Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all my readers! I will be continuing this blog when I return to Russia in a few months, but for now, I have updated my previous posts with some pictures from my time in Orion.

Thanks for reading!

Thanks for reading!

There's no place like home

Our last few days in Orion were spent having three last lessons with the 4th form (we thought the last one was on Friday, but then we had one on Saturday, which we thought was the last one, but then we had another one on Sunday!). We made crafts for the first last lesson, then we watched Mulan for the second last lesson, and then we watched My Neighbour Totoro for the actual last lesson.

We also did a lot of washing up as there were lots of guests staying in the village over the weekend.
We had one last trip to the shop to buy some beer etc for our final night, and watched Fright Night (worth it for Colin Farrell and David Tennant), Dead Heads (pretty silly but oddly enjoyable) and the Muppets’ Christmas Carol, which I haven’t seen in years.

Yesterday, our last morning in Orion, it snowed, so we have some nice photos. We also got lots of thank yous, hugs, and cards, which was all really nice – they clearly really appreciated the work we’d put in over the past three months.



The tiny guest house!


Our house in the snow

We left the village at midday, and our flight was supposed to be at 5:50, although it was a bit delayed, so we got back to the UK at about 6:15 UK time (10:16 Russian time).

And that is the first part of my year abroad done!

Thanks for reading.

The final week begins!

I can’t actually believe that this time next week I will be home! These past weeks have gone so fast it’s incredible.

Anyway, annoyingly I got ill again last week (this time with a fever and possibly tonsillitis…), and Lois was also ill, so we didn’t leave our room for three days (though we still did ironing!). On the Tuesday and Wednesday before this, we had the 4th form for two lessons. On the Wednesday, they refused to have a lesson and wanted games instead; luckily we had flashcards with the vocab they were learning, so we could play a matching game, which was actually educational as well. We then played ‘krokodil’ (charades), which was hilarious, since they decided to act out Lois, and made me act as Katya. And also led to us being told off for being too loud by Yura.. oops…!

When we’d sort of recovered, on Saturday, there were lots of visitors from a Moscow school, which meant that there wasn’t much to do. I went to Masha and Anton’s house to do some ironing, and Lois did the same at Katya’s house. At first it was pretty dull ironing. Tamara was there looking after little Sasha, and she told me to put on slippers to protect my feet, so, predictably, I managed to drop the iron power cord onto my toe, the only part of my foot not covered by slipper… After a while, some of the visitors came and started talking to me. One asked me questions, and then took photos of me. While I was ironing. I have no explanation for this, and I am slightly worried about what exactly she’s planning to do with those photos… The other woman, when she found out I was English, switched to English and spoke to me about how nice it was to be in Orion. Apparently it was the first time they’d visited, and they’d had to really convince the parents of the school children to allow them to visit, as they were really suspicious about Orion. I’m not really sure why, but perhaps they didn’t understand this village and what it does? She also said that because of this suspicion, a lot of the parents wouldn’t let their kids visit, which pushed the price of the coach up to much higher than what it should have been. After I finished ironing, Tamara made me some tea, which was lovely, and I got talking to a girl, Nellie, who was visiting from Kitezh. The man, Andrew, who teaches English in Kitezh must be amazing because her English was fluent, and didn’t even have a Russian accent or anything. She was very interesting; it turns out that she’s the dancing teacher in Kitezh – she knows ballet, ballroom, and belly dancing (she could teach us!) After that, I was rewarded with more of these sweets that Han had brought from Vietnam. They are jelly-like, and come in different flavours, and it also turns out that they are illegal in the UK and the US due to people choking on them and dying…! Woops! But they taste really nice. I also had some fruit, which was good, as fresh fruit is not always available in the village.



The illegal sweets…

We’ve been doing a lot of puzzles lately, starting at 500 pieces and graduating to 1000 pieces. After we completed this, we thought we’d be able to tackle the 2000 piece one. We may have been mistaken. It’s even too large for our kitchen table…! We worked on it whilst sharing our new strange drinks, orange and grapefruit beer, which is pretty good, although kind of strong!

After Katya saw the results of our craft workshops with the older kids, she asked us to do one with the kindergarten. I was a little apprehensive, after our previous experiences with them, but it actually went reasonably well, and it was only an hour, so that was okay.

As part of the healthy week they’ve been having, the kids all had to make presentations on different health topics, and we watched a few more today. It always surprises me how confident almost all of them are at speaking, even when surrounded by people asking loads of questions all at once! Plus it’s good listening practice for us!

Today we had a lesson with the first form, which went well. We made flashcards of the vocab we’ve been learning, and played the match game with them, which took a while for them to pick up – we were surprised that they didn’t know how to play!

We are planning a potential further drinking evening on Sunday, being the day before we leave. Lois has accepted my dare to kiss the ground once we land in the UK (in just 6 days!!), so I’ll be ready with a camera to make sure she does!

This will probably be my last post from Orion, as there are only 6 days left, but I will update once I get home with a post about our final days here, and with a whole load of photos!

Thanks for reading!

A big thank you...

…to the authors of the ‘Another English Site’ blog for linking to my blog! It was a lovely, unexpected find and made me very happy, it was very much appreciated!

Here’s the link to their post: http://anotherenglishsight.blogspot.ru/2012/11/a-british-girl-majoring-in-russian-and.html

Also I want to say thank you again to Lizzie Fane from Thirdyearabroad.com for publishing my article about a day in the life of a volunteer in Russia. Here’s the link: http://www.thirdyearabroad.com/work-abroad/volunteer-abroad/item/1369-day-in-the-life-volunteering-in-russia.html

I have just moved from Tumblr to WordPress because I’ve had enough of Tumblr confusing me, so sorry for any confusion! Also, I will make this blog look better when I get home, as I can’t upload pictures here as Orion’s internet doesn’t allow it.

Thank you for reading!

Half term for us teachers!

After 2 days of illness, we were slowly eased back into work again, with washing up and peeling potatoes. We were invited to see a part of the weekend game, which turned out to be an old-fashioned fair on the bottom floor of the school. It was really cute, with a fortune-teller (Vika), a matchstick game in which the person who picks up the last match wins, darts, pillow-fighting (the first person to knock the other person off the bench wins), a game against Yura where you had to estimate how many knocks it would take you to hammer a nail into a piece of wood, basketball (using a bin), a dancer, and skipping. With every game you won, you were given a piece of wood, which you could exchange for sweets or toys. I had a go at the basketball and the matchstick game, and attempted to teach Lois how to skip!

After all of the game people left on Monday, the big clean-up operation began. We have been set the task of washing and ironing all of the sheets, which we have worked out will take us about 12 days, as we can only wash one load per day as there is only a tiny amount of hanging space! We also cleaned the rooms. It was odd on Monday evening to have the house completely to ourselves; even Galia had gone away for the night!



Yay for washing!

On Tuesday we had the Sunday that we missed while playing the game, so it was a rest day, which we really didn’t need, since while we’d been ill all we’d done was rest! We had dinner at Masha’s house, which was really nice, we got to try some of her ‘day and night’ cake (the ‘day’ layers were plain sponge, and the ‘night’ layers were chocolate). Then, after most people had left the table, Masha’s older brother turned up with some home-brewed vodka in a mineral water bottle labelled ‘The Source of Life’ – love the irony! He offered us some, and at first we declined, but Lena, our Russian teacher, decided that it was part of our Russian cultural education and insisted we try some! But actually, it wasn’t that bad! It was much better than the vodka I’ve had in the UK anyway. We drank out of shot glasses, but Masha’s brother took a tea-cup full each time. We were then taught the rules of each shot, which included the fact that you aren’t supposed to leave much time between the first and second shot, so we had to drink again! And then, after some chatting, we were talked into yet another shot… Having not drunk much alcohol since being here, I wasn’t sure how I would react, but I seemed to be okay! But the fourth offered shot was definitely a step too far and so we declined the ‘walking stick for the road’, as it’s known here. We were also offered tea etc etc, but we managed to get away in the end after an enjoyable evening.

As this week was half term for us teachers too, we’ve had no classes, so we’ve been doing a lot of ironing, and filling in time by attempting to complete the 500 piece puzzles that lie in a pile in the school supply cupboard. I say attempt, because they are often missing pieces – we tried to complete one of a Japanese castle the other day, but it was ridiculously difficult as there was so much blossom, so we had to call in extra help from Max, Katya and Sergei, and discovered that there were sixteen pieces missing!

Yesterday was possibly my favourite day here. After washing the dishes, we helped Max do the 500 piece tiger puzzle, only he kept telling us off for laughing too loudly! He often does this, so he’s now earned the title of the ‘Fun Police’, making sure that when you have fun, you aren’t having too much fun, and in a quiet manner…

After I polished some furniture and Lois cleaned out the fridge in Katya’s house, we watched a film about some of the wonders of the world, which was interesting, especially as we’d been to one of them, Tsarskoye Selo, when we were in St Petersburg last year. We had my favourite tea (Redbush tea), and coconut biscuits, which are always good.

In the afternoon, we requested to have a sort of craft club thing with the kids, and Masha told us we could have it at 4. However, at 3.30, little Katya came round to see where we were, and to inform us that everyone was waiting! I don’t understand what happened there, but we quickly threw some things in a bag and headed to the school. Lois had the great idea of using the felt I’d brought to create hairclips (she’d brought some plain ones), which went down well. We also took thread, so that the kids could make friendship bracelets, the magic painting things, which Katya loves (and Vanya painted one too), and Vanya and I made Olympic torches out of gold card and flame coloured tissue paper. It was a really fun way to spend 2 hours, especially as we hadn’t seen much of the kids, since we’d been ill, and also because there were no classes. We also had a really good turn out, seeing as Vika, Zhenya, Roma and Anton are away for half term, and a lot of other kids are ill.



The results of craft club!

To further add to this great day, we had a barbecue for dinner (even though it’s November), which included chicken with cheese and mushrooms, which was really good, and even had Pepsi, which seemed like a novelty! They were obviously expecting a lot more people to show up for dinner, but so many people are ill! We met Max’s ‘Godparent’ Steve, who is nice and also English!

After dinner, we were caught by Max, who wanted us to come to his house and play Game of Thrones with him and Steve, so we went, and had a really good time attempting to explain the ridiculously confusing rules to Steve, who speaks Russian, but phrases such as ‘mustering armies’ are obviously things you wouldn’t expect to need…! He also gave us some wine which was nice. Of course, the only rule you really need to know is the Max always wins.

Once we’d finished the game, which of course Max won, we went back to our room. After sitting for a while at a loose end, I had the idea of making brooches with the millions of safety pins I’d brought (the kit list said I’d need them… I didn’t). So now I have a blue flower hairclip and a cute owl brooch which Lois made me. I made her an I <3 1D broach, because she clearly does love them..!

Today is Sunday, so another rest day, and the end of the holiday. At the Community Meeting, we were told that this week is health week, so I think they’ll be keeping a closer eye on what everyone eats, and making sure everyone wears warm clothes etc – which means I have to start wearing a hat…
And that’s all for now!

Slightly big news – I have officially dropped Chinese, so I am now doing Single Honours Russian, which means that I won’t be going to China next year, and will be going to somewhere in Russia instead – although I have literally no idea where yet…!

Thanks for reading!

A small update

For the past two days, Lois and I have experienced the worst sore throats we have ever had. Ever. I’m not exaggerating, the only other symptom I had was a horrible headache, but we couldn’t go outside for two days because we felt so rubbish. It hurt to breathe even. Katya and Yura brought us meals and checked on us. We spent the time sleeping/watching movies. They have a copy of the old BBC version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which is funny to watch (the animations are hilarious).

Galia remained her usual unsympathetic self. She said that we’d been relaxing all day, and that Lois should have said hello to her when she saw her. We don’t talk to her because she’s so miserable and we know we’ll normally just get a lecture from her! She didn’t bother to ask us if we were okay or anything. Although today, she did actually ask us at breakfast. There are lots of guests (at least 20) in the White House to help play the game thing, so that means huge queues for the only working bathroom! But Katya said we can take it easy today as we’re still recovering, so we’ve just been set some ironing, and we can watch the game if we want. However, as there were so many people at breakfast, there was a lot of washing up, and Anton was supposed to do it all by himself, so we lent a hand and washed up the cups and cutlery.

And that’s essentially what’s happened in the past few days! It’s now half-term, so that means no teaching, but I’m not sure what that will be replaced with.

We only have 23 days left now…

So much snow! So little heating...

Today we woke up to the joys of no heating or electricity, which means no shower. Also, it had snowed. And then continued snowing for the rest of the day, but actually it was really nice, and now everything looks really pretty (especially as the electricity is now back on..!!) I was surprised that during our lesson with the 6th form, Zhenya and Roma kept looking out the window at the falling snow. I mean, I can understand it when kids do that in the UK, because we normally only get snow a couple of times a year, but this is Russia! And, for Russia, there is barely any snow! So I don’t understand why this was such a novelty?? Also, Max kept begging us to join a snowball fight, but since these kids are used to snow, and we are not, and also Lois is on the verge of being ill, we declined this time. Apparently everyone has to make their own fort, and then the battle begins. Maybe next time…!

The cold also brings other hilarities, like when we tried to mop upstairs, the mop was frozen solid (they keep mops outside here). So we poured hot water over it until it had defrosted a bit.

On Saturday we had our mini party to celebrate a month to go til we return to the UK, so we watched Lost in Translation complete with the drinking game, which was a good film, although a bit ironic, since it’s about people being in a foreign country but missing home, and having communication problems…!

Sunday was pretty rubbish, everyone forgot about us, and Katya was away, so we had to fend for ourselves (we’re too British to go round asking people to have us over for meals…). This meant that we had to go to the shop, where we successfully found some pasta sauce and cheese, which was pretty good, although the sauce was ridiculously spicy after months of bland food here! (They use nothing except salt and pepper, no spices or herbs etc…) So we were feeling a bit down and homesick, especially as the sky was so grey. But we watched the Inbetweeners’ film, and that cheered us up.



Some really great cereal

On Monday, we had a lesson with the 1st form, which was successful, as they remembered the words for different colours, and we taught them some new colours, and they got to colour in, which they love. We then had karate. The first few exercises were pretty extreme, and Lois had to leave as she felt ill, so I was left to practice my blocks against a pillar (not joking..) Then, since most (if not all) the kids have passed to the next belt colour, Sasha taught them a new sequence of moves which were very confusing to me. She then got them to practice individually in the middle while everyone else watched. Since she’s never asked Lois and I to do this before, I assumed I’d be okay to just sit down and watch, but after the kids had their turns, she asked me to come up. Umm..?? That was pretty scary, since I had not mastered the new moves in any way!! Luckily all she wanted me to do was to practice how to stand properly with my ‘fingers’ (she meant ‘toes’, but I didn’t want to correct her, since she was helping me and all), towards the centre, and how to move backwards and forwards with my foot making the letter ‘C’ on the floor. It doesn’t sound particularly complicated but it kind of was.. But it was much less embarrassing than I was expecting, and I was proud of myself for staying in the class!

After lunch, we had our first ever Game Club. This was brought about after Max said in a meeting that he wanted to play more games, but no one had the time to watch the kids. So Lois proposed the idea that we take it on. It took quite a long time to get the okay, but finally it happened, and I hope they keep it going after we leave because then we will have left something really good in Orion! Unfortunately Lois was too ill to come with me, so, with Ira’s help, I ran the club. At first, I thought it was going to be the biggest failure ever, since when I arrived, only Ira and Zhenya (who was curled up on a sofa attempting to sleep) were there, and there were no games out. Luckily, Max soon arrived, and I got him to go and get his two favourite games (the Game of Thrones game, and The Settlers of Catan). Then Dima turned up, and started playing a game with the pack of cards I’d brought. Roma, Zhenya, Vanya and Petya also turned up, and started a game of Twister. Max attempted to teach me how to play The Settlers of Catan, and Ira joined in, but because some of her set of pieces were missing, she had to borrow some from the other set, which meant that only the three of us could play. This then meant that Dima had nothing to do, so I taught him to play Solitaire, but it was a bit complicated, as I was trying to teach him that while trying to learn to play a different game! In the end I understood basically what I was doing, so it was good, even though I lost magnificently…! At the end, Ira said thank you, so that was nice, and I was very grateful for her help! So overall I think the Game Club was a success!

That evening, we watched the Bridge to Terebithia, thinking it would be a nice heart-warming children’s film. We were so wrong. (Spoilers if you’re thinking of watching it!) Josh Hutcherson (looking sooo much younger than he does in The Hunger Games) plays a boy who makes friends with this creative girl, and then out of the blue, she dies, and he has to escape into the imaginary world they created together in order to escape his grief. Not exactly cheerful!

On Tuesday, we thought we didn’t have any lessons, but as usual plan change! So we had to plan a lesson for the 5th form at short notice. It wasn’t a bad lesson, but they had a lot of energy and weren’t exactly focused! But some of what we taught them did at least stick. We’ve had to correct the English textbooks before (the 6th form book, for example, stated that there were 6 continents – there are 7 - and that Australia is one. Which it isn’t), and this time it was trying to teach them ‘animal hospital’, so we changed it to ‘vet’, since no one calls it an ‘animal hospital’… Also, it taught the word for ‘greengrocer’, but that is pretty outdated now, so we taught them ‘supermarket’ as well. And today and dinner, Dima repeated this, and knew that ‘animal hospital’ was wrong, so we were very proud!

We then spent about 2 hours getting the White House ready for all the guests who will soon be arriving. Basically the whole village was in our house, cleaning and getting beds ready, fixing things, and sealing up one of the doors which is no longer in use. So now everything looks very clean and welcoming!
We also had a Russian lesson in the evening, which was really good, and for the first time, I think I understand verbs of motion and their prefixes properly! Lena is a very good teacher, and it helps that there are only the two of us, so she knows if we don’t understand something, and can help us easily.

My parents rang very late in the evening. Basically Russia is now four hours ahead of the UK, because, after a lot of confusion, we finally found out that they weren’t changing the clocks this year. I can’t believe how disorganised it was – no one knew, we asked people in the village, and Google etc! But it was really good to hear from them, and to hear some motivating and positive things! Plus I got to speak to Chris twice which was really good since I haven’t been able to speak to her for ages!

Today, we had just one lesson, as we were supposed to have one with the 4th form as well, but they were both ill! There is an illness going round the village, so every morning less and less people turn up for breakfast. I’m surprised that we haven’t got it yet (although Lois looks like she’s on the way to getting it, which means that I probably am too, but I came prepared with Lemsip and lozenges etc so it should be fine….) since we aren’t used to Russian illnesses…. Then we had two hours cleaning in the White House again, which involved hoovering up lots of flies from upstairs, and a lot of ironing.

On Friday, lots of people will be turning up to run this sort of wide game, where the kids have to defeat the ‘ogres’, and Katya is going to show us the film that this is based on, so that we understand and can take part too, so that should be pretty good! It lasts a few days, as it will be half term for all of the kids, except the 9th form, as they are preparing for their scary university entry exams. So we have a week off of teaching, so I don’t know what we’ll be doing instead…

Although the teaching can be hard at times, I do find it rewarding, especially when the kids finally get something, or are really enthusiastic.

And now we have just over three weeks left! I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone. Although I will be happy to go home, it will also be hard to leave this village with people who have been so kind to us (except maybe Galia….!!) for three months. And all the lovely kids!

Also, although today might be Halloween, we aren’t allowed to celebrate as it’s deemed to be ‘too evil’. So yeah. Bit odd not to do anything, but oh well! It will be strange not see any fireworks on Guy Fawkes night either!

Thanks for reading!

A trip to Moscow and some soap!

On Sunday we got to go on our trip to Moscow with Sergei! We had to leave at 8.15, only we weren’t told that we had to be exactly on time – we thought Lyosha was driving us to the city, but it turned out we were actually supposed to be catching a bus, Lyosha was just driving us to the stop! Oops. Plus Galia was coming with us to catch the same bus to visit her family, so she was angry at us. The fact that one of the cats had left a mess on the carpet the night before and she’d stepped in it didn’t exactly help (and we got the blame for forgetting to put the cat out, despite the fact that we put him out twice, and didn’t know he’d managed to get back in….).

Anyway, after Lyosha drove us to the stop and a speed which probably broke the limit, we managed to catch our bus, and we were on our way! The bus was hilariously slow, and sounded like it had a scooter engine, but it managed to get to us to the next bus stop, where we waited for the marshrutka, (a minibus), which was to take us to the edge of Moscow. When we arrived, we had some food in the amazing Coffee House (where they sell the greatest selection of cheesecakes ever), while Sergei looked to see if there was a bus which could take us to Red Square. He decided however that it would be easier if we got on the metro instead, and we finally arrived in Red Square about 3 hours after we left!

Red Square is a pretty place, full of historical things, such as St Basil’s Cathedral. There is also the centre of the city there, which you can stand on, as well as the grave of the Unknown Soldier, which is always guarded by soldiers as a mark of respect. Red Square was a lot less busy than the first time I visited back in 2007, but still as nice. We actually went inside St Basil’s this time, which was amazing; it’s full of intricate paintings and tiny churches (small rooms), and it’s very easy to get lost in there! It’s a very religious place still, unlike some of the cathedrals and churches that I visited in St Petersburg; there was a service happening while we were there, which was interesting to watch.



St Basil’s

Next, we walked through гум, which is a huge shopping centre, full of designer shops. We popped into one, and tried lots of cheese, which was good since we were pretty hungry by this point…!

We looked at going into the Kremlin, but the prices and queues were ridiculous, and we decided that we just didn’t have the time, since we were only there for the day! We then went to the Arbat, which is a famous street in Moscow, where we had lunch in Teremok. We were planning to find some kind of Italian food, but we were so hungry that Russian pancakes sounded fine! We then had Dunkin’ Donuts, which I’ve never had before since they don’t exist in the UK, so that was pretty awesome. I also bought a bottle of my favourite raspberry flavoured Lipton’s Iced Tea, which is amazing and I don’t understand why they don’t sell it in the UK!

After that we went to a massive market, which is near the hotel I stayed in when I last visited. When I say massive, I mean that I’m glad Sergei was there, otherwise I don’t think we would have found our way out again…! We managed to buy lots of souvenirs, which was good!

After all that we were completely shattered, so after a quick trip to a bakery for some food for the long journey, we got back on the marshrutka, which took us to Voronovo, where Lyosha was waiting with the car (not sure why we skipped the second bus, no one explained this!) and we drove the next hour back home.

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We spent Monday helping the kids make Christmas cards to send to their Godparents (people who sponsor them), which put us in a festive mood! I even made one for my family as well. We had to do some translating for the older girls as well, so that they could write longer letters.

We’ve done a lot of log moving this week, yesterday Yura took us into the forest, but not that far (we could still see the village), to show us the logs we needed to move. He made sure we understood, then left us to it. However, we are not Russian, and do not often walk around in the forest, so after picking up some heavy logs, we tried to make our way back and inevitably got very lost. This was hilarious, and was even more hilarious when Vika found us and couldn’t understand what we were doing…

Today it has snowed, hailed, been sunny, and been windy – wish the weather would make up its mind! However, it’s set to get even colder next week, so maybe the snow will start settling then?

This morning I was told off by Galia in front of everyone, which was embarrassing, especially as I didn’t understand all of what she said, so I couldn’t defend myself! Basically, 2 adults are assigned to do the evening duty every night, which is to clean and mop the floor, and to do the larger pots and pans that need washing. I turned up and did an hour’s washing up, which included the disgusting fish trays which were covered in fish scales (bleeee I really hate fish!!!). After an hour, the guy that was scheduled to work with me hadn’t turned up to clean the floor, so I left, thinking he’d come later, but of course he didn’t turn up at all, so I got the blame! Then he apologised to me, and said it was ‘partly’ his fault. Umm, no, it was completely your fault!! Also, Galia’s door was open today, and what did I see in there? Oh yeah, my missing slippers!! Cheers Galia! We were hoping that she might get sacked today, since last night there was drama in the village; Dimitri Morozov, the creator of the village, yelled at her (banging his fists against the table and everything) in front of everyone – we couldn’t understand exactly what she’d done wrong, but it must have been bad to annoy him, he’s normally so mellow! Also, today we were cleaning the tables and having a laugh, and she told us to shut up because she couldn’t hear herself think. This job takes a few minutes, she couldn’t handle us talking for just that long?!

There’s this guy Han, who’s helping to teach maths and physics, who we think is from Vietnam, who is literally the complete opposite of Galia. The other day, he did the washing up for us, and he offered to do it today as well, only Galia stopped him (cheers again Galia – I don’t think she realises how much work we do……). Today we cleaned Sergei’s house, where Han is also staying, and he made us some really nice coffee, and refused to let us clean his room too, saying he could do it himself. But we did it anyway, to return the washing up favour!

We had to give the 6th form a test today, just to check what they had learnt, but it felt mean and really weird! But they need it, since they haven’t been taught how to conjugate the verb ‘to be’. Also, I have seen many many variations of ‘one’ from the fifth form, but none of them were right, which is worrying! We taught them 10, 20, 30 etc, but we didn’t know they didn’t know how to write numbers 1-20. My star pupil Vanya actually stayed behind at the end to ask me how to write these, and today he made me give him extra work! So cute.

After lunch we were set a mountain of potatoes to peel, which was a bit more fun today since instead of the lovely Radio Dacha, which only plays incredibly dull Russian music, we listened to probably the equivalent of Radio One or something, anyway there was English music, as well as Russian club music, which was pretty funny.

On Wednesday, the craft people who we made the tote bags with came again! This time we made soap. We made friendship soap first, only me and Lois misunderstood, and put scent in, which we weren’t supposed to do, as if everyone did that, it would’ve been a disgusting mixture! But now it just smells like peach and biscuits, which luckily go together relatively okay….! (oops..) I then made a watermelon smelling soap, which has a bright red and bright green layer, and a mandarin and vanilla soap, which is gold and blue. It was good fun, but made an absolute mess (there was glitter everywhere, even in my hair – thanks Lois haha!!).



Our soap

That evening we had another ‘party’ for being here for 2 months! This meant more beer. We also had beer in order to be able to face the cat poo on the carpet like men. (It was still gross). We played the Fifty Shades drinking game, which was funny, and even funnier once the Ana and Christian had chavvy accents…
And yesterday, we had pizza for dinner, which was awesome.

We were going to celebrate a month til we come home today (being the 26th), but since tomorrow is a work day, we decided to put it off til tomorrow evening, when we won’t have classes the next day! This means more weird Russian beer and zephyr (the actual name for the squishy marshmallowy goodness), and Chocopie!

Falling into a routine...

After Halfway Sunday, which involved watching The Science of Sleep while playing the drinking game that goes with it, we weren’t exactly on the ball when Monday morning arrived! However, the day was good, after our usual washing up, we had our first lesson with the 1st form, which went surprisingly well. We then had a humongous amount of potatoes to peel, which we kind of felt was Galia’s way of getting back at us…!! The community meeting took place after that, which had been put off from Sunday as Sasha wouldn’t have been able to attend otherwise. We were supposed to have a Russian lesson with Lena that day as well, but she was too tired after a busy day, which is fair enough. (We had a lesson on Wednesday instead, which was very useful – I think I finally understand participles now!)

On Tuesday, we had two lessons. Lois was feeling too unwell to help teach the first one, which was with the 4th form, so I took my first ever lesson by myself! I was a bit nervous, which wasn’t helped by the fact that Arina was half observing me (I say half, she was on her laptop at the back of the room, but I had the impression that she was keeping an eye on the lesson)! Anyway, it went well, we sped through the lesson plan, which left time at the end for them to draw, which they love! Lois was able to join me for the second lesson, which was the 5th form, where they learnt numbers to 100, and we played a game with them that they liked, because it was competitive.

We’ve spent a lot of our afternoons getting through the huge amount of laundry that Katya set us to do, and we still haven’t finished it yet, which has led to lots of moaning from Galia, as I don’t think she realises that it’s actually part of our job! Oh well.

On Wednesday, we had a lesson with Sonia and Vika, which I thought might be quite good for Sonia, and for Vika, as it would be revision, but unfortunately Vika was acting up, and setting a bad example for Sonia, which we had to remind her of quite a few times.

We were supposed to help out with the job of getting the trees ready and warm for winter (we had mental images of us putting scarves and jackets on them, but it actually just meant putting a thick layer of manure at their bases), but we were kept behind in the kitchen doing a lot of washing up etc, and then when we did get there, Arina sent us away for not being warmly dressed! The coat I brought is good for keeping me warm, but is totally impractical for working, as is Lois’, but luckily we managed to find some coats in the boutique which are good for working in – yes, they don’t look good, but c’est la vie! It’s better than being cold!
We had to clear up the rubbish from around the school, which was made more fun by playing Russian word games with Vika and Zhenya. I also helped clean the two guest houses in the village with Ira and Lera. These two houses are adorably small, they’re like wendy houses! The slightly bigger one has a living room, a bathroom, and a bedroom in the attic, but the smallest one has a living room/bedroom, with a small bathroom which you reach through a tiny door. Very cute! The cleaning was quite fun, as I spent the time talking to Vera about music and films etc, which was really interesting. She even knew One Direction……

The one remarkable thing this week is that we have fallen into a routine, which means that the weeks are beginning to fly by. You might think that being only just over halfway through, it might start to drag, but its even faster!

Also, we have had some ‘arguments’ with Galia, when she’s got angry with us for using the washing machine, or something, and I got annoyed her when she lets the cat in her room, and then just lets it out in the corridor – there is not cat flap so how is it supposed to get out? Plus I was in a rush to get to our Russian lesson, and having to sort the cat out made me late.

However, I am beginning to see improvements! For example, she offered me some coffee the other day. Also, she’s remembered that Lois doesn’t like egg, and that I hate fish, (although she did call me a ‘poor girl’). She even made me an ‘omelette’ (it was actually 2 fried eggs, but that was even better than an omelette because I could dip bread in the yolk and it was amazing) when it was fish day (every Thursday), which was really nice of her, because she didn’t have to, so I was very grateful!

And that’s it really, apart from the fact that our trip to Moscow was postponed to Sunday! And nothing’s been said to contradict that yet, so yay! (Or ‘oora’! as they say here...)

Halfway Sunday!

Today, unbelievably, marks our time in Russia as being halfway through already! So naturally this led us to wanting to celebrate, and so we have bought a few kinds of strange-looking beer, some odd flavoured crisps, some of the squishy meringue things, something called ‘Choco Pie’, which claims to be healthy, as it has vitamins and minerals in it, and some ice cream, despite the fact that it is now pretty cold over here. The other night both of our boilers broke down due to a power cut, and we were reduced to huddling in our duvets with thermal socks on, attempting to keep warm. We found out that it was minus three that night! And just to make things even worse that day, we couldn’t shower because there was no hot water. Luckily they have been fixed now, and we are toasty warm again! (So hot in fact, that we’ve had to turn off one of the radiators in our room….)

This week also marks the end of our ‘lessons’ with the kindergarten. They could not behave themselves, even though they knew that this was their ‘examined’ week, and Katya decided that this experiment must come to an end. She has instead given us classes with the first form, which is made up of Sonia and Dariona, who hopefully will be able to learn from us. With Nastiya and Danya in the same room with them, it was impossible to teach them. Danya was ill for a few days, and so Nastiya took to copying the example set by the two older children, and actually learnt a few words, but as soon as Danya returned, she began fighting with him at every possible moment once again. After Lois and I suffering many near heart attacks, we are very relieved that we won’t have to go through that again..!

Sadly Starsik, the really adorable dog who was the size of a small bear, had to be put down this week. It turns out he was Sasha’s dog, who came with her when she moved to the village, so it was especially sad for her. He was very docile, and even let one of the kittens cuddle up to him when it was raining a few weeks ago.

We are off to Moscow on Wednesday! Sergei is taking us, and will show us around, and take us to the good souvenir buying places, so that’s exciting!

Last night, Maxim and Vika invited us to play the Game of Thrones game again with them, which was really nice of them, and it was extra good because we sort of understand the rules now! And I earned some respect from Maxim for finishing in second place behind him (I still have no real clue how that happened…)
Galia has been driving us mad with her terrible kitchen hygiene. We’ve seen raw meat left out, things covered in flies, and cats walking through the open kitchen door and helping themselves. We’ve been trying to get her to put the things away after breakfast, but she claims she has no time, despite the fact that there are four hours between breakfast and lunch… I’m surprised we haven’t all got food poisoning yet…!

Now to enjoy my 6 weeks left in Russia!

Goodbye summer...

I want to start with a big thank you to everyone who’s been reading my blog! It turns out it has more readers than I thought, so thanks everyone!

This week has been as eventful as usual. We’ve been teaching a lot of Sasha’a English classes, as she’s still very busy at the farm with Buttercup. We’ve managed to find the teacher’s books for the 4th, 5th, and 6th forms, so we use them, as they have pre-planned lessons in them, although they are pretty dull, so we attempt to spice the lessons up a bit. We’ve found the 4th forms lessons especially repetitive, and it’s not helped by the fact that our two pupils, Katya and Vika, have no enthusiasm. Vika often pretends to fall asleep, and both of them are late to class, which led up to today, when they were 25 minutes late. The lessons are only 45 minutes long! Luckily big Katya was around, so she told them off and made them apologise to us, but it is really annoying, because we are supposed to be helping them, and if they don’t want help, then we could me much more useful elsewhere in the village. Hopefully after today they won’t be that ridiculously late again! Apparently they went back to Vika’s house to fix her shelf or something.

Luckily, our other two classes are much less stressful. The 5th form is made up of four boys, Petya, Vanya, Maxim, and Dima, so I was a bit worried at first that they would just mess around and not listen to us, but they are my favourite class! Although three of them were a little late, they made up for it by being very enthusiastic, and I was especially happy with Vanya because he tried really hard, and did very well. The 6th form is made up of Zhenya and Roma, who, although less enthusiastic than the boys, tried hard, and we tried to make the lesson a bit more interesting, since the lesson plan wasn’t particularly inspiring. So overall, I think the lessons are going okay.

The kindergarten are having an exam in behaviour this week. If they keep up their messing around with us, they won’t have lessons with us anymore. Katya helped us begin our lesson with them on Monday, and that really helped, because she made them listen to us, and I think we actually got something done; Nastiya even learnt numbers 1-5 (Dariona and Sonia already know this, as they are in the 1st form). Today we managed to get them to play a counting game with a balloon, after 15 minutes of them messing around, so it’s an improvement at any rate.

This week, Maxim has been hanging around with us a lot, even convincing us to play his Game of Thrones game with him, which is ridiculously complicated in English, so it was almost beyond comprehension in Russian! We did try though, and I think he appreciated the effort. He’s also been coming to a few of our lessons with the kindergarten, which is helpful.

On Sunday evening, the kindergarten and the 4th form put on an Autumn show for us all, which was really funny. Apparently it’s traditional to say farewell to Summer, and greet Autumn. The kindergarten all recited poetry, and Katya was dressed up as Summer, with a green tutu and green wig with flowers on it, while Vika was Autumn, in a metallic gold dress and matching wig. They gave us tasks to do, such as write a poem about Autumn (one team), and Summer (the other team). We were given Summer, so we helped write a bit of the poem in English, which big Katya translated for us when they were all read out to everyone. Then there were two teams to see who could pick up the most leaves off the floor. Then all of them did a little dance with leaves. It was really nice, and they’d obviously put a lot of effort into it, as they were all almost completely word-perfect. It was great to witness a piece of Russian tradition.

A piece of Russian (or maybe just Orion?) culture that we have difficulty understanding, however, is their attitude towards mice. We have some in our house at the moment, and Galia told us today that she had some superglue, which she was planning to put on some cheese, and then the mice get stuck to the cheese?? We were really confused, and though Galia was talking rubbish again, so we told big Katya, who said that it was correct. Apparently mousetraps don’t work, so they have the option of having a cat, which obviously makes a mess, or the glue method. So we are expecting to find lumps of gluey cheese around the house soon….! I don’t know what they do with these live mice once they get stuck to the glue, but if I find out I’ll let you know…….

I’ll leave you with that, genuine Russian hilarity!

Buttercup, Nutella, and many, many walnuts..

On Sunday, we were supposed to go to Sasha’s for breakfast, as she is house-sitting and looking after Dima and Vika while Katya is away with Yura and the first form in Kitezh for the week. However, Arina came to tell us that because one of the cow’s was giving birth, we were to have breakfast with her instead (Sasha is in charge of the farm). We had a really nice breakfast there, partly because we got to eat Nutella for the first time in ages! So good! Anyway, after that, we decided to visit the farm to see the newly born calf. When we arrived, lots of the kids were already there helping out, and they immediately gave us a slip of paper each to write a name down for the calf. I checked to see if they wanted it in English or Russian, but they said English was fine, so I wrote down Buttercup. Sasha then chose one of the names that we’d all written down in a raffle, and she picked out mine! I was very happy, and luckily I’d looked up the translation for buttercup a few days before, when Lois had found one on our walk to the river, so I was able to explain that buttercup was ‘Лютик’ (Lyootik) in Russian. So now this baby cow has two names!



Buttercup!

We then were invited by Katya and Vika for a birthday tea in honour of Buttercup, and so they prepared cheese on toast and tea etc for us, in a way that I don’t think many 10 year olds in the UK could do! We were then joined by Sasha, who put on one of her favourite Russian comedy films for us, which was about this guy who invented basically a time machine, and accidentally lets Ivan the Terrible through into his time. Even though I didn’t understand all of it, it was pretty funny. She then invited us for a late lunch, so, after checking on Buttercup, we made mini pizzas. We then had to leave straight away to get cooking our dinner for 12! It was a little bit stressful, and it turned out there were no leeks, so we had to use onions instead, but somehow we managed to serve up a dinner almost on time, which was eaten by almost everyone. We had wine, and Masha gave us a toast, which was embarrassing, but really nice! The kids were all drinking this drink which was a mixture of water and jam (I watched Masha prepare it), which sounds disgusting, so I had to try it, and it was actually really nice! It wouldn’t work with English jam though, Russian jam is much more runny. All the kids disappeared before we could serve the apple pie, so we were worried that it wouldn’t all be eaten, but luckily some guests turned up, who, although they’d brought their own cake, all had a piece of our’s, and said it was really good. We also took some to Sasha, Vika and Dima as a thank you for lunch, only they weren’t there, so we left them a note with it. Lena forced us to take some of the huge amount of walnuts that they now have in Orion – they’re fresh from the Caucasus, and I think they bought about 700 kilos, so every available container, including bins, are full of walnuts. I thought I’d try one again, but, as I thought, I really don’t like them! So now we have a big container full, but Lois doesn’t think they’re worth the effort to open either…..!

At the community meeting, Masha thanked us again for dinner, and Sasha, Vika and Dima were very grateful for the pie we left them, so it was all good! The recipe for the pie is on the BBC Good Food website, and I really recommend it because it was so good.

We’ve been even busier this week as we’ve had to cover Sasha’s classes as she is very busy on the farm. Today, I had to look after the kindergarten for 2 hours, only to then return a few hours later for the hour and half lesson with them. However, they were pretty good today, but maybe that’s because half of them weren’t there! We also had what we thought were Jaffa Cakes at Tamara’s house, only to discover they were in fact raspberry flavour.

Lois quest for trying strange Russian drinks continues, we’ve had bark juice, apple and peach juice, cherry juice, and now a tarragon flavoured drink, which is a luminous green colour. Russia is amazing…!



Some strange drinks…

And we have now been here for 5 weeks already!

A lot of laughter!

We may have had another fair share of ups and downs this week, but all the hilarity definitely makes up for things that haven’t gone so well.

Firstly, one of the funniest things that happened probably doesn’t actually sound that funny, you probably had to be there, as Lois said! After our Russian lesson with Lena (which are really good and I’m very thankful she takes the time to help us out), we were going downstairs, and Lois turned the first floor light out. Leaving us in total darkness. Being as we are in essentially the middle of a forest, there is no street light, so we could not see a thing. We tried to get out of the ground floor of the school, but because it’s circular, it literally took about 10 minutes, with us bumping into pillars and chairs, and Lois thinking that a window was the door. I hadn’t laughed so much in ages, because it was so ridiculous! Finally we made it to the corridor that leads to the kitchen, only to realise that it doesn’t actually have a light, but luckily someone found the light switch for the toilets, and we were saved.

Masha asked us to join her dance class the other day, so we went, which meant skipping karate, and having absolutely no idea what to expect. We thought that lots of the adults would be there, but in the end it was us, Masha, and two of the older girls, Ira and Lera (yes, their names rhyme, and just to complete the set – and add to the confusion – the other older girl is called Vera….). Masha put a video on, and we were confronted with a woman who looked like a stripper. Oh Russia…! Anyway, it turned out that “Танец живота”, which literally translates to ‘dance of the stomach’ is actually belly dancing. At first I panicked – I can’t belly dance! But it turned out to be pretty funny, especially as the women on the video were identical twins. Plus a very good work out – my abs and shoulders were so painful afterwards!

It turns out that the builders were here to repaint the school. It’s now gold, which we weren’t sure about at first, but it actually fits in more with the other buildings in the village, and looks really nice when the sun catches it. This also means that the builders have left the village, and no longer will I endure the fear of seeing some guy sitting in the kitchen in total darkness (I still don’t understand what he was doing there…)
There has been a concerted effort this week to work on the vegetable patches in the garden, as I think that at least for the past year they were neglected. So we’ve done lots of weeding etc, and it also gave us a chance to speak to the kids a bit more. We don’t teach the older kids at all, because they are preparing for exams, so we don’t normally get a chance to speak to them. So it was really nice to speak to Lera, I found out that she wants to be a doctor.

On our latest trip to the local shop, we discovered that they had a supply of Milka, which, if you don’t know, is basically amazing chocolate. So of course we stocked up. There were some men outside who said ‘hello’ in Russian to us, then, because they’d heard us speak in English, attempted to say ‘goodbye’ when we left. I had a bad feeling about them, which turned out to be justified when they followed us to the driveway to the village, and kept whistling at us to get our attention. Luckily they didn’t follow us up the driveway, and we weren’t so stupid as to go back to them. But it was a reminder of what the world can really be like, since we are so isolated from the outside here! (I’ve left the village once, not counting a few trips to the shop which is literally at the bottom of the driveway.) Anyway, it turns out that all the bars of Milka are past their sell-by date. As in, waaay past. Lois’ bar holds the record; it went off on the 29th of May. We can only assume that the shop is supplied by things that fall off the backs of lorries, since the products are never the same each time we go….

Two days ago we walked to the nearby river with the kindergarten and Katya. It’s a short-ish walk down the road, til you get to a point where you’re sure that nothing lies ahead, and then you turn left and walk down a hill til you reach the little river. It used to be deep enough to swim in, but a road was built and so some of it goes down a tunnel instead. In the winter it freezes over so you can skate on it, and you can ski down the hill. All the kids threw stones in the water, I assume in a vague attempt at skipping them; I would’ve taught them properly only I still don’t know how either! Lois and I attempted to play Pooh sticks, but it didn’t really work to well. We then played dodge ball together, followed by this thing where we all stood with our hands up towards the sun (it was late afternoon by that point), and felt its warmth (or something..??) It was nice and relaxing anyway.

Karate is really good, on our first lesson we all had to light a candle and reflect on our inner light, which was really relaxing, and surprisingly all the kids stayed disciplined and quiet the whole time.

We’ve had a few troubles with the kindergarten this week, mostly to do with discipline – when they do something bad, we don’t know how we are supposed to punish them. We had to watch them play the yesterday, until suddenly everything went wrong and there was a massive fight, and Gary, an 18 year old, had to come and sort them out. This was incredibly embarrassing, and led to Lois getting upset and leaving, which left me alone with the kids, because Gary left too. The kids then decided to run riot. Two of them ran inside the White House to find Lois, but I couldn’t follow them and attempt to stop them because Danya and Sonia were still playing in the sandpit. Then Danya also left, leaving me with Sonia, until it began to rain. Luckily, by that time it was their lunchtime, so I managed to get Sonia to go to the dining room. Then I had what I assumed would be a not too hard task of getting the other kids to go to lunch too. When I got inside the White House I found a still upset Lois attempting to retrieve her iPod back from Dariona, to no avail, and then, when I told them it was lunchtime, they all ran downstairs and locked themselves in a room. Which they then couldn’t unlock, and since the lock was inside, I couldn’t help them. Luckily, they managed to open it, and then ran towards the front door, only to run back again and lock themselves in another room. Finally, I managed to herd them into the dining room, 15 minutes late, and missing Danya. I was so stressed out I managed to spill half my soup over the table. I then had to sit with them while they ate their lunch, which was ridiculous since they kept running away to find Danya, who finally appeared about 10 minutes later. Tamara came and took the three who had finished lunch back to the kindergarten, leaving me with Danya, who I was instructed to return once he’d finished eating. Finally, half an hour later, I managed to get him back to Tamara, after he insisted on wearing a hat that covered his eyes so he couldn’t see where he was going, and I couldn’t get him to remove it. After all that, I couldn’t go back to Lois and the White House, so I went for a walk in the forest to get some of my stress out, which luckily worked. Anyway, Lois apologised for leaving me, and I hope it doesn’t happen again because I really couldn’t handle them by myself.

When we had our lesson with them later that day however, they were a little bit better behaved. Since we have now completed the alphabet with them, we weren’t sure what to do, but luckily my mum had convinced me to bring some of those magic painting books, where all you need is water and a paintbrush, and the colour comes out in the right places, like magic. The kids really liked this, although there was an argument when Nastiya messed up Sonia’s one. We solved that by quickly putting on Aladdin, which unfortunately has had the side effect of seemingly cementing the ‘Prince Ali’ song into mine and Lois’ heads… and no amount of listening to other songs will remove it! We also did some of the magic painting ourselves after dinner whilst watching Sleeping Beauty, so now we have an orange sheep, a guitar-playing horse, a cow and a peacock to join the dalek poster on the wall.

Yesterday evening there was a storm, which led to a power cut in our house; it only lasted a few seconds but it reduced us to a couple of 5 year olds! I then had to go out into the storm to do my evening cleaning duty with Gary in the kitchen and dining room, only he didn’t turn up for half an hour, so I walked to the building to find it in complete darkness. I started the washing up, while the ceiling overhead seemed ready to cave in on me, and all I could think was “will the insurance cover this??” There was also two leaks in the dining room ceiling, which, when he finally turned up, I had to explain to Gary by saying ‘water from’ and then pointing upwards, since I didn’t know the word for leak, and totally forgot the word for ceiling…

Today has been a good day, and I feel as if I’ve done no work at all. This isn’t true; we had a lesson with the 5th and 6th forms this morning, where we had two very success games of Bingo, followed by the washing up after breakfast, and then sweeping up the school. We then had a meeting with Katya, which involved tea and biscuits, and a meeting with Masha, which involved this amazing flower tea, and these squishy marshmallow-like things (but much better tasting) which look like meringues, and really nice jam. We then watched a film about different types of martial art, including ninjitsu, which is training to become a ninja (so cool!) We have also been given the task of cooking ‘something English’ for 12 people tomorrow. Ahhh! We’ve chosen a chicken and leek pasta bake thing, with apple pie for dessert, because Masha said she likes that. Hopefully it should be fine….!

I’ll leave you with the cutest thing that happened today, Nyusha the kitten was in our room today when we were changing the linen on our beds, and somehow she jumped from my shoulder straight into a pillow case. It was adorable!



Here’s a photo!

A week of being told off a lot

This week has been a hard week, in terms of communication, and also we got told off a lot.
Anyway, firstly the cook, Galina, who is apparently from Ukraine (we had no idea) doesn’t seem to understand that we are not Russian, and therefore when she suddenly launches at us with a jumble of words that are often colloquial, we have no clue what she’s talking about! And once she’s said it, and she can see we don’t understand, she just gives up attempting to explain, even when we ask her to speak more slowly. For example, a few days ago she said something, and gave up and asked one of the adults, Arina, to explain to us what she was saying. Arina didn’t use English, but spoke slowly, and when we didn’t understand a word, she found a way round it until we did. And it turned out all Galina wanted to tell us was that there is a washing line behind the White House and that we should put our washing there to dry. It was such a random thing to say that we would never have been able to guess what she meant!

Also, she said that I hadn’t diced some vegetables into small enough pieces, but since, on closer inspection, not only has she chopped half her thumb off, but also the tips of two of her fingers, I decided not to completely follow her idea of chopping.

However, she did cheer me up when I needed it by bringing one of the many kittens into the White House. He was very cute and very playful and a great distraction for an hour (although we later found out that he wasn’t the one she’d meant to bring in – she’d wanted the ‘more fluffy’ one instead, who is also a tortoise shell). Also, Katya had a word with her on our behalf and she is making much more of an effort now to help us understand her – she even checked if we knew the word ‘koshka’ (cat), before telling us that one of the cats was currently eating a watermelon.

We got told off by Katya for giving the kids a copy of the Top of the Pops magazine, as it included a picture of a half naked guy (which we didn’t realise as the magazine had been wrapped up, otherwise obviously we wouldn’t have given it to them), and she just wanted to remind us that they want to shield the kids from things like that here. However, it turned out that the half naked guy was actually Tom Daly in what is essentially his work clothes, since he is a diver…

We also got told off by one of the kids when she came into our English lesson with the 4th form. However, she came in just at the point when our two pupils were fighting over an English magazine. Before that, they’d both been doing really well in the shop role play we created, and had been speaking English. She told us that we shouldn’t be playing with them, and that they should be speaking English, so we had to explain to her what had happened. But even though we knew the lesson had gone well, she knocked our confidence a bit.
The reason that we had the 4th form for three double lessons was that an English guy called David Dean was staying in Orion for the week. He used to run a special school in the UK, and now spends his time visiting places like Orion and giving advice, so the adults had meetings with him everyday, meaning that Sasha couldn’t teach that class. The first lesson, we planned thoroughly, with games, a shop role play, and making friendship bracelets. However, when we arrived, Vika was already making a bracelet! Luckily, everything else took longer than we’d anticipated, so it was fine in the end. Sasha said it would be fine to just watch English films with them for the other two lessons, so we watched The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast (which I haven’t seen in forever!). We did start watching Mary Poppins, after they chose it, but they decided it was too boring so we changed it.

Because we had lots of visitors last week, Sunday and Monday were swapped around. Sunday is usually a rest day, but that wasn’t possible, so it led to quite a lot of confusion. We also had the kindergarten on Thursday, to cover for Tamara. It’s been a bit difficult with them recently, because what’s starts of as a bit of play fighting soon becomes a full blown fight, and usually culminates in at least one kid crying. The first time this happened, it was Nastiya, and I managed to calm her down by asking her what she wanted, which was a sweet. The next time, it was Sonya, and she was much less easy to pacify – she went back to her mum, Katya. I thought I’d done something really terrible, but later Katya said it was fine that Sonya had gone home, and that we should keep her informed about them. She also had a chat with the kindergarten about their behaviour, so we should hopefully see an improvement tomorrow! We babysat them last night whilst the adults were in a meeting, and they were okay then, so it should be fine. The main difficulty is that we don’t know the right words to stop them fighting, and even when we learnt the word for stop, they don’t listen. However, Katya told us some ways we can control their fighting, but I hope it doesn’t come to that again.
Today is Sunday, which is a much needed rest day. We had breakfast at Katya’s, a community meeting, followed by an hour of karate (yes I do karate now, it’s pretty fun! And good exercise..!), then a barbeque in the rain, then clearing up after, and then an amazing dinner of lots of blinis and condensed milk and this amazing jam that you eat with a teaspoon. Plus lots of tea. I read lots of articles that people had written about their stays here and in Kitezh, and they kept mentioning the amount of tea they’d drunk. One even said that they’d drunk more tea than they’d ever drunk in their entire life, which obviously coming from a British person sounds ridiculous, and I thought they were exaggerating, but they genuinely weren’t! Also, I love the variety of tea there is here, at home it would be PG Tips, or Tetley or something, whereas here, it’s either breakfast tea, or Earl Grey, or Redbush, or peppermint tea, or Sergei’s amazing Egyptian tea, etc etc. And I don’t even miss having milk with it.

One of the reasons for doing karate, other than the fact that it’s good fun and helps show the kids that we’re parts of the community, is that we are training to do a 5k run in Santa suits once we get back to the UK, through Greenwich Park, to raise money for Orion and Kitezh. We’ve also been running laps round the village.

We do have ups and downs here, but I never have a bad day – something bad might happen, but then something or someone will make the whole day much better again. I can’t believe we’ve been here for almost a whole month – I think the time’s been passing so quickly because we’re so busy, which is good.
Today Yura asked us what we liked most about Orion. We thought about it for a while, before finally answering with “all the kittens!!”, thereby firmly cementing our status here as the crazy cat ladies…..
But it is really hard to pinpoint the one thing that I like most about being here. I think that everything combined is what makes it good.

Also we are hopefully visiting Moscow next Monday, which is very exciting!

Birthdays and collecting mushrooms

We've done a lot of learning this week, and not just in terms of language. A few days ago, we were feeling a bit down with the amount of work we were doing, and the fact that we couldn't sit in on an English lesson to see how the Russian children learn our language, or take up Lena’s offer of walking into the forest to collect mushrooms. However, Masha (one of the leaders of the community) had invited us to tea that day, and after hearing our mini grumbles, she then told us how much work she has done since the village began 8 years ago. For example, she told us that day that she hadn't even had time to shower yet (it was already 1pm by that time). She told us how much work she and her mother Tamara put in building the foundations of these houses, and how much she has sacrificed. The sheer amount of work that all of these people put in everyday for the benefit of these children is astounding and heart-warming. Masha also explained that the work we do helps the village keep running everyday, so although they don’t often show it, they truly are grateful for the work that volunteers like us put in.

That really put it all into perspective, and, after watching a film about Kitezh and Orion, we realised that the 4 hours of work that we are set everyday is absolutely nothing compared to the amount of work that others do round here. The film also interviewed some of the kids, including little Katya, who, at the time of filming, had only just arrived, but that was 3 years ago, so it’s really great to see her now, happy, and a total member of this community, with lots of friends. At the end of the film, she described it as ‘like a fairytale’ and that is so true. The whole concept of rural, traditional life may sound ridiculous in modern Russia, but they really have managed it here, and that is a massive credit to Masha, who founded Orion when she was just 19, and to Dmitry Morozov, who came up with the concept of Kitezh in the first place, having worked with orphans in this country.

So it was with a renewed sense of worth that we went to clean the circular building that is the school, and incidentally is very awkward to clean. I was so prod of myself because while I was sweeping, I noticed a spider. This spider would have been squashed had I not saved it. Somehow I picked it up with my bare hands and took it outside, and wasn't even scared… that would not happen in the UK!!

Teaching the kindergarten is really good now, they know that once they've coloured in the worksheets that we’ve made, they get to watch more of a film (we've now finished the Little Mermaid and have moved onto the Fox and the Hound, which is bad because that film always makes me cry…). Plus they are learning some English words, so we are being a little bit successful!

Breakfast here is hilarious – today we had rice pudding again, and a few days ago we had what was essentially lemon cheesecake with condensed milk and a very sugary baked apple… it was so good! Whilst we were eating though, Katya came over to inform us that we had a lesson to teach. At that exact moment. Ahh! So with no preparation whatsoever, we rushed upstairs to the school to play some English games with the 5th form (which consists of just 3 kids). After some confusion, we got them to play ‘I packed my bag’, and then they wanted to play hangman (they explained that they wanted to play that by miming hanging themselves, so creative..!) So for a lesson that had no preparation, it was actually okay! And they learnt some new words as well. So now we have that class every Saturday morning.

Then we did the most Russian thing we have done so far – we went to the forest to find mushrooms. We were convinced that we were going to be terrible, and at first we kind of were, since we managed to collect the wrong type of mushroom (and we thought we’d done so well!!). However, armed with a knife, and with a lot of help from our resident mushroom police woman Vika (who showed us how to tell whether a mushroom is good or bad), we collected a reasonable amount of the weird inside-out, peach coloured mushrooms, at least for our first time mushroom collecting!

Sundays are family days, and non-work days, so Katya invited us for breakfast, lunch and dinner at her house, which was really nice. We had her version of an English breakfast (scrambled eggs and toast and cereal!), chicken soup for lunch, and blinis with honey, jam, or sour cream for dinner. Although it is supposed to be a non-work day, we helped to clean the kitchen for an hour, as Dmitry Morozov was on his way back from Kitezh and they wanted it to be clean for him. There was also a community meeting, which was interesting to listen to, if a little hard to follow. Other than that, we relaxed and watched some films. It was really nice to have a rest day after having lots of busy days, as you really appreciate having the time to just sit and think.

Yesterday we had UKO (Unidentified Kasha Object – we have no idea what it was) for breakfast, and then I went to Masha’s house to do some ironing, which is actually one of my favourite jobs because you get to listen to music while you’re working. Plus they have an adorable kitten in that house, and a really nice wood fire, so it’s really cozy.

We sat in on two of Sasha’s English lessons, which were really interesting, although we had to correct her a couple of times (for example, she said ‘to take care about’ rather than ‘to take care of’), which we felt a bit bad about, but she said it was really helpful. She invited us to meet her 10 minutes before her lessons so we can go through the materials and check that it’s all correct.

Lunch was UMO (Unidentified Meat Object) soup, with egg and meat salad, which was funny because I didn’t like the meat and Lois can’t eat egg.

Lena offered to give us Russian lessons twice a week, and our first one was last night. It was really good to go over the basics again and fill in the gaps in my knowledge (I never knew the words for niece and nephew), and she’d printed us out worksheets and gave us exercise books and homework, so it’s like being back at school!

She asked me to give her son Gary (not his actual name, but his real name is hard to spell) French lessons, starting today, only it’s now 9pm, and he still hasn’t turned up, so I’m guessing he’s not coming. Plus, we thought he was in his late 20s or early 30s because he’s a teacher here…. turns out he’s 17. Mind = blown..!

Today I just had an hour of ironing at Masha’s house, and then moving firewood around ready for winter. We normally all work in a chain to pass the wood down, only I managed to drop a big bit on my foot, which, instead of sympathy, earned me a lot of angry looks from the kids, and moans that I had slowed down the line. I’m putting their grumpiness down to the fact that it was really hot work and they wanted it to be over, because they aren’t normally like that. For dinner we had not so yummy buckwheat with salad and one meatball, but, for some reason we can’t work out, we had the most amazing cake afterwards – it was strawberry cream and sponge with loads of fruit on top. The last time we had cake like that, it was Zhenya’s 12th birthday, which was also amazing; it was a feast worthy of Harry Potter – lots of fruit styled in so many different ways, it looked so great and must’ve taken ages to do! Everyone had cake, and they let balloons off, and (this is the strangest part) although there were a few bowls of chocolates on the table, nobody touched them. Nobody! At an English birthday, they’d be the first to go! But here, it’s all about the fruit! The chocolate was not touched until all the fruit was gone, and even then, the kids only took one or two bits. Amazing. But my favourite part of the party was when every kid and every adult took turns to say something nice about the birthday girl. It’s such a lovely idea, and it was even better because Zhenya has only been at Orion for a year, so it was really good to see how accepted she is here. It’s something that I think is missing from parties in the UK. Plus, she clearly wasn’t expecting to get any presents, so her face really lit up when she realised she’d been given a new art set. Kids in the UK seem to expect and be given so much, so for a kid to be so happy with an art set, and not the latest laptop or something, was really great to see.

A very late update

The sign for Orion

I have been in Orion since the 29th, but my excuse for not updating this blog is that we only just found the guy with the wi-fi password! Anyway, so it’s been a very busy 8 days so far…

Orion is a very tiny village in basically the middle of nowhere. Each house looks completely different, and they are built in a circle around the school/dining room/kitchen building. We spent the first few days in the Flagman house, which is owned by the Heads of the community, but we then moved into the ‘Byelie Dom’ (the white house), which is huge, and could probably sleep about 30 – in fact it’s where the whole community lived while the village was still being built.



A view of the village

There’s so much to say that I don’t know where to start! Everyone here is really nice and welcoming, despite the warnings we had in the leaflet before we arrived. I don’t think I've ever drunk so much tea! Also,the village is perfect for me because they have so many cats and kittens it’s ridiculous – you rarely see the same cat twice. They also have two pregnant cows, three dogs, some rabbits, some chickens, and a horse. We decided to adopt a cat for our house, so we brought one in (we named it Ash because it was sitting in the ashes of the barbecue when we saw it), and it sat on our laps for a while… before wandering off into one of the rooms which was painted to look like a meadow, and pooed. Nice! Still can’t actually believe that happened….

Everyday is very busy; Katya the volunteers co-ordinator gives us a timetable each day. We wash up after breakfast everyday, and then we have some kid of community work, like taking firewood from to forest to the village, or cleaning jars ready to preserve food for the winter, ironing, helping in the kitchen, cleaning (including Sergey the computer guy’s house, which was… challenging), cleaning toilets, and cleaning the banya (sauna). We also teach the kindergarten English on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Our first lesson, I’ll admit, did not go to plan. There are only 3 kids in the kindergarten, but honestly it felt like 20! They’d only just woken up from their nap, so they were grouchy and had way too much energy, and we’d spent the day cleaning and hauling wood around, so we were tired. Basically, they learnt nothing that lesson whatsoever. However, the next lesson, we came prepared, and after letting them play outside for half an hour, they were happy to sit down and colour in the worksheets we’d made for them, and then watch The Little Mermaid in English. It was so much calmer than the previous lesson, it was amazing! So we have planned our subsequent lessons like that one, and have some good ideas for incorporating learning the alphabet with Halloween etc.



The school and dining room

I decided before I came to Orion that I would try to eat meat and fish in an attempt to not be awkward, so having been a vegetarian for six years, it was a bit of a challenge, but I have eaten pretty much everything that Galina the cook has produced, including herring in a fur coat, which was essentially herring hidden between layers of grated beetroot, carrot and potato and a lot of sour cream. The porridge, which is called ‘kasha’, varies daily (and sometimes we don’t have it at all). It can have oats, but on our first morning, it was semolina, and the day after, it was made with macaroni. Today, we had rice pudding for breakfast (which my Dad would love!). Yesterday, we had pancakes, and another day, we had tvorog, which is cottage cheese, but in a pancake. On our very long drive to reach Orion (it should take an hour but actually took 3 because there was so much traffic and Russian’s are terrifying drivers – at one point we were driving in the hard shoulder…), Yura the driver bought us some tvorog which was covered in chocolate. That probably sounds disgusting, but was actually really good. Other than that, we've had a lot of soup. We also had a barbecue to mark the start of term, where they gave us wine; they asked us which we wanted, and Lois just said ‘byelie’ (white), but it turns out if you say that, it literally means vodka!

We spent 2 hours today supposedly helping the kids with a craft activity, but there was enough for us to join in, and we took far longer painting our tote bags than the kids did… Plus, my ‘artwork’ was then laughed at… but then I was never any good at art anyway, and pretty much just made a huge mess attempting to make brown… but it was really fun, even though I might just pretend one of the kids made it, not me..!
This post has already gone on too long, so thanks for reading! I’ll try to update again soon.

An introduction

My name is Vicky, and I am studying BA Russian Studies. This year is my third year, and therefore is my compulsory year abroad. I will be spending six months in Russia.

For the first half of the six months, I will be volunteering for three months in a village called Orion, which is about an hour and a half’s drive away from Moscow. I will be teaching English, milking goats, and making myself useful, with my friend Lois who is also studying Russian.

I had never heard of Orion, or its sister village Kitezh, until Lois mentioned it to me, and, as I wanted to do some volunteering on my year abroad, and because she was so enthusiastic about it, I decided that this was the place for me. Both of these villages take orphans from awful backgrounds and give them a new life, with foster families, good education, and therapy. Although I know that this will be a challenge, having worked with AIDS orphans three years ago in Namibia (near Windhoek), I am looking forward to it, although this will be the longest time I have ever been outside of the UK!

I was studying Russian and Chinese Studies Joint Honours at the start of this year, but have since dropped Chinese. I was supposed to be going to study Mandarin at my university’s campus in China, but now I am looking for somewhere in Russia to spend three months.

One of my life goals is to visit every continent, and so far I have visited just Europe and Africa. As I thought I would be studying in China, I thought I could tick off Asia, but this is not possible at the moment so I’ll just have to wait and see what happens…!

Thanks for reading.

..

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
- Robert Frost