How I ended up with this cucumber

You might be wondering how I ended up taking a photograph of a cucumber setting on my hand. Well, here's how it happened. After we had been at Sovietsk Orphanage for about a day and a half, Sergey and I had, in a way, found our rhythm. As I've mentioned, he's painfully shy. In fact, he seemed even to be a bit embarassed that Sarah and I had come there from America to visit him. It was all he could do to stay in the same room as us for more than a few minutes at a time without having to escape to the solace of his bedroom or some other such private place. I didn't take his constant scurrying away personally, but I had really started to wonder what he thought about us. But I got a clue as to what he thought by a small, meaningful action. We were hanging out with some of the kids when Sergey took off again, so I went to look for him. When I found him, he handed me a cucumber that he had picked for me, and then promptly ran away again before I could even say thank you. I don't know all that much about Russian culture, but I think that giving someone a cucumber as a gift probably means that you think of them as a friend. The cucumber was delicious.