Day 5 ~ Tuesday ~ First Day of Internship

07. July ~ Tuesday ~ First Day of Internship

It’s a little after 10:30 and again I am really tired! I guess all of this walking around and being busy all day is the reason why. Oh well.

Breakfast this morning was really good. It consisted of eggs with blini and crème with strawberries on top. You would think that wouldn’t be good with eggs, but the taste of the egg isn’t as strong as you would think. I don’t know if that makes sense, but trust me, it’s really good.

Getting to school this morning was interesting as always. Left earlier then yesterday and this time took a bus, and went to the bus stop around the corner. I was supposed to wait here and get on bus 36. That same bus picks up Masha and we would go to school together. Well Olga and I waited and waited, and it never came. Instead we took a taxi. Tomorrow morning Olga says I should take bus 20 instead, and its 9 stops to school. So, we’ll see how it goes.

Michelle was about 15 minutes late, because she waited a lot longer for bus 36 and eventually she herself took a taxi. Two other people from class who walk, walked in the opposite direction for a while so they were late too. Hopefully tomorrow is more successful!

As for getting home, it’s really easy! Bus 16, seven or eight stops depending on where I get on. I get on either in front of the university or the stop closer to the orphanage where I have my internship. Both locations are located off the same street, the street is just long so it had various bus stops.

We had a quiz in school today, I am thinking that we are probably going to have one during every class. Oh well. Painting went better, I wasn’t as messy and I cleaned my brushes better before mixing colors! I am painting a spoon, and soon a small plate. While we were painting outside there was a radio playing and it was playing English music that had been redone in Russian. It was soo strange but we were enjoying it! It was weird because you could recognize the tune and what the song was supposed to be, it was just sung in Russian.

Anyhow, school today was better. It’s still hard, but I don’t feel as bad as I did yesterday. Speaking with others, I am not the only one who has a hard time with it, although some of us are better than others, but at least we’re all in the same boat. Although, as Francesca said yesterday, it’s a sinking boat. It’s not that bad, yet. Haha.

Olga made the same thing for me at lunch because I told her I loved it soo much.
After school, which ends at around 2:30, Francesca and I have our internship from 4-6. Instead of going home and then coming back, today I went to her house. Francesca and I ate vegetables, like a stir fry that Elena had left over, and then time for tea! (Oh, I forgot to take a picture of the stir fry, oh well.. haha). With the tea Elena served us something that I forgot the name of, however, it looks like cookie dough and tastes like cheesecake. It has raisins in it and I also put strawberries on it, soo great!

A note about these strawberries! They are better than in the US. They are smaller however they are less watery, sweeter, and overall just taste a whole lot better. However, they only grow in the summer (and maybe spring) just not winter. I don’t usually like eating strawberries at home by themselves because they aren’t that sweet, have tartness to them, I guess. Overall, the strawberries here are just soo sweet!

The internship was really good. Francesca and I got there a little after four and the children were just coming inside from doing something, and it was time to eat and have tea. They were given small saucers of what looked like soup. Reminded me of the stories that mom told me about, I counted the children eating soup in the orphanage.
There are ten children, seemed to be an even number of boys and girls from ages 4-7. They are adorable. At first they couldn’t say anything to us because they had to eat, and then get ready to play outside but they were very curious and watched Francesca and I as we waited.

At first being there was really uncomfortable. Personally just watching the children was weird in the sense that, wow, I used to be one of them! I was thinking soo many different things, it was crazy. Personally I want to know what circumstances led them here, and I wonder what kind of life they’ll have. It’s a lot to think about and it was a lot to take in. I know I am very lucky.

Francesca and I were not supposed to start the internship for another two weeks or so, and we both wish we had a little bit more Russian language experience before we started. Oh well. It does make things really challenging.

The building that they live in isn’t as big as I thought it would be, but compared to the size of homes and apartments here, it is big. There is a large main room where there are chairs and tables for coloring and such, a piano, a TV, drawings on the walls, a few couches. There are about three or four rooms off the one side of the main room, and a hallway on the other that leads to other parts of the building that I assume is the kitchen and offices for workers. We didn’t get a tour or anything, so I am not sure.

Being my first day and all I really did not want to take out the camera and take pictures, I’ll wait a little bit.

So, we then went outside, and the little girls introduced themselves. They seemed shy, however, that could be because of the language barrier as well. The workers got some balls and we got in a circle with a few of the little girls and tossed the ball around. Eventually this led to practicing Russian and English vocabulary.

There is one little girl there, named Alla, who is very interested in the English language and seems overall very smart and interested in learning. She writes in cursive better than myself and Francesca. Anyways, she started asking us what different things we had were in English, and so we went back and forth asking each other things and saying it in both languages.

After that we sat at a table and started coloring. Alla wanted us to write out the English and Russian alphabet, and Francesca also wrote out the Spanish alphabet. Alla was soo interested and practiced pronouncing everything we were telling her, she really is a bright girl. She even made Francesca and I flowers from folding paper! Francesca made Alla a paper crane, and then Alla asked her to show her how to make it. So Alla and I made one as Francesca showed us. Well, let’s just say Alla understood better than I did and hers turned out nicely.

There were two other girls who sat and watched but did not really say much, they were coloring pictures. One of the girls had drawn a picture that I found before I left and it was of myself. It‘s actually pretty good and so I took it home with me.
Additionally, I think that the orphanage is also a day care, because some of the children had their parents coming to pick them up. The workers said that some of the children stay at the orphanage at night, and others go home and then come back in the morning. That makes me wonder!

I ate a whole lot for dinner, triple what I normally eat. Olga made stir-fry with green and red peppers and left over cutlets from last night and some other sausage. From there she added pasta and cooked it. Then, she put egg and milk and cream cheese and the stir fry together, grated cheese over it and cooked it all together until the egg was done. It was really good. However, now that Olga see’s how much I can potentially eat, she might make me want to eat more and more and more. She doesn’t force me to eat and eat and eat like I was told she would. Uh oh!

We were soo full after dinner, so went and watched television; I did some homework and watched the animals play. Shira loves my pens and plastic bags. Olga and I heard rustling in the kitchen and Shira was into all of her bags. Olga gave Shira and empty one and Shira had a whole bunch of fun getting into it and doing all sorts of silly things. At one point she had put holes in it, and her head was poking out of one hole, and her tail another. I laugh soo hard watching her. She’s really cute!
By the way, I see Obama is in Moscow, it’s on the news. All I could understand was that they talked about Economics. The news showed them having tea. Obama in Russia, for some reason that makes me laugh.

Oh well, today was a great day, I know I am going to love my internship. Despite feeling uncomfortable at first because we were just sitting around, now that we know where we’re doing and stuff, it’s going to be soo great! Tomorrow I am going to bring them some markers and coloring books!

Well, off to bed early tonight, hopefully I can get an alarm clock to work. The alarm I brought from home doesn’t work, perhaps the one in my phone will! Oh yeah mom, that watch that I got a battery for, well the strap broke as I was getting off the plane in Helsinki, so, no watch for me! Although, I don’t really need it, and I’ve got a cell phone!

I hope to get online and post more pictures tomorrow (Wednesday).
Goodnight, with love, Sasha.