IA

Well, I'm back in St. Petersburg. It's nice to be back and settled in somewhere. I got back on Friday and started work on Monday. I'm really looking forward to this school year for a few reasons. First, there's the new school building that we signed a five year lease on. It's a great building; it used to be an Estonian Orthodox Church built for the merchant families of the Baltic countries who lived in that part of the city (which is near the port), and St. John of Kronstadt was there to dedicate it at it's opening. So, it's now returned to it's original purpose of ministering to foreigners living in St. Petersburg. Also, the school has a great faculty this year. There's always a lot of changes, but this year it happened to work out pretty well in that we've had more comings than goings.

But we've also had a bit of sad week. One of our Korean students drowned in the Neva River last Monday. He was supposed to be one of our 11th graders; the kids have been great, though. Many of them went with the family to the airport as they went back to Korea, and two of the students organized a memorial that the whole International Academy community ended up attending. I'm continually impressed with the students I have here and I recognize how blessed I am by them.