How I drank 8 cups of tea in one day

I got up and made myself breakfast. It was very cold and there was nothing else to drink, so I had a cup of tea and went to teach my English class at the seminary. We had an interesting conversation about how Russian culture is more emotional.

Afterwards I had lunch in their cafeteria, plov and tea and cookies. They all eat first and then drink tea. Vera told me they are taught that your stomach will rot if you eat and drink at the same time. I still can't eat without drinking anything, it gets all dry in my throat, so I had a cup of tea while I ate and another one while the other people did.

Usually I meet with my friend Sasha for mutual language practice after lunch, but she couuldn't do it so I went across the street to the seminary students' communal apartment to visit Olga, the pastor's wife and the friend of my Gulia. She was home all day cuz baby Matthew had a cold, and they were building an amazing city out of toys. She said, "Hello! Play with him a moment and I'll make tea." Which means, "we can sit and talk about what's going on in your life," so I didn't protest. We had a long conversation about everything from the problems in their church to giving to beggars to relating to Yuliya and Katya to plans for Gulia to her post-partum depression, and I drank two more cups of tea.

I decided to wait for her sister Nadia to come from her college of psychology, so I studied while she put Matthew down for his nap. Nadia was late so I went and drank another cup of tea while she did dishes, and she told me about her husband's salvation story and her experiences in college. Then Nadia arrived, bearing milk and cake "for tea."

I declined this one and just had the cake and some milk while we talked. Then Pastor Sasha came home and so I gave in and had tea and he told me about their trip to evangelize in the villages this weekend, his father's ten years in prison, the difference between real Russian Orthodoxy and what most Russians believe, why he found it easier to work with American missionaries then Korean ones ("American culture is Protestant, but Korean culture is Eastern and Christianiy is new and there are lots of problems" - so interesting).

Then I went home to meet our guest, Larry from America, the supporter who bought this apartment. We had dinner and tea, and then showed him pictures of the repairing and redocarating process, then had more tea, and then he played the guitar. He played "Starry Night" about Van Gogh's suicide, only about Jesus.

"I think that now I understand
What you tried to say
They didn't listen then, they did not know how,
Perhaps they will listen now."

I was just thinking about the orphans we can't reach, those who don't want help, and the endless people on the metro. I have started looking at their faces as they sail by on the escalator, instead of their flashy clothes, and thinking, "the faces of people God loves." They are beautiful faces.

"It doesn't really fit," Larry told me. "I need to change the line, 'you took your life, as lovers often do.' Van Gogh killed himself after being kilted by a woman."

"Oh really? I thought it was talking about Jesus laying down His life, you know, 'no greater love has any man than this...'"

"That's it! That's the lyric, 'you gave your life, as lovers often do.'" And he started to cry. "You've ruined it for me. I don't think I'll ever be able to sing that again without crying. He loved us so much! You know, before I started coming to Russia, I cried at my wedding or if I hit my thumb with a hammer. But now something has been opened inside of me, I cry a lot more."

"Me too," I said. "Today on the metro I saw a woman reading a zodiac, and I almost started weeping because she was so lost and it hurt me."

I love it here. It's like you take all this tea and melt a little piece of your soul off and share it together in the cold.