- 2/14/2008 10:00:00 PMMoscow Trip - Day 4Today we headed back to the orphanage with Marina to get a more detailed visit. Marina once again said we only had a limited amount of time. We went into the blue building and grabbed some of the gifts we had left from yesterday. Yuri quickly brought us to all the key locations. The first stop would be the second floor of the blue building There were some older boys up there and Yuri gave them one of the boxes of gifts. We went downstairs and headed back toward the director's office. Yuri's right knee and left heel hurt so bad, he must go down the stairs backward to avoid bending his joints. Downstairs on the wall were hung many pictures of the children at various events. Yuri was in some of them. They also had some large murals on the wall. One of them was of a large cartoon man character with wings and a jar of something. If I didn't know I was in a children's orphanage, it might be scary
The second stop was Yuri's building which was across the court yard from the blue building. Outside, some of Yuri's friends were playing. They had little skis that they strapped onto their boots. They scooted up and down the sidewalk under the supervision of Yuri's former tutor. Yuri opened a box of candy canes that we had brought. He immediately took a handful for himself and shoved them into his pocket. Then he gave each of his friends one. The tutor had a look on her face that said, "Yup - that's Yuri". Peggy said firmly, "YURI !". Yuri gave the rest of the box to his tutor and we went inside.
Yuri showed us his locker where he kept his coat and boots. Then we into the sleeping area. This is a large room with 10 beds. There are 4 larger beds and 6 smaller ones. All of the beds are much smaller than a standard twin. If I were to lay on them, my head would be near the headboard and my butt would be nearly touching the footboard with my thighs and legs hanging over the end. Each bed has a fairly large pillow on it. One thing to note about the pillow cases is that they do not open on the narrow end, but on the wide end.
The next stop was in the "Day Room". It has desks, shelves, a TV, some games, and a kitten. Yuri showed us the desk he sits at and some of his school books. The grades they receive in school are not in the form of A, B, C, D, and F but rather 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. Yuri had a wide range of numbers in his school books. Like any other normal American boy, he can do good work - when he wants to. Yuri asked his tutor if he could bring his books and book bag with him and she said "yes". Then his best friend, Ruslan gave Yuri his math book. Apparently Ruslan thinks this will be a good excuse as to why his math book is missing when he goes to school this afternoon, "Yuri took it". What is a best friend for?
Marina came to us and said, "it's time to go" and we quickly left the building. The other adopting family was having their court hearing and they were about to break for lunch. Even though thet are a day ahead of us in the process, they will be delayed one day because Monday is a national holiday here. Some kind of military/veteran day or something.
We headed back to Peter and Luda's flat. On the way home, I noticed another thing - this time it was the amount and frequency of gas stations. The ones in Moscow were like a pit stop on a race track. The were parallel to the road so that you could quickly pull off to the right, get your gas and then immediately merge with traffic again. The other thing about them is that there doesn't seem to be that many of them around. In all the driving we did in Moscow, I saw 1. On the way home from the orphanage, I saw 1. This is very strange considering the number of vehicles on the road. Then again, both cities - Moscow and Cheboksary - have extensive public transit systems.
When we arrived back at the flat, Yuri and the other family's children were watching Star Wars Episode 3 on a small DVD player. It was in English, but Yuri didn't mind. In fact, he took the player from them and set it on his lap. For lunch today, Luda made some kind of beef and pork cutlet. It was served with mashed potatoes with an onion/carrot gravy. It looked a little strange but tasted great. Every meal is served with this drink called "kompot". That is com-pote - with a long "o". Generally speaking, it is made from some kind of berry (strawberry, currant, cranberry, blueberry) and some sugar that gets boiled in water until all of the juice is extracted. It is good but some times a little sweet. Not nearly as sweet as the frozen juice concentrate you would buy at the store. When you combine this with some of the rich food, you have a potentially deadly combination of heart-attack waiting.
Another interesting thing is that they informed me that if I wanted to pray before a meal, then they would wait for me to do so before they ate. It is not normal for them to pray before their meals but they go along with the American visitors who wish to do so. So at each meal, I lead the family in prayer.
All this week is the world bi-athalon championships. This is a big deal around here and Luda likes to spend part of each afternoon watching. Today there was an athlete from the area competing. Luda gets quite worked up watching. She jumps up and down and cheers just like some people do during a football or basket ball game in America. It is as interesting to watch her as it is to watch the TV.
Luda showed us some pictures of other families that she has hosted. She told us some of their stories and they are quite heart wrenching. They all start out tragic and usually end up good - although sometimes not. I asked her for her address so that we could write her and she produced an envelope from another family who had photocopied Luda's hand written address onto the envelope. I guess they wanted to make sure that they didn't mis-translate the address. She has beautiful handwriting but I can't understand a word of it. I asked Luda's daughter - Sveta (pronounced Sv-ee-eah-ta) to translate the address for me. In America, we would normally write it as follows:
Name
Street
City, State Zip
Country
Over here, the order is completely reversed.
Later in the evening, I wanted to get on the internet so I could send a message home. The computer here is in Sveta's room and she is the only one who knows how to get on the internet. Unfortunately she was not around. I had been journaling quite a bit and I wanted to send out what I had so far so I went into our bedroom and powered up the laptop. I had read that much of the daily spam email that is received in America - particularly the ones about some guy from Nigeria who wants to send you some cash if you will just help him out - come from right here in Cheboksary.
I plugged my wireless network card into my laptop thinking, "who knows - perhaps there is a free network available". Sure enough there was. "Do you want to connect?", my laptop asked. "Yes", I responded. That is when the dreaded Blue Screen of Death happened. I have no clue what happened, but now my wireless card is completely neutralized. Every time I stick it in, the laptop crashes within seconds.
As we were getting ready for bed, Peggy was looking out the window at the street below and the other buildings. There was a light snow fall and it was nice. She jumped back from the window and screeched, "Oh My!". I said, "what is it?". "There is a naked man in the window across the street". Of course my first and natural response was, "What? Where?". "Right there..." she said. I said, "I see a man but he is wearing shorts". "He wasn't a minute ago", she replied. Welcome to the other side of the world.
After we went to bed, I made another interesting discovery. Before the trip, we were worried about our sleeping patterns getting messed up due to jet lag. While that is a definite concern, it is not the only one. There are two others in particular I'm speaking of. One is eating patterns. The other is the opposite of that - bathroom usage. Let's just say I'm a morning person and leave it at that. We are nine hours ahead so over here I am no longer a morning person, but a night person. So there I was laying in bed, not feeling so well wondering what was wrong. Needless to say, I quickly figured it out and used the bathroom. Then I laid awake all night - extremely hungry.
Here is a little FYI for you, those little orange fishy crackers are great night time snacks. If you ever have to go to Russia, bring some along and save yourself some trouble.
