Finally!!!!

Not finally, I have been moved to a cat-free apartment in a good neighborhood...but finally, I am updating my blog! I wrote a really long update on Thursday but my computer ran out of battery right before I could publish it :(

Update on Extra curricular activities

So I quit the kindergarten, because the administration of the kindergarten wasn't very friendly and accommodating, and because it was really far away from where I live, and the Russian kindergarteners weren't interested in learning English, and that is why we were going there. At first though, the administration didn't really care and let all of the students whose parents didn't pay for them to be in the "intensive English learning" section play with the kids whose parents did, but then they separated them and it became a lot less fun.

Instead, I am volunteering right now at Dom Miloserdie. It is an institutionalized foster care system; children who have been taken away from their parents due to their parents being alcoholics or another bad living situation live there for a year while their parents try to get them back, or if their parents are unable to get them back they can be adopted after a year. The kids there range from 3 to 17.

Also, my friend Erin (who is from Iowa) and I are heading up a Toys for Tots program for the kids at Dom Miloserdie. I am going to be very busy!

My region discoveries
My metro stop - Prospekt Bolshevikov - means Prospekt of the Bolsheviks. I somehow did not make the connection until just recently!

The big abandoned field that for some reason hasn't been developed - - the former city landfill!!! That explains the way that it is a hill and a very unnatural hill.

My street means Latvian archers, who were a group of archers that helped with the revolution before Stalin killed them all...familiar story....

Travel plans

I have plans to travel. I travel by a luxury night train (courtesy of my tuition to the program) on Wednesday night, and then my travel week starts on Sunday. I plan to do the Zolotoe Koltso. That is a modern name given to a group of medieval cities around Moscow that have old museums, churches, monestaries, etc.

I bout a guidebook, and the guidebook said NOT to go after November or before April, and not to rely on public transportation, because it is complicated, etc.

I'll show them!!!!

I'm going with my friend Anna who is from Oregon. She has a really good sense of direction and is really nice. Some other people were going to go to, but they wanted to waste all of their time on a train going to the south of Russia (my words not theirs).