Wednesday (Of universities and circuses)

Today we went by bus several hours outside of Moscow to visit Zaoksky Adventist University. This school, of over three hundred students is the only Seventh-day Adventist university in Russia and was built shortly after the fall of communism. The university actually has over 1,200 students if you include its affiliates all over eastern Europe. The campus consists of a large main building that houses the Seminary, a computer lab, library, and administrative offices, another very large building that contains the dormitories/cafeteria/classrooms, and the main church auditorium, a gymnasium, a faculty apartment building, and a farm. The farm grows produce for the university and there are also greenhouses for growing flowers for sale.

Nearby, we toured the publishing house with its impressive million-dollar web press. Both the university and the publishing house came into being through a series of small (and not so small) miracles and they are a great blessing to the work in Russia.

Several hours and many more traffic jams later we were back in Moscow parked beside the famous Moscow circus. We had mid-tier seats for the evening performance and were all very excited. The circus was quite impressive and very diverse. It had clown acts, animals (lions, seals, camels, horses, and birds), high-wire performances, ice skating, acrobatics and even some synchronized swimming. The floor of the circus ring was actually a large hole in the floor and between acts various plug-in modules were inserted from a cavernous basement and lifted up into the hole. In this way they could change the rink from the standard surface, to an acrobatic mat surface, to an ice-skating rink, to a huge swimming pool as needed. The swimming pool came up empty but we could see it being filled while they did a performance from the upper tiers of the auditorium. The whole two and a half hour experience was quite impressive.

It appears that we are over budget already and have been asked for an additional $420 dollars. Originally the budget called for only $270 dollars but I gather that costs are constantly changes and they’re not going down.