I Do What With These Scissors?

Ok so clearly (not really clearly for you as I can't get myself to an Internet cafe to post any of these on time anyways) I'm not doing well at this whole keeping a blog thing. Anyways, here is what I remember of the last week (it is all true no matter how untrue it seems).  Upon arrival Thursday morning to Babies, we were going to garden again. This had previously seemed like a very calming way to start off the day. Then we were handed scissors. Household scissors. Maybe one step up from safety scissors. We were instructed to cut the grass with them. I kid you not. CUT. THE. GRASS. So our group of volunteers and two translators (one of which was wearing a skin-tight clubbing dress with a lace back because that's just how you dress to volunteer here) spent the next two hours giving the grass a hair cut. Totally normal. By hour two of my fun carpal tunnel volunteer work I was ready to sell my soul to do just about anything else. Lucky for me, Sveta took pitty on me and my roommate Lauren and allowed us to go with a group of two-year-olds to the amusement park.  Ok. Maybe you're thinking, "Wow! Russia has an amusement park?! That must be awesome, just like six flags!" No. It is not awesome like six flags. It is in a parking lot of an abandoned movie theater. It pretty much looks like a carnival that goes town to town and sets up in parking lots in the US but furnished exclusively by rides and attractions that didn't make the cut anywhere else (such as the "log flume" ride where you have to push the logs (read: offensive native american canoes) around the river yourself. There is no jet system. The water is so still algae can grow. But once you've begun to push your offensive canoe, your small Russian orphans go trough a TEEPEE. Yes. I am rarely offended by anything but that was pretty damn offensive. Then we went to drag queen Mickey mouse accompanied by a cartoon horse toting a tequila barrel. It was a carousel.  Other than the fact that Lauren and I thought we would be abducted ourselves in the haunted carnival of death, we blew some bubbles for the children, sent them down a completely age-inappropriate bouncy house slide, and all left unharmed.  The rest of the work week consisted of pretty much the same strange scissor grass ordeal followed by pushing around baby Anya and Maxim around for hours upon hours to make them go to sleep.

Want to learn about going abroad to fabulous places like Yaroslavl and have your own ridiculous experiences? Go to crossculturalsolutions.org!