This was only my second time there – but this time it was for a whopping 4 days. I apologize for my sarcasm, but I have to admit, it’s a little lame to only get to TRAVEL to this amazing place and not live there. Don’t get me wrong, I love it here in beautiful Akademgorodok, where the forest is green and there’s the smell of flowers in the air. I know that God has brought me here – to what might be the best Russian language program in Siberia and to Baba T. – for a very good reason. It’s always just a bit hard to leave Tuva - a place that is so unique, so beautiful, so isolated, so hard, so lost and yet, somehow, reminds me of home.
Enough of the “prolog”, the trip there with the Orner family went well – we took a train for 24 hours to Abakan (the last stop) and then a taxi for 5 hours to Kyzyl, Tuva. My friend had asked for a few things from our metropolis here in Novosibirsk that he couldn’t get anywhere his side of the Sayan Mountains. I was a bit reluctant to hall a futon mattress, 2 mattress covers (the size of sleeping bags) and a mirror along with my personal belongings over this long journey. But I didn’t want to “wimp-out” so Baba T. and I packaged up the things. Praise the Lord that everything fit on the train and in the taxi!
Samuel did great on the train ride!
While there, I got to meet some new brothers and sisters and got to know some people from the first trip much better (my language had improved quite a bit since the last time I was there 6 months ago!).
A sister who works as an English teacher at the Tuvan State University gave me a little tour of the campus where I might study at in the fall of 2010. The campus is in the middle of nowhere – so it feels like home! 
We also got to go to barbecue at a family’s house out in the county and use their REAL Russian banya – this little log house didn’t exactly have the “relaxing atmosphere” of the public city banyas I’d been to. I seriously thought that my body was going to catch on fire and the lady with us was a “professional” at beating people with birch branches . . . IT WAS GREAT!!
Nothing like roasting imported marshmallows after the banya! Seems, i got this one a little over done...
I decided to take the bus home, to give it a try and to be back to Novosibirsk in time to help Baba T. with a memorial dinner for her husband (more on that to come…I hope). It was only 21.5 hours and the bus was only half full so I had 2 seats to sleep in. Our bus was a modern, spacious, clean Mercedes Benz with a big screen TV (that worked for 30 minutes before all the shaking of the bus got to it).
Highlights of the trip:
laughing with friends
being encouraged with language
playing hooky for a week
gaining a better understanding of life in Tuva and how to pray
