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Hi everybody! How are you doing? Last time I promised to share a big summer recap post with you, so that's what I am going to do now. This summer turned out to be one of the most challenging summers in my life. At the same time, I was blessed beyond measure. That's why the title mentions bad things turning out for good. So let's start and I hope I won't scare you away :)

Hi everybody! I am very sorry for being silent. I always say that you have to set your priorities right and have to treat your blog as a part of your business and then it will thrive. But I guess I just experienced something like a personal crisis. It definitely had something to do with the latest political situation. Really, you have to be blind not to know about the news concerning Ukraine, Russia and the Crimea. I come from a multi-national family, so I have a  lot of relatives in Ukraine, in the Crimea and I dearly love all of them. Being partly a Ukrainian, I love Russia where I grew up, and I love Ukraine. So this crisis is the time when I thought for the first time that speaking more than one language can be a curse... Because I could read the Russian articles, could understand some of what the Ukrainian authors wrote, and could surely read and understand the publications in the European and American mass media.... And it made me sick. This whole situation just makes my ...

I really enjoy getting to know you as you are commenting my posts, sharing them and writing to me. I love it that you find my blog useful in your freelancing career, or helpful in your search for a freelance translator. I will do my very, very best to keep being useful :) Merry Christmas to YOU, my dear readers! Joy, peace, love and all the very best to you! Olga

Many people in November take the 30-day gratitude challenge. This morning I read a new post by Judy Lee Dunn " Can You Name 99 Things You Love in 10 Minutes? " and I immediately felt inspired to try. Especially given the fact that I've written a post about gratitude a very loooooong time ago. So let's see how many things I can come up with in 10 minutes. Some things stay the same as they were 2 years ago, plus there are a few more:

Dear readers, I know how much you like my blog and are looking forward to new posts every week. This announcement is specially for you. Some of you have noticed that I've been doing some changes here lately in order to make all posts easier to find. I am also going to rewrite most of the pages. Some older posts which are of zero (or close to zero) value are going to be deleted. The rest are going to be grouped nicely, so you can search and find them by categories listed on top: Freelance business , Professional translation , Foreign language teaching , Russian culture , Blogging , and Tips for clients . You can still use the search box in the top right corner and type any keywords, including "personal" to find the posts that have that keyword. I am going to delete the page about guest blogging because I've been getting too many weird requests from people who can't even spell words in English. You know I am not a native English speaker, that is why I always do...

Suzdal is a very special town. It is very small, only about 11,000 people live there. There are no factories, no big buildings. Nowhere else you will see so many horses. Nowhere else you will see so many churches in one place. It has a very special atmosphere which is hard to explain, yet you will definitely feel it if you visit Suzdal. That's why I was so happy when I learned that Delia's class was going there! I couldn't miss another chance to see the town, so I went there to help the teacher. And I made some cool pictures to share them with you. If you've been reading my blog long enough, you certainly remember this post about Vladimir and its World Heritage sites . Well, Suzdal's white stone churches and monasteries are also included in the same UNESCO list . And of course, Suzdal also belongs to the Golden Ring of Russian cities . This is a panoramic view of the town. As you see, there are no multi-storeyed buildings, because people want to preserve ...

This post was inspired by the posts of my colleagues. I thought it would be good to look back and see what I did right and where I didn't do such a good job. That would probably give me some basis for defining my goals for the next year. Overall, I can say that 2012 was a good year for my business.

On Saturday Delia and I were invited to a very interesting exhibition. There were wax figures of different mythological characters of Russia and other countries. Plus the figures could move and some of them could speak (well, they didn't move the mouth, but we could hear their voice). Both Delia and I loved the exposition and were sorry that there were not so many figures. And then I thought that you might probably be interested in some of the Russian folklore characters we saw there. The hall of the exhibition was pretty dark and unfortunately my camera refused to take high quality images in this case. But I think you can still get an idea of what all the characters looked like. Of course there was Baba Yaga : Kids absolutely loved her. Then there was Koschei the Immortal . I loved that figure! It was absolutely in tune with my perception of Koschei.

Happy Saturday everybody! Are you enjoying your weekend? This post is absolutely off the topic of translation. Last weekend my mother, my daughter Delia and I went to our favourite park in the city. Vladimir is beautiful in late spring, and this park is so very special! It is called "Patriarch's garden" (Патриарший сад). It has been known since the 16th century. Some legends say that it has existed since the days of Pince Andrey Bogolyubsky (12th century), but there's not enough evidence of that. In the 16th century a cherry orchard was planted here and the Russian Orthodox elite came here to enjoy the cherries and the beautiful views that the park offered. It was especially popular in the 19th century. Unfortunately, after the revolution of 1917 the park was virtually destroyed. In 1948, after the war it was renamed into the "Garden of 16 republics" (Сад 16 республик). School children helped the adults to take care of it. They planted the trees again, b...

I've been thinking about this issue for a long time. As you may already know, I am Russian (partly Ukrainian) and I have a Western/American mentality to some extent due to the years spent among American and European missionaries. Well, in 1998 I met a man in my church who always looked at me as if I was his worst enemy. I was even a little bit afraid of him. After some time we kind of started communicating since he became a student in our Bible College and I was interpreting there. That's when I found out that he was just a very shy person and that I totally misinterpreted his look. And I loved his accent :) We got married in 2001. That's my husband Albert and our daughter Delia (the picture was taken a couple years ago at a dinosaur exhibition).

This is a personal post, and I'd really like to hear the opinion of my colleagues about such situations and how to deal with them. My situation is kind of like the one described in Mox's blog . In December a new prospective client wrote to me asking about my availabiility for a new project. When I read the overall description of the project, I got really interested in it. But the client needed to know exactly how much time it would take and how much it would cost. No problem, just send me the text to look through or a part of it so I could get the gist of the style, level of complexity etc. In the reply that person just stated the wordcount, but there was no sample. I thought, maybe they didn't understand me. English is not my native language after all. In my reply, I stated the estimated time and cost based on the client's wordcount, but I repeated the request to see a part of the text. And then the person thanked me and ... disappeared.

As I promised in my previous post , here are some pictures of our New Year . First, on December 28th there was a New Year party in my daughter's kindergarten. They staged "The Snow Queen" by Andersen. In the beginning kids had fun dancing rock-n-roll. They loved it. Their parents did, too :)

Dear readers, I am so happy to greet you now in 2012! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year celebration! In my next post I am going to share our celebration with you ;) The past year was very interesting. It was challenging, but also rewarding. It was in 2011 when I started receiving more comments to my posts and now my blog gets more than 2000 visits each month. I am so grateful to all my readers! This blog wouldn't exist without you! You rock! I'd like to share the most popular posts from 2011 with you. Some are quite logically popular, others - well, frankly speaking, I didn't quite expect them to be so interesting, but it was a good surprise. So, here's the list:

With the New Year rapidly approaching, I am starting to analyze this past year. In fact, I've been analyzing all the changes in my life since 2007. And I am learning to value the Lord's timing, His guidance and support while He has continuously been pushing me out of my comfort zone. I started working in the church while I was still a student and I never wanted to look for a different job, or a different position. Even when I realized that changes were necessary I did not welcome them. Partly, this was because I loved my work in the church. I made a lot of friends, I had a chance to develop the skills that could otherwise remain hidden, plus I had a privilege of serving the Lord and helping people in Vladimir and its suburbs, and even people from other countries. Thankfully, the latter point applies to my life now as well, otherwise I'd have to admit that I made a huge mistake ;)

January 1, 2010. Delia is standing next to one of her favourite cartoon characters made of snow Last year I wrote a post about advantages and disadvantages of being a freelancer . Now, as I am sitting by my daughter watching her sleeping and finishing another urgent assignment, I realized how blessed I really am. I can see how she's growing. I can spend time with her. I can take her home from the kindergarten right after lunch, not in the evening like most parents do. Every day we read or do some maths to prepare her for primary school. We can go outside and play in the first snow. We can watch her favourite cartoons together. All while people with 'normal' jobs are still at work. To me, this is the greatest advantage of being a freelancer. Yes, there are deadlines, taxes and Russian laws which are hard to figure out without some legal help, and sometimes I am not sure whether I'll be able to pay all the bills (but our awesome, amazing Lord helps us every single ti...

My twitter friends and experienced translators, Liudmila Davydova @ldavydova , Ewa Erdmann @Transliteria , and Aga Gordon @acgtranslation , nominated me for the Versatile Blogger award. This award is given from bloggers to... bloggers. The nominees have to be recently discovered or new bloggers. It's such a great honour for me that these wonderful ladies and absolutely amazing professionals have chosen me among the other nominees! Liudmila is a great translator. She has a wonderful blog which you can find here . Her posts are very useful for both translators and their clients. I learn a lot from her blog. The same can be said about Aga's blog " acgtranslation " and Ewa's blog " Transliteria Polish translations ". Aga and Ewa are both wonderful professionals. But what's more, they are very kind people who made me feel welcome on Twitter :) So it's a great honor and a joy to be nominated by Liudmila, Ewa and Aga. The rules of the award ...

September 29th 2001 was a very special day. I know that this day happened in my life only by the grace of the Lord. Two years before that day I met a handsome young man who took my heart. A lot happened during those two years. When we decided to get married we realized that there were two main issues we were worried about. First of all, we belonged to two absolutely different cultures and had different mentalities. My husband is Armenian. His ancestors had to flee to Iran during the Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915, so he was born in immigration. His family moved back to Armenia when my future husband, the youngest child in the gamily, was 2 years old. My family was Ukrainian-Russian, plus by that time I had traveled and worked in the US and Germany and had a pretty much Western mentality. Thank God, we didn't have any problems with getting our parents' blessings. Our dear pastor Ken Blake and his wife Marilyn were a huge source of blessing and encouragement for us. Her...

Hi! Hope your week was good and now you're ready for a new blog post :) This post is about some changes in my life and business that occurred since I wrote about my goals in winter. Do you remember my post " How well I have achieved my goals for 2010 "? It's time to see what's changed. First of all, my goal was to reach 150 readers in 2011. Right now I have 17 email subscribers to my posts.  I also have 4 members who joined me through the "Become a reader" top menu option. So that makes 21 people. Many thanks to each one of you who found my blog interesting enough to subscribe for it! I also have 114 Facebook fans and about half of them read my blog on a regular basis. I also have some readers on Twitter (to be honest, I have about 380 followers. I don't think all of them read my blog, but I do know of at least some of them), so I can say that right now about 100 people read my blog regularly! I'd like to thank each one of my readers! It...

As some of you may know, a few weeks ago we celebrated my niece's wedding. That event gave me an idea to share some Russian wedding traditions with you. I don't mean those ancient traditions that no longer exist. I would like you to see what our modern weddings are like, with all the ancient traditions which are still kept. You will also get to see some pictures of my niece's wedding. Hope you don't mind that :) Modern Russian weddings usually last for two days. During the first day there are some very important things that happen, like the process of buying-out the bride, the ceremony in the wedding palace, the church wedding (the ceremony in the church is optional, it can take place on a different day and in case with Russian Orthodox church it can even happen years before or after the civil ceremony), then the newlyweds visit different important sites, and then there's a banquet. The second day is normally a smaller celebration with family and friends where peo...

I am so glad it's Friday and I can have some quiet time to reflect on the past week. It was a fun week - there was a Christian English day camp in our church. The younger kids came in the mornings and the older ones came in the afternoons. My daughter Delia was one of the campers in the morning shift and I was glad to serve as a helper. I love helping other people :) First let me share some pics. You will see one and the same little girl in the pictures. That's my daughter ;) Playing a game to help the kids get acquainted with the American team The youngest group (4-6 year olds) with their favourite American young lady. Playing soccer More soccer :) Watching a cartoon First of all, I'd like to share the benefits of the camp : 1) The kids heard God's word; 2) They heard native English speakers and tried to understand them or at least get used to the rhythm of their speech and the pronunciation. On Wednesday my daughter shared one thing with me. Sh...