The following is taken from an emailed update, and this is the blog referenced that will contain more stories and things.1) Orientation.
We had orientation in Madison, WI, at the Best Western that InterVarsity takes over for all their major staff things, apparently. I went into this project with only a vague idea of what was going on, as did the rest of the team. When I got there, half the team was still missing, but I was right in time for dinner. Every night during orientation, we ate at a different restaurant on their State St., trying to fit in as many different cultures as we could. I distinctly remember the Ethiopian place having the same pitchers as Lalibela's. They also had mini versions of the woven tables and chairs Lalibela's has in the back.
Anyway, this first dinner (I think it was kabobs) was when I had to try and sort out all the names and descriptions from the email Krista-Dawn had sent us. I didn't really succeed until the next day, after everyone had arrived. I had known that most of the team was from the northwestern part of the country, but I don't think I really realized what that meant until that first full day. Raul, our bassist, painter, and Tex/Mexican, was the only other person not from the same region. Somehow, they managed to integrate us into the group, though :)
I think the girls (Christina-my Ukraine roomie, Melodie-my Madison bed-buddy, and Taryn-my song-writing colluder extraordinaire) had the most fun there. We had a movie and ice cream night in the short time we were there, where we bought a pint of Coldstone's and watched "While You Were Sleeping" on TBS. Apparently, the guys didn't want to share a bed, so Raul spent orientation sleeping on the floor. Peter (drummer, music enthusiast with wild hair) took turns with him during de-brief, and I remember having a discussion about guys' cramped sleeping positions taking place at one point because of this.
2) Getting to Kiev...
The trip over was actually fairly stressful. If you think about 10 adults and a baby traveling with over 20 bags, most of which included heavy and expensive musical instruments, it wouldn't be too surprising. For some reason, we had to check in as a group, but couldn't get seats together. Flying to Chicago from Madison wasn't too difficult, with Krista-Dawn wise enough to save the story of how Matt, the cellist from Urbana, ended up missing a flight because he said the word 'bomb' in the security line for after we all got through (although you could tell she really wanted to tell us right before).
Chicago was a different story. A huge mess getting onto the plane--it was overbooked, our seats hadn't been assigned, Peter lost his boarding pass... the list goes on. It was only by the grace of God that all of us made it out of the country that day. A lot of people missed their flight. We managed to get some clumps of seats together for the eight hour flight to Frankfurt because David (ethnomusicologist, Christina's fiancee) almost literally threw the stewardess at the counter a couple of boarding passes to get seats assigned to them, and since they were coming from the same person, the seats were together.
Once we got to Frankfurt (my first time in Europe, yay!), we had a three hour layover before our flight to Kiev. Unfortunately, most of that time was spent waiting anxiously for Peter, as he tried to track down the case of cords and mics that were his carryon (which he'd left on the plane inadvertently). Poor Peter. That was not a good day for him. He ended up having to wait in Frankfurt for the next plane to Kiev because Luftansa couldn't get him the box in time. He didn't get in until about 11pm that night. (We'd gotten in in the morning sometime).
3) Kiev, Ukraine and the Institute.
We finally got to Kiev, and right after I stepped out of the car, I started getting really bad allergies. My eyes were itchy, my nose was runny, and my throat was sore. It was strange because the plants were basically the same ones I had grown up with in L.A.--only bigger. But the weather was much more humid, and, as I found out at Rob's house, humidity mixed with pollen do not agree with me. I took allergy pills for the first week or so, but once it started raining, the pollen in the air was much less, and I could breathe easier.
We stayed at a sanatorium about 45 minutes from the city. The accommodations were dorm like with worse plumbing. The food was pretty good though, even if we did have basically the same thing every day, after not having it for two months, I almost miss it :P For breakfast, there was always ham and cheese and bread, and some sort of main breakfasty dish. We had everything from eggs with dill (they put dill in almost everything) to pancake-like things to a block of cream cheese with sugar and milk. There was also yogurt most of the time. Lunch, the largest meal of the day, was basically some sort of soup (borscht on Wednesdays :) with a cutlet of meat and carbs (rice or mashed potatoes usually, sometimes stroganoff or buckwheat), eaten with different flavors of ketchup (BBQ or original). There was a chocolate-covered cream cheese bar with filling for dessert. Every day. No one (except maybe Christina, a vegetarian) lost weight on this trip. Dinner was pretty much the cutlet and carbs (usually fish, while chicken was the usual fare for lunch) with tea. We had tea with every meal, and two tea breaks during the day. It was very nice :)
We had a week to get ready for worship for the IFES Eurasian Institute (basically, staff training and region updates--an excuse for everyone to get together :). For some reason, the day after we arrived, we were sent on a sight-seeing walking tour of Kiev. I loved taking pictures of the city, but I was exhausted from traveling. The record-breaking heat didn't help, either. Also, after walking around the city for about five hours, our guide, Slavic, brought us to a buffet for 'lunch'--it was 5:30 pm, but our clocks were still screwy with the time change, so it didn't matter too much. But what we didn't realize was that, although we could point and get food, we didn't know what most of it was... Slavic wasn't much help that first time, but the next time we went, I made sure to stick close so he could explain what the food was. Besides, I think he enjoyed seeing us looking confused at our food.
That first day in the city was also when we met guitar Misha (or just Misha, since he was the first one we met). We had five musicians from Eurasia as part of the worship team, and since we didn't speak Russian and their English ranged from really good to not a lot, we had translator Misha to translate. ('Misha' is the shortened form of Mikhail, a very common name.) Anyway, Misha was from Kazakhstan (but he was ethnically Russian) and an amazing guitar player. He seemed to live and breathe music. He walked around with his headphones on most of the time, listening to music (instead of people!).
While we were 'orienting' in the states, Krista-Dawn had told us the little she knew about our Eurasian teammates. We'd heard that one of them was the General Secretary of IFES Ukraine, but nothing prepared us for Olexiy. He was younger than most of us had expected, in his thirties, and a total goofball. He was our one male vocalist, but he kept having to run off to do general secretary stuff. He didn't really have time to be on the worship team, but he did it anyway. The last day, he took us to his favorite laser tag spot and to pizza afterwards. It was an American day in Ukraine to help us transition back to the states.
Our three female vocalists spoke less English than the guys, but we still managed to communicate. Tanya (short for Tatiana) and Valya were from Siberia. Tanya missed the classes she had signed up for at the Institute in order to keep singing with us. Valya was a jazz singer (her husband plays bass in a jazz band) who loved the flute. I actually got to play a semblance of jazz flute with her and her husband at the last banquet. They just told me what to play and I played it, but it was so much fun. I got to do rolls and everything!
Nazik was from Kyrgyzstan. Because of this, we were basically adopted into the Kyrgis contingent of the Institute. They kept saying I looked just like a little Kygis girl, which I think was a good thing :) They invited us to their party one night, and we were all a little confused for a while. Basically, we sat around in a circle, ate, introduced ourselves and then were expected to ask questions about the Kyrgis. It was very touching how they wanted to learn more about us and tell us more about themselves. They also taught us how to play a crazy version of UNO that involved slapping and lots more rules. I also finally got to put my Old Norse to good use, with Bjorn, from the land of fjords and Slartibartfast (or Norway, for you non-hitchhikers). Apparently, he's very good with languages, speaking fluent Kyrgis after working their for a couple years with no prior training.
There are so many more people to tell you about, but this email's already getting really long, so I'll save them for my blog. No email from me is complete without a link: http://nitaspitas.blogger.com (I'll probably end up posting this email in some form, so other stories may not come till later. again.)
4) Worship at the Institute.
So basically we were asked to lead a multi-cultural, multi-sensory worship experience for the Institute. Everyday. And twice on Fridays (communion/banquet days). For three weeks. Practically, this involved creating the worship environment (the main worship space and other specially focused alcoves for personal worship time), singing and writing songs in the styles/languages of Eurasia (8 different languages, and only one of them using the Latin alphabet), incorporating creative elements into the teaching to encourage memory and response, and training staff to bring this type of worship experience back to their home countries. *whew*
We had about a week together as a team before our first worship session. In that time, we had to learn the songs and plan and set up the space. Bob Grahman, the director of the Institute, was very into integrating the message with creative ways of worship. We set up things like the visual corruption and redemption of a map of Eurasia and a celebration drum circle, where everyone made 'celebration wands' and danced around. It sounds cheesy, but it was a lot of fun. I got to play a giant water bottle. (You know, the ones that are in the water coolers... that're refillable...) It was amazing to see the spirit of God fill these people during worship times that we facilitated. It made staying up late getting powerpoints done worthwhile.
Each week, we had one session that was just worship time (i.e., no sermon or exposition). For those, we set up worship stations around the premises that related to either the passage or what God was doing in Eurasia. For songs, we did many that had already been translated into Russian (the common language of the area), tweaked some English ones, sang some written in different Eurasian languages, and wrote some of our own. Taryn, Nazik and I wrote a song called 'Beauty for Ashes' based on Isaiah 61. I rather liked being a lyricist, especially when most of the words were already there ;) Melodie and I also helped Nazik with one in Kyrgis.
I actually ended up doing a lot less music and a lot more art than I expected. I played flute, but since we had a bunch of Eurasian vocalists who spoke Russian, I didn't need to sing as much until the last week, when everyone got sick. I worked a lot on the initial set-up of the space, figuring out how to create the most effective worship spaces in the auditorium with nailed-down rows of seats. Christina and I built a giant throne on the stage (the theme for the week was 'God as King'), and mostly did what Stefani, our resident worship artist, told us to do. She was on staff with InterVarsity for a number of years before realizing that her true calling lay in spreading the Gospel through her art.
5) After the Institute.
Traveling back was less eventful, although United lost 13 of our bags in Chicago. Half of us also missed our connecting flight to Madison because of security. We all made it back to Madison safe and tired. But the good tired. The tired that comes of productivity. De-brief part worship seminar during IV staff training and was a lot of reconciling that we couldn't hang out with each other every day anymore. We'd all gotten really close, especially the seven of us 'kids', and we were all going into the 'real world' (with the exception of Peter).
That was the interesting thing about our group--everyone, including the leaders, was going through a transitional time in their lives. All the students were recent graduates (except Peter, a junior, and Melodie, who was trying to put off college as long as possible...). Stefani was in the process of moving to Colorado to live with her mom and work on a painting portfolio for grad school. Joel and Krista-Dawn just had a baby and were thinking about moving to San Jose. And Judah was, well, four months old (six now) and growing a lot :P
Joel, taking on the more administrative stuff of the leadership for the team (while baby wrangling as Krista-Dawn led the music and worship part), had each of us come up with plans of where we wanted to be in the future, and what we could do now to achieve that. For me, a lot of that was taking the experience at the Institute and using it to reconcile my pragmatic side to my creative side. Part of how that's going right now is taking (more) art classes to see what I want to do and build a portfolio to do it.
