:)

March 13, 2008


Today at the little Russian bakery by my school I dropped my sunglasses and when the sweet Russian lady behind the counter saw that they had broken, she said, “Oh no! I will take you to my brother.”

So we walked down the street to find her brother who took my sunglasses, fixed them and cleaned them off in less than two minutes.

The point to my story is not about the sunglasses though…I successfully had a conversation in Russian with this wonderful woman, and her brother. I’m pretty darn proud of myself right now.

Yesterday I was called into my director’s office and given a package of cookies and a letter from my friend who lives in a tiny village twenty minutes away. She told me later that she just saw a dude with a car and asked him if he was going to Yoloten. When he said yes, she handed him some money and the package asking to deliver it to me at the school.

It’s a perfect means of communication when phones don’t work.

I hopped in a taxi to visit her in the afternoon and was awestruck once again by the beautiful simplicity of the oba life. There’s only one street in her village…

There’s something about the peaceful aura of the oba that I truly love.