Hi Friends!!

The last days for us in Naryan Mar are here! I’ll update you on what we have been doing since I last updated for you.
SCHOOL VISITS: our first visit to the school was on Thursday (March 1) we were all really surprised at how welcomed we were! It was amazing! We were ushered right into a meeting hall, a room filled with children applauding for us! I wasn’t really expecting there to be very many kids there, so it was such a shock! They sat us down and then put on a performance for us with some Russian songs, and dancing. After their program we were able to do our program, which they seemed to enjoy. We were invited to come back the next day, they told us that they had a strong volleyball team and they wanted to play us! HA, so the next day we came back in, three of us excited (Lenneke, Leivur, and Annika) and the rest of us a little nervous(ok, honestly we were filled with dread). But, play we did! It was the 3 I mentioned earlier as well as Cherob, Bex and myself on a team. We played one game against their girls team, and then we mixed teams for another game. It was an interesting experience for me….a little stretching J They invited us back again for Saturday, to join them with a party and a disco! What a party! They fed us FRESH fruit (ok, about as fresh as fruit in northern Russia can get) and chocolate! If it’s possible to overdose on fruit I think that I got pretty close! It’s been such a long time since we’ve seen fruit (those brown and black object that slightly resemble fruits in the supermarkets do not count!), so we didn’t want to miss anything while it was available for us! Mmmm, such a delight!
SUNDAY: Our Sunday morning started with a laid back church service. Larissa (a Christian hairdresser, whom we met last week) came and joined us. It was nice to see her again. Then in the afternoon and into the evening we invited some of the students from the school to join us. So we had about 10 teenagers fill our living room! Only one of them spoke a teeny tiny bit of English…so our English/Russian dictionary was in high demand! We made balloon flowers together, and played the animal game…..yep, the animal game. It’s become one of our favourite guest games. In the evening we also had another couple come over to hang with us.
MONDAY: Yesterday most of us stuck at home for the day. The major project we had was to redo the wallpaper in one of the hallways. What a job! I’ll leave it at that J Lenneke and Olga left for the city in the morning to do some errands and stuff. They went by the school to visit one of the teachers and Lenneke ended up getting invited to teach part of the English class! The English teacher had lots of questions about our school and different things about her beliefs. At the end of the class the English teacher invited us to come back on Tuesday to have Christian programs for some of her classes! So that’s what we did today! We had 3 classes where we were able to talk about God’s love and even teach them ‘Jesus loves me’ and ‘our God is an awesome God’. It was so much fun!
Tomorrow is our last day in Naryan Mar and we got invited for one last trip back into the school. J They had been planning a concert for the 8th (which is Women’s Day), but they moved it up a day because they wanted us to be there! Such precious people. We also plan on having some friends over for the evening to say good bye. Then on Thursday morning we fly!
I don’t know if we’ll have internet access for the next weekish. SO: Borgen peeps…we look forward to seeing you again on the 12th! And everyone else we look forward to seeing you whenever we will (that’s March 25 for YOU my fab fam)

XOXOXOX,
Melodie, for everyone else