Ninja vs Penguin

Penguin July 31st, 2008

Woke up a little before 6 today. I had a dream with Marcia in it. Don’t really remember what it was about though.

I did my devos and went down for breakfast of fried eggs.

Afterwards, I read my Bible as I waited for Marcia. She came by around 8:00 and we took a taxi to the orthodox church.

When we got to the church, we saw another camera crew there. They looked pretty pro. A woman came up to us and told me that my shorts weren’t really appropriate. I should’ve worn long pants. We started talking to her and found that she was the producer of the camera crew, here to shoot a documentary on orthodox churches in Kyrgyzstan for Kyrgyzstan TV. Obviously, she was a great candidate to be interviewed.

When we finished, she gave me her card, and I gave her mine. The title on my card is: “Man of God”, which intrigued her.

I shot some B-roll outside and then went in as service started.

This was the first time I’ve been in an Orthodox church. It was really interesting. I did my best to stay out of people’s way as they worshiped, making good use of the optical zoom. I even had the opportunity to go up to the bell tower and watch them ring. I was surprised to find a little boy ringing the bells.

I finished shooting, and we went down the street to the police station. There weren’t a lot of police standing around, but we did manage to get one interview, though it wasn’t all that interesting.

We grabbed a taxi back to the office to do some translations. We started with the ex-con. It was hard for Marcia because he used a lot of slang and other words she didn’t know in English. A 20 minute interview took about an hour or so to translate.

For lunch, we had vegetable soup with a little bit of chicken in it. Over lunch, I started to teach her some English slang. Not that it would do her much good, but it was fun.

We went back to translating. We had a lot of fun, joking around about various translations and stuff. This was a lot less formal and relaxed. There was one part where we were talking about baring children. But Marcia wrote it down as bear children and we laughed for a good while about people having bears or having sex with bears. We also talked about our first impressions of each other and how it’s changed over the last few days.

We had been working for awhile, so we took a short coffee break. We chatted, and she started to teach me Russian slang. To her chagrin, I urged her to teach me “skinny bitch” in Russian. It was hilarious. Then it was back to translating.

All in all, it was a pretty fun and relaxing day. Granted, I wasn’t the one doing the translations, but it seemed like Marcia was having a good time learning new words and stuff. I would’ve liked to chill with her longer, but she had to go back and spend time with her family. Her older brother was in town and she doesn’t get to see him that often. Maybe once every month or so. Her mom was also sick, so I urged her to go home around 4.

The power was going to go out between 6 and 9, so the cook prepared me dinner early. She left it out so I could reheat it. But I had to eat it before 6, otherwise I would have to wait until 9. She made these little dumpling like things of lamb, potato and onions. They were great. Too bad I wasn’t that hungry or I’d have eaten more. I also wanted to jump in the shower before the lights went out. While I waited to eat, I played my NDS.

I’ve been finding a lot of mosquito bites, even though I haven’t felt them around. It’s only after the fact that I start itching. My guess, is that I’m being bitten while I’m sleeping.

Related posts

• Kyrgyzstan: Day 9 - 7/15/08 (0)
• Kyrgyzstan: Day 8 - 7/14/08 (0)
• Kyrgyzstan: Day 7 - 7/13/08 (0)
• Kyrgyzstan: Day 5 - 7/11/08 (0)
• Kyrgyzstan: Day 4 - 7/10/08 (0)

Tags: Documentaries, Kyrgyzstan, Missions, Orthodox church, Trips

• Missions , Posts by Penguin
• Comments