george and i left our condo in nashville, tennessee about 9am on wednesday the 6th outward bound for nizhny tagil, russia and some long overdo visits to orphanages, a shelter and several hospitals scattered across the russian countryside in the ural mountains. we finally reached nizhny tagil on friday morning at 8am....both exhausted and ready to start visiting the children we hadn’t seen in 4 years! elena antropyanskaya hibbler, our good friend and russian project director, arranged for us to say in her friend’s apartment so we have all the comforts of home in this far away land. it’s going to take some time to adjust to the fact that although the sun goes down somewhere around 11pm, but it never really gets dark. tuesday is the russian independence day....last time we were here, it snowed on independence day...surely hope that doesn’t happen this year!!!!
today we visited the high school where elena teaches english, met some of her students, toured the school’s museum and ate a yummy russian meal prepared by the cafeteria ladies.....salad, borscht, beef, potatoes and slaw, cheese filled pastries, apple juice and hot tea! the instant we finished eating elena said: “let’s so...time to go to Orphanage #1 and teach a cooking class and eat dinner! what? today? teach? dinner? well, off we went with elena, zhenya (her working partner), sue and nikita English students and OUR translators. when we reached Orphanage #1, the girls were anxiously awaiting our arrival....(fyi, nizhny tagil is a city of 400K but has a staggering total of 14 orphanages!! we unloaded our 38 pounds of salsa and tortillas, spices, chicken, 
ground meat, veggies, cheese, pastries, etc, etc, etc and began the visit by checking out the museum of crafts made by the girl residents over the past 40 years. awesome stuff... craft items for display and for sale...tapestries, dolls, toys, jewelry...thousands of handmade treasures by young girls with so much talent and imagination. we then deemed it time to start preparing the first mexican meal probably ever cooked in a russian orphanage! the girls were having so much fun...slicing and chopping and dicing....setting the tables, filling plates and helping the little ones. IT WAS SO COOL! at one point there was a little boy riding on a scooter, a girl jumping rope and a dog with us in the kitchen! russians seem to have the curious habit of talking and talking and talking to you knowing full well you don’t understand a word they are saying. but, funnier is that you find yourself answering even though you aren’t certain what they have asked. just my theory, but i believe that people can always communicate.
while we were cooking, george and friends played some rousing games of ping pong and george performed a few magic tricks to the delight of the children. one of life’s basic truths......every child loves the paper bag trick! everyone seemed to enjoy the fajitas and tacos except the really young kids.....it was the first time i recall seeing folks drink hot tea with lemon while eating mexican food! another russian habit, hot tea with every meal!
we were given some small pillow hearts as gifts and a lovely purple tapestry made by 15 year old Luba! we loaded 2 huge bags of christmas wreaths to bring back to the USA for our friends in texas to sell as a fundraiser for the children’s craft workshop. the children all begged for us to come back and visit again soon. that’s the thing...they don’t care if you bring food or clothes or anything.....all they want is you to come back and see them! i don’t know if we will have time on this trip....we have so many places to visit and so little time....but one thing’s for sure...we’ll be back sometime!
No comments:
Post a Comment