Saturday, July 22, 2006

Language and Donations

I was a language major in college - I thought I was going to be a Spanish teacher! It's a long story, but I wound up in libraries instead (and very happy that I did). I understand a smattering of other romance languages but Russian is something else. The Cyrillic alphabet is based on the Greek alphabet and it looks really strange at first. Actually it's not that bad - each letter in the alphabet has it's own sound so once you get those in your head you can pronounce any Russian word you see. Then once you pronouce them a lot of them sound close enough to English that you know what they are. For example, "taxi" sounds like "taxi". I've got a set of Russian language tapes I'm working through and so far I can say "I don't understand Russian very well." I need to keep working on it!

It would be really nice if the airlines, hotels and restaurant people thought this trip was such a wonderful idea that they would donate their services, but unfortunately that's not the way it works. The cost of the trip per person is around $2000. I'm blessed that my church (Central United Methodist) has decided to make my travel one of their mission projects and I have resources of my own. However, part of the purpose of the trip is to buy Christmas presents for the orphans and you can take part in that if you wish. There is a link on the right hand side of this web page to the West Virginia Volunteers in Mission where you will find information about how to donate and a form. If you have problems finding it let me know. Also, I understand that I will be selling tickets to take Russian orphans to the circus for $10.00 each. Let me know how many you want! Blessings!

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