News for the week

It's Summer time, which means our regular schedule is on hold and life is quieter for us. I have been trying to brush up on my Evenki in preparation for our trip up north. We also need to brush up on our phonetics symbols, so we can record Evenki word lists. Our plan is to compare the Baikit and Tura dialects of the Evenki language by collecting word lists and doing some phonological analysis. We also hope to learnt the Evenki language further and speak it with some people.

Aside from Evenki language we hope to share oral bible stories with people. Just today I told the story of God creating the garden, man and woman to an Evenki man who lives here in Krasnoyarsk. 

L-R Roma (Yura's son), Yura, Alona and Katya (Yura and Alona's daughter). We will be staying with them in Evenkiya in August for two weeks.

I may have a chance to travel to the forest with Yura and visit the reindeer herd. We shall see.

This week apart from preparations for our trip to Evenkiya we have taken the kids to Central Park and collected our 3 year exit visas. Even though we have temporary residency permits now, we still needed to get exit visas to leave the country.

At the end of this week Tim and I, along with Rustam (former team member) and Andrei are planning to visit the Chulym. We hope to record some stories for them. Their language is quite endangered, so anything we can do for them will hopefully be a blessing to them.

Raspberry season has started. It's the best time of year. Last year we bought a lot of raspberries and then preserved a bunch for Winter. I'm glad they are here now, as I did not want to miss out on them when we travel north.

Funny photo

This is the crosswalk at our bus stop. (I have adopted the Canadian "crosswalk" into my idiolect. It's a lot less cumbersome than the Australian "pedestrian crossing" although of course Australian also includes "zebra crossing"). They just moved the location of the cross walk a little, so that it is now behind the bus instead of in front of the bus. Crossing the road can be a bit of an adventure. Some cars refuse to slow down, although many still do. But crossing does require courage and an act of faith. It's a matter of stepping out and letting the car know that they are obligated to stop for you.

The writing on the crosswalk reads, "If you want to cross the road, raise your hand", to which someone has added "and your leg". We laughed when we saw it as did other people crossing the road. Lifting your hand won't get you across the road!

Flowers

I thought that the various waves of flowers had finished for the Spring/ Summer. But this is a new one that I have never seen before. There must be up to ten or more varieties of flowers that grow in the forest.