until after lunch that it would probably melt some and it would be a lot easier. His reply was "Всегда трудно, я снегопад!" "It's always hard, but I'm the snow man!" I'm well used to these illogical attitudes, they simply amuse me these days. He has an old communist mind set. He simply does his job when he is supposed to. Besides, so long as he is in the process of removing some ice, it doesn't matter if he actually gets the job done or not.


Today I saw Merja and Veltsu off after their lightning visit. Their visit was fun and a good chance to learn some more Finnish. Here is a list of some words I remember:
Hei Hei: hello and goodbye
Kiitos: thank you
Ole hyva: your welcome
hyva: good
oikken hyva: very good
hyva ooyet, Jesus mooyet: good night, Jesus be with you

yksi, kaksi, kolme, neelia, veesi, kosi, setsamen, kahadekksen, oohadekksen, kumanen: 1-10. (Merja and Veltsu were very impressed when I rattled that off within a few minutes. I was surprised myself, Finnish is a crazy hard language, with virtually no similarities to European languages at all. But it is amazing how much relationships can inspire language learning.)

We will be passing through Finland at the end of July on our way to Canada, so we will catch up with our Finnish friends again then.