Birthdays, Banyas and a Super Cute New Roomie

Hello!

So since my last blog post a lot has happened… not only am I now legally allowed to apply for a provisional licence to drive a large heavy goods vehicle in the UK (I’m 21), but Gaff the kitten moved into my room for two weeks, I’ve been to Moscow for a day trip, won an award at the ‘KinOrion’ film festival, experienced my first Russian banya, and Orion has also celebrated a landmark age of 10 years

Gaff exploring his new surroundings outside

Our 10th birthday decorations for the White House 

Lizzie and I looking happy chopping cucumbers for the Orion birthday celebrations

A mini Nottingham uni reunion as past Orion volunteers Marina and Fabienne came back for the birthday

I’ve been here for over five weeks now and already I feel like time is going too quickly and I have a feeling that I’m not going to want to leave at the end of August. The past two weeks here were very quiet as some of the families were on holiday in the Crimea (the reason why the kitten moved into my room), but this meant that our days were very relaxed and we had lots of time to get to know the children that were still here. Here is what a typical day has looked like for the past couple of weeks:

6.00 – Gaff wakes up and jumps on my bed, only to be swiftly thrown off

Gaff in the morning

9.00 – I wake up

9.30 – Morning exercise with Lizzie

10.00 – Breakfast and then washing up on alternate days

11.00 – Morning work (gardening, cleaning, painting the classrooms, making veniks for the banya or hacking the dangerous ‘Borshevik’ plants to death)

13.00 – Perhaps a Russian lesson with Katya or free time playing games with the children

14.00 – Lunch

15.00 – Activities with volunteers (teaching languages / drawing / craft)

16.00 – Teach Katya French (Katya is a foster parent, teacher, psychologist and the volunteers coordinator here and she is very keen to learn French and so I have been having one to one lessons with her)

17.00 – Free time until dinner, usually spent playing endless games of Uno or volleyball with the two Maxims or being taught how to skate on the ripstick by the younger Maxim

Maxim skating round on the ripstick

19.00 – Dinner

20.00 – The evenings here are varied, although recently we have been having some Russian film nights at Katya’s house (baking some sort of cake or very sweet treat beforehand is obligatory), or we will play outside until it is time for tea and lots of biscuits and sweets at around 22.00, either in the white house or with a family (despite the British stereotype, I think Russians drink far more tea than we do)

A day trip to the waterfall included picking wild strawberries

One of quite a few little snakes we have seen

As I said at the beginning of this post, I celebrated my 21st birthday here in Orion on the 17th June. Despite managing to ruin/organise my own surprise party, I had a great day. It was my first birthday away from home and it did feel slightly strange at first but when I was given a card made by the other volunteers and signed by people living here in Orion, all my slight ‘missing home feelings’ went away and I realised just how at home I feel here. We spent the rest of the day making biscuits with Sonya and Masha and then after dinner we had the ‘surprise’ tea party in the White House for me and Josephine (another volunteer whose birthday was the day before) where I received some adorable gifts from the children that came with an individual ‘toast’ from everyone at the table wishing me a future full of good health, wealth, success and free from scandals. By the end of the day I had spoken to my parents and me and Lizzie had drunk the bottle of Crimean champagne that I was given by Masha and Anton (heads of the community) and I felt very happy, thankful and so lucky to be living here in such an amazing place. (I promise I’ll soon stop being soppy about how much I like it here…)

Birthday baking

A Коля cake (Коля/Kolya) is what I'm called here

In my birthday glasses with everyone at the tea party

The day before my birthday was our day trip to Moscow, and it was great to see most of the main tourist sites and have a pizza and a beer in a restaurant, and now I can’t wait to spend 4 days there with my family when they come to visit at the end of my time here in Orion.

 

Expect more touristy snaps of me and my family in August

After hours of making veniks from birch tree branches, we finally got to experience an authentic Russian banya and in the hottest steam room I have ever been in, drinking a very hot cup of herbal tea, I was beaten by the fruits of our labour. 

The venik making in progress

After each short session in the hot room, we came outside to pour cold water (they called it warm, but it was definitely very very cold) over ourselves and then we went back in to drink more tea and sit and sweat. I’m hoping that we have another banya soon because although my description of it doesn’t sound like that much fun, it is definitely something you need to experience to understand how great it is and as Yura explained, the Banya was indeed one of the main reasons why the Russian soldiers defeated France in the Patriotic War of 1812.

Dima and Yura bringing us a Birch tree delivery

Cleaning the banya the next day was the perfect phototunity with the venik and obligatory banya hat... 

There are lots more things that I have been up to that I haven't been able to mention in this post (my laptop has no Internet at the moment, so doing this all on my phone hasn't been that easy), but all the photos below show some more of my adventures here in Russia. The only one that maybe needs more explaining is the Irish dancing - performing an Irish dancing routine that we learnt in 3 days in front of around 40 people for Orion's birthday celebrations was perhaps one of the most surreal things I've ever done.

Dima and Gaff

A rehearsal for my Irish dancing debut

An apple crumble cooking session with the children

Artyom putting all 6 kittens on Lizzie

Our sushi evening

Making sushi for the first time

The new 'ploschadka' playing area that I have been helping to paint

I have also just had news that I'm moving house! I'll be moving from the White House to Flagman which is where the heads of the community Masha and Anton live with their family (and Gaff!!). It's about a minute walk at most from where I am at the moment, but I'm really excited to be moving in with a family because it will be a great opportunity to improve my language even more.

If you want to keep even more up to date with everything I'm doing here, Instagram is probably the best way (nickmslater - link at the top of the page), and once again credit goes to Sergei for the professional looking photos from Orion's birthday. 

До свидания!