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.