If you’ve never tried to explain Frogger (or Poison Dart Frog, Froggy Murder, whatever you want to call it) to a group of Russian 10 year olds who don’t speak much English while speaking almost no Russian, I highly recommend it. We arrived here in Kirov on Saturday morning, but it feels like it’s been much longer. There was a Russian summer camp in the building when we got here and they leave tomorrow. In the meantime, we’ve been playing Russian and American games, drinking tea, and chatting with the help of Google Translate. They’ve also been helping us with our homework. Classes started Monday, and I think we’ve covered half a semester of material since. They weren’t kidding about this program. Yesterday we made presentations about ourselves and our states in English and Russian and presented them to the kids. We were all kind of awful but it was good practice.
Mira, one of the girls here, had her birthday last night. Sasha (the AFS volunteer who’s staying with us) bought three cakes, but forgot to get forks or plates, so we all just stood around and ate with our hands. It was really fun. The food here is great, and there’s a lot of it. It’s more than anyone could reasonably be expected to eat and yet we are expected to eat it. On the other hand, Theo ate 5 servings of the omelette yesterday so what do I know.
We went on a walking tour of Kirov with some girls from a local high school. It’s a very old city, and it was very interesting to learn about its history, especially the huge impact of the revolution on Kirov’s churches and monuments. On this tour, we visited a Russian Orthodox monastery, which housed several beautiful cathedrals, including St. Seraphim, which is very well known.
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