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.