Day Three

On the third day of our trip, we typically get up kinda early and have a good, hardy Russian breakfast before departing the hotel for Sovietsk. The drive from Kirov to Sovietsk takes somewhere around ninety minutes. It goes by quickly because of the anticipation of seeing the kids and orphanage staff again and besides, the scenery is pretty nice.

When we first arrived at the orphanage on our last trip, the kids were very shy (some of them never stopped being shy). But it didn't take Katya long to warm up to Sarah again. She remembered Sarah from our previous visit a year and a half before. I had never met Sergey in person, but had exchanged a few letters with him. I wouldn't consider either of us to be conversationalists, but I was happy to meet him and I think the feeling was mutual. We also met some of the caregivers, orphanage staff, and of course, Galina, the orphanage director. She led us on a tour of the building and its grounds (a beatific setting, I must say) and then showed us to our rooms.

By then it was midday and time for lunch. We shared with our hosts a meal of borscht, potatoes, fresh vegetables, and fish. As is customary, following the meal I delivered a (somewhat awkward) impromptu speech telling them how excited we were to be there and how very delicious the food was. Galina also delivered a speech thanking us for coming. We were then directed to follow Galina to her office for a meeting to plan to the upcoming week. There wasn't much planning, really. She mostly just told us what we'd be doing for the next four days, which was fine with us.

Then we divided up by gender. I went with Vadim Petrovich, the wood shop teacher, and Sarah went with the sweet-voiced needlecraft teacher, Yelena. Part of the plan for the week was for the two of us to learn some skills from the kids. I would learn how to make things out of wood and Sarah was supposed to learn how to make things from thread and needles. Vadim Petrovich, who's an older gentleman, treated me and Misha (our translator) to a thirty minute PowerPoint presentation about all of the skills he teaches the kids in his shop. The presentation was unexpected, but actually quite informative.

After the presentation, we were able to spend some down time with the kids. There weren't many around at the time (most were away at summer camp) so we just sat down in the common area where the boys were hanging out and tried to strike up (and sustain) a conversation. Not a terribly easy task, but I think it was a good start toward getting to know each other.