Greetings from the Siegel's .... Newsletter Spring 2010

Most of our record-breaking winter snows were reduced to small piles of ice after two days of rain a
couple weeks ago. Spring then came in like a lamb and has remained, for now. The usual sight of
spectacular ice floes on the Neva River making their way from Lake Ladoga, the river's source, to its
mouth on the Bay of Finland never materialized this year. We just had occasional small clumps of
floating ice. But, in its place we've had another kind of weather anomaly – invisible clouds of sharp
volcanic ash floating over from Iceland and wreaking havoc on airline schedules. Depending on how
long the volcano decides to spew, people's summer travel plans may not happen exactly as planned.
Our summer includes two trips to Europe in July – one for John to attend the wedding of a co-worker in
Germany and the other for our whole family to attend a biennial group conference in Budapest,
Hungary. Please pray our flights happen as planned so we can use the tickets we've purchased.
Thanks to the generosity of many of you, John and the boys have already had the opportunity to travel
to Hungary once this spring (March 1 on the Russian calendar). Our basketball team was invited to
participate in a 4-school tournament in Budapest. Two weeks later they traveled by train to Moscow
for a 3-school tournament. Despite illnesses, they did a good job representing our school at both
tournaments. They didn't win either tournament, but some of the games were quite close. Many of the
kids at our school have never had the opportunity to play competitively before coming to International
Academy; so they're on a steep learning curve. The hard work and experience Jake and Kurt got
playing for Pettisville last year definitely paid off. Both boys were recognized for exceptional
tournament play by participating coaches this year (see picture below). Kurt's growth of nearly 6
inches since our return to St. Petersburg may have helped a little, too!
Another activity that took up a lot of the boys' time this spring was the school musical. This past
weekend, Jake and Kurt played the parts of an older/younger Gilbert (respectively) across from an
older/younger Anne sister team in Anne of Green Gables (see picture below). They both would have
preferred speaking parts over singing parts but gave it their best effort nonetheless. Hopefully, some
clips will be put on YouTube in the weeks ahead so those of you with access can catch a few scenes.
On the in-class side of things, school has been very busy. Jake took his first stab at the college ACT
test in April and will be taking an advanced placement computer test the first week of May. Grades
K-8 have just completed standardized achievement testing. It's usually a pretty frustrating experience
for the younger kids when it comes to the social sciences. Very few of them, including the American
kids, have had in-depth classes on American history since they've attended international schools most
of their lives. So, we teachers always get the opportunity during testing to downplay the connection
between test scores and personal worth and help them learn the lesson of accepting difficulties in life
and being able to move on. Not a bad lesson in and of itself.
Life for John and me hasn't been much slower. We've had plenty of opportunities to show hospitality
while teaching full-time and juggling a few other activities besides. John is finishing a distance
learning course and I have taken on a couple of new tasks for the North Eurasia Group (NEG) office
here – helping to train incoming workers and coordinating children's education for our group. I've
always helped out in these areas while teaching; but, I'll soon be doing them full-time. After school's
out, I'll be assigned to the NEG office here and won't return to teaching in the fall. Pray for this
transition, that I will serve the larger group well in these areas. I've done the jobs before in the early
years of our ministry here, but the group has grown much larger since then. Pray, too, that the school is
able to replace me with little to no upheaval for the staff and students.