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ErinMadeMeDoThis
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Name: Neal
Country: Turkey
Metro: Istanbul
Birthday: 7/29/1987
Gender: Male
Interests: Staying up till 2 o'clock on Friday nights and making STUPID blogs. Because Erin made me.
Expertise: Obeying Erin, :rolls:
Occupation: Bum
Industry: Food Management
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
5/7/2004
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| So... I'm back. I got back Sunday night, my summer was totally awesome and challenging. I don't really know where to start or what to talk about so I picked out about 20 pictures and I'm just going to talk about those.
This is Charlie. He roomed with me and David for the whole summer. Moscow is so far north that during the summer the sun rises at like 4 AM and since David and I didn't want to wake up at 4 every morning we decided to foil our windows. I had a little bit of masking tape left over and that's how Charlie was born.
This is three of our Russian friends making us Blini (crepes). They served these with sour cream which, believe it or not, is really good. These girls aren't friends that we spent much time with but we did see them around campus from time to time.
Ok, I must be retarded or something cause this picture won't rotate. So just rotate your head 90 degrees clockwise and you'll see our dorm building. It's 15 stories tall. The elevators in these dorms only go up. Nobody knows why, but that's the way it is. Luckily we were only on the 3rd floor so we didn't have that far to walk down. We felt kind of sorry for last years team because they were up on the 15th floor and had to walk all the way down. Ok, I guess I should clarify. These elevator are one-use-only. You use an elevator car once and then burn it. Ok, I lied about that too. It's just that none of the call buttons work so unless someone happens to get off at your floor just as you're going down, you have to walk.
I'll admit it, this made me pretty homesick. It's the Turkish embassy in Moscow. We were just walking through back streets downtown, lo and behold, a Turkish flag hanging off a building.
This is gorgeous. It's Christ the Savior Cathedral. The dominant religion in Russia is Orthodox Christianity and this is one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the whole country. On the inside (which you're not allowed to take pictures of), every surface is covered with paintings of Bible stories. While it's amazingly beautiful, it's really sad too because the whole place is cluttered with icons that Orthodox Christians pray to. It's awful to stand there and watch people praying to and kissing some painting that a random monk did. To add insult to injury, the candles they light (so God hears them better?), are sold right there in the church. I'm pretty sure Jesus was against that kind of thing.
This is the Moscow metro system. It's easily the best metro system that I've ever been in. This is the Victory Park station. Each station is different and almost a work of art. Unfortunately, this is the only one I got a really good shot of.
I don't really know what to say about this one. I put my camera in the barrel of a cannon and looked in. Don't ask, I have no idea why I have that look on my face.
...and this is me riding a tank. Again, don't ask, I'm not sure.
This is the rest of my team. We had just finished a delicious meal of traditional Russian quisine at... the Hard Rock Cafe.
This is the fuse box for the whole floor of our dorm. Needless to say, we have great confidence in the Russian electrical system. We discovered this beaut when one of the guys on my team, Ed, decided to replace a lightbulb in his room and ended up frying the whole light fixture.
This is on our way to Uly. We took a 4 day trip to a city called Ulianifsk to help out with a youth camp there. We didn't get any train tickets so we ended up driving 17 hours to get there. As you can see, traffic sucked so our driver, Mark, decided to go British and drive on the left hand side.
We kind of sucked at navigating so we ended up going too far and we ended up at the Pacific Ocean. Ok, I lied, this is the Volga River, it just looks like the Pacific cause it's so wide. Apparently they dammed it up and now it's super wide.
This is Masha. She's the daughter of one of the ladies that was helping out with the camp. Yeah we have tape over our mouths, so what? I spent a lot of time playing with her even though she only spoke Russian and I (obviously) only spoke English. She even taught me the Bible in Russian.
This was my favorite part of the trip. I got to lead worship in both Russian and English. The 5 Americans would sing a song in English as the Russians sang the same song in Russian. There's something really powerful about worshiping in two different languages at once.
This is my good friend Vasya. I love this picture cause not only does he look totally insane, but he's wearing my Focus hoodie. (Focus is the company that the whole trip was through).
This is me riding a horse. Yes, I rode a horse. Yes, it smelled. It was kinda fun though. I'll admit it.
We took a two day trip the last week we were in the country with the head of the langauge department at our university.
This is me jumping over water. As you all guessed, I fell on my butt.
This is me about to eat a giant turd. Yeah, you heard me.
That's it for my trip to Russia. Hope you enjoyed the pictures.
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| I went to prom. Don't ask, just enjoy the picture.
Totally 007.
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| So I have a theory. This theory that, left to their own devices, people are jerks. When their friends or people that they want to impress are around, people are nice, polite and courteous. However, when they're buying deli meat, people are jerks. Yeah, it was a long day at work. Also, I discovered that my job sucks. It sucks when it's busy because you don't have enough time to get everything done. Also, it sucks when it's slow because there's still a ton to do, but you have all the time in the world to do it.
Also, homework is relative. Obviously, because I have a psych test tomorrow that I haven't studied for and I'm sitting here blogging instead of studying. Farewell.
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| Well, it doesn't look like many people are reading this anymore. That's ok cause I wouldn't read it either except.. it's MY xanga. I've been super busy between school, work and the BSU. This weekend was awesome, we had our leadership training conference. That's where all the leadership from all the BSU's in the state go and learn about leading. It was an awesome weekend even if it was a little convicting. Oh, and anybody that doesn't know where they're going to college (Michelle) should seriously consider coming to NMSU. Because A) There's an awesome Christian community, Michelle knows, she went to Crosstraining one night, and B) I'M here, I mean, what more reason do you need? Oh, and also my family.
It's seriously awesome being a pastor's kid. Well... it can be awkward cause I meet so many people that I don't remember and then they see me later and they're all, "Hi Neal!" and I'm like, "Ummmmmmm..... hi?" Oh, and I'm quitting my job which I'm happy about. My main reason for quitting is that I'm going to be in Eastern Europe for two months but I don't like that job so much and hopefully I'll be able to find something that pays better. Speaking of Eastern Europe, I'm not allowed any email contact (which doesn't really matter 'cause people never email me.  ) and I get like one 20 min. phone call every other week to my family (which I probably won't use). Sooo... if you guys want to get updates on how everything is going, you can just email me, and I'll have my team leader add your email address to our "google group" that will send you an email every time we update our team blog. Which, I can guarantee you will be more than I've been updating this one.
I hope you guys finish out the school year strong and bring yourself to graduate.
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| So... I'm laying in bed not sleeping. Why? I don't know. I have to go to my astronomy class tomorrow and then go convert people and then go to work and then write a lab summary for that same stupid class. Yeah, my boss is crazy. She scheduled me to work 32 hours this week. Isn't that crazy? Working 32 hours while going to school as well. Oh well, I guess the paycheck will make up for it somewhat. I don't know if I mentioned it or not but I'm not dating this year. Don't laugh, it's not funny. Well... maybe a little bit. It's been 6 months so far. Pretty crazy but good. I would quite definitely reccomend it to anybody considering it.
Dang, I just ran out of stuff to talk about. Annnnywho, war in.
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