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!
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