Math, Russian style. My Moscow event hosts at Favor (Mount Tabor) Center closed online registration when it reached 150 for the hall which seats 80, and then looked truly disappointed when only 40 or so people showed up. I was not – this is pretty normal for: 1) free registration; and 2) summertime. For the upcoming two sessions, however, administrators want to make registrants to pay a nominal fee of 300 rubles (~$3.50) and, I was told, are already way overbooked. Also, they gave me exactly ninety minutes but then simply added another hour – upon the audience demand. I was happy to oblige, but my poor feet were shaking after the forty-eight-hour trip from Minnesota, including two mostly sleepless nights and crossing eight time zones. That trip was extended by an unexpected five hours of standing in the line at the border crossing from Estonia over the Narva River bridge. Admiring two gorgeous Middle Age castles on both sides of the border partially sweetened the delay and the frustration from missing my train.
Two days in Moscow and I was on the plane again – on a six-hour flight (across six more time zones) to the city of Yakutsk for teaching at the Russia’s Far East Conference of Catholic Youth. Yakutia, by the way, is fifteen times the size of of Minnesota with a population of just over 1 million people, and 350 thousand of them live in Yakutsk. It is considered to be Northern Siberia with permafrost and winter temps often reaching -67º F. Well, it was +90º F all day today and I didn’t hear anybody complaining.
On the opposite, young men and women from as far as Vladivostok and Ulan-Ude plus a group of university exchange students from Sierra Lione, Pakistan, and Nigeria, ages seventeen through thirty, were very excited and engaging at all of my eight teaching sessions on two topics: “Historic Foundations of Christian Faith” and “Sixty-three Arguments for the Existence of God.” This mixture of cultures and languages added a healthy measure of confusion and, as a result, very vivid discussions and sharing time.
