Day 39 ~ Last Full Week!

10. August ~ Last full week begins!

I woke up today with quite a runny nose and all day I’ve spent the day blowing my nose. I think it’s just my sinuses acting up, I wonder if the banya caused them to want to clear themselves out! My nose was like a faucet. I was quickly running out of tissues, and tissues in Russia aren’t really a big thing.

When I arrived at work today the children were all watching Snow White, we finally watched it to the end! All the kids said hello and Daniel came right over and gave me a hug, then asked me if I had my telephone so he could play with it. I hadn’t so he was a little sad, but soon got over it. We went right outside and most of the day was filled with arts and crafts. We made these cone figures and put faces on them. It was fun. I pushed Daniel on the swings since he loves doing that, and helped the other boys build castles in the sandbox. I noticed that Veka wasn’t there although when I wsa leaving her mother showed up and dropped her off. My first impression was that her mother looked extremely young, perhaps even my age, but I don’t know. Veka didn’t want to go inside to eat, she wanted to swing and started to cry.

One thing about Veka, she cries anytime she doesn’t get her way, you try to take something from her or basically when you aren’t giving her the attention she wants. Initially I was like I am not going to like this, but when she isn’t crying she’s very sweet. I figure at home she may not get a lot of attention, but she’s going to have an interesting time at life if she continues to cry about not getting her way.
There were two new kids that showed up too, a small girl named Christina, and a boy named Sameer. Sameer looks a lot bigger than the older children; I am not sure how old he is. Christina has really short hair, as short as a boy and the workers were checking her hair for lice. I wonder if she has been in other orphanages.

After the morning work I met Steve at the Kremlin for lunch. We talked about our jobs and listened to some of the music on the big screen TV. Europe and Russia sure loves its techno music. Only here in Russia can you still hear the Backstreet Boys, “Quit playing games with my heart”, it’s only like 10 years old. I was amused and happy at the same time.

When I went back to work at night I basically spent the afternoon doing more arts and crafts and pushing Daniel and some others on the swings. It was a calm afternoon. Overall I am enjoying this internship, the children may be difficult at times, but I really like them.

For dinner Olga made what looked and tasted a lot like a hamburger with noodles and vegetables. I really enjoyed it. We spent some time talking about what kinds of food, books, and music Olga and I like to listen to.

Olga said some of her favorites include fruits, meats, vegetables and salted fish pie (similar to what we had at the village I assume). As for music, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and ballet music such as Tchaikovsky . Classical music is her favorite, but she doesn’t like Rachmaninov because as she said, she likes “nice music”. I was surprised, only because Rachmaninov was born in Novgorod.

Olga loves to read, which is obvious if you see all of her bookshelves. One of her favorite writers is Chehov. She loves history and classical books. Surprisingly she doesn’t like Tolstoy.

We also talked about what I like, and more about what my family is up to. It was a really nice conversation overall. After dinner we went to the store because Olga has to bake a cake the next day for a friend at work. The store is right across the street. Its small compared to American stores. The cashiers sit, which is not fair! I noticed that cards to not have envelopes to accompany them and there is a whole isle for flavors of tea, and different type of chocolate. Furthermore, the coffee section is very small and there is a whole isle for beer, vodka and alcohol. There are little stores and markets on every street I assume because it’s hard to take your groceries on the buses and that is how a majority of people get around. When we retuned Beesha was eager to go for a walk so we took him for a walk around the big building complexes. Another thing I’ve come to notice, there are little playgrounds in the center of each building complex. It’s a little kid’s paradise! It looks like Russia is very family friendly in this regard

When we came back Olga spent the evening making her cake and I sat and watched her, and read a bit from a new book I am reading. I have now started to read, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I was surprised that Olga knew of the Author, although he is from Prague. It’s a good novel so far.

The batter that Olga used to make the 6 layers of the cake looked like cookie dough and had a honey flavor. She took a lot of lemons and shredded them whole, added sugar, cooked it, and spread them on top of the layers. She also had another saucer with milk and a whole block of butter that was cooking. When I went to bed at 12 she was still waiting for the milk stuff to be the correct consistency and was adding other things to it.

I was so tired I just had to go to bed, I wonder how long Olga will be up!? Oh well, watching her cook is fun!
Love,
Sasha.