Christmas ornaments, English class, and Winter's arrival

Wow, it’s already Thursday. Where has this week gone?!

This past week, the girls and I have begun making some Christmas ornaments. We are just making them from a simple salt dough recipe, but we sure are having fun! I’ll just say, our Christmas tree is definitely going to look ‘interesting’ this year. We already have a bright orange angel and a hot pink star (smile).

David has thoroughly been enjoying his weekly time at the university, helping with the English class. He goes every Thursday morning, and for 90 minutes, he simply talks with the students in English. The students all know English grammar very well, they just need practice talking, so it’s just perfect for David! He just needs to prepare some discussion topics, so it’s not much extra work on his part. Last week, they spent the class time discussing the US elections, racism, and the economy. Today, David took a whole list of questions to ask them, concerning different cultural topics about T-land. They didn’t get past the first question, which was on love and marriage. David said they just had so much fun discussing this theme, as it is something they are all interested in right now (smile). From this time, David learned quite a bit about this part of their culture. He recorded the whole class so that I could listen to it and so that we could record some cultural information from it. What an opportunity though… 90 minutes of discussing any topic with students… a great way to build relationships and learn about their culture! This is an opportunity that only he could have provided for us. We are thankful.

Since David is in charge of this Thursday morning class, the teachers are required to pay him for this. Yet, since we do not have a permit to work here, we are not allowed to accept this money. Instead, David told them that they could save the money that they would normally pay him, and put it towards any projects that the university would need. In return for his help, David just asked the teacher if she could provide him with two dependable students who would be willing to help us learn Tuvan. She thought this was a great idea, and last week, already had two students (a young lady for me and a young man for David) picked out to be our language helpers! This morning, David talked with them some more, and it seems like they are really excited about helping us learn their language! They are both coming over tomorrow morning to discuss when we can meet, etc. It’s going to be interesting figuring out our schedules, as they are both full-time students, and we’ll have to juggle our 3 little ones, so we’d appreciate your thoughts about that!

We are both really looking forward to finally beginning official tuvan language study! Hopefully, we can begin next week. Even though I know it will make our lives quite a bit busier, I’m really looking forward to it. I’m excited, that finally, I’ll be able to learn a language with David. Up until now, I’ve just been trying to play ‘catch-up’ with David, (learning German and Russian). It will be different for us to be learning a language at the same time! I am planning on it being fun. :D While I really enjoy studying (I know, call me ‘weird’, everyone else does :D), David really enjoys just being out with the people and talking. So hopefully, we’ll be able to complement and help balance each other out some.

This week, the temperature has dropped significantly, and is now below freezing. Late this morning, it began snowing! And, since it’s cold enough outside now, the snow is still laying on the ground! Oh my, the girls were so excited when they saw it snowing! I could barely finish eating lunch. Aria kept saying, “mommy, come look out the window! There’s so many snow!” Of course, we would jump up and down and do a little “happy dance”. I love seeing the girls excited about things! I told them that after they woke-up from their nap, we’d go outside and play in it. Aria even wanted to sleep in her mittens! Too funny. Needless to say, even though there was only a couple of centimeters of snow on the ground, they had a blast playing in it! We would have stayed outside longer, but Micah’s little nose was turning a nice shade of pink, so I decided it was time to come inside. Winter has finally come! :D

(We were in need of some warm winter coats for the girls, and so we were delighted to find these at a store not far from our apartment! They were made here in Siberia and are really, really warm! We got each of the girls a coat about 2 sizes bigger, in hopes that they will be able to wear them for the next couple of years. They are quite a bit big now... the sleeves are rolled way up!... but they are still wearable. We've already seen several little girls with the exact same coats, so I guess Aria and Nina will be in "Tuvan style" this winter!)

(Micah's first snow! :D He is wearing a snow suit that David's aunt Maria had gotten for Aria several years ago. We have gotten a lot of use out of it, as both Aria and Nina wore it too. As it is quite big for our little guy, we are thinking he'll be able to wear it next year too! Danke Maria!)