Thursday may quite possibly have been the best day I had in Russia.
We started out with another double babies day. To make this even better, Natalya (another one of the translators) ensured that we were with our respective groups all week so we got to be with group 6 again. The last double babies day, Becky had only come for half so she had yet to experience the full intensity of a double babies day. What made it even more... fun... was that the kids had been getting a rash from the cushions they put down in the little play house (I’m so surprised... the babies throw up all over them and they look like an orange and brown grandma couch so you can’t tell and they’re almost never cleaned) so we were only allowed to play in the big one. This is especially difficult because when they’re in the big one, they’re technically not allowed to sit/crawl on the floor so they’re confined to a little elevated play pen or our arms and once they figure out that our arms are even an option they would rather be in a pit of porcupines than that play pen. At least we figured out that we could put Masha in the baby walker, Vanya in a stroller (since he’s 2 months old and perpetually upset), and that leaves one of us with Rita and one with Sveta. Even by the end of that, our arms were exhausted... and then we had to go get the big kids.
If I thought it was rough with the few bigger kids I had the other day I had no idea what I was about to be hit with on Thursday. We were given four kids: Katya, who is content anywhere (read: playing peek-a-boo under a blanket) until suddenly she’s not, Anya, who is tiny and quiet, Micha, who is twice the size of any other kid and only wants to be cuddled, and Varya, who is almost as big as Micha and is perpetually maniacally laughing and then bursting into tears. It was like wrangling a tiny petting zoo filled with animals that want to eat each other. I’ve never seen someone look as tired as Becky looked. At one point I was dancing in front of a pen of children, going through and fluffing each chin as they hysterically laughed at me. It was probably the highlight of my life. Then I looked over at Becky who looked like the living dead and it was as though they could smell her weakness. They became as obnoxious as possible and whoever I wasn’t giving my full attention to would throw a fit. Thank goodness we had to give them back and got Sveta and Masha back to walk around with and play with. It was my own little slice of heaven.
That night, Victor decided that he wanted to take us to the Russia vs. Canada hockey game at the Locomotive’s stadium either because he wanted to make himself crazy or because he was blissfully unaware of what exactly taking a group of Americans (more specifically, a group of Lily’s) would entail. Because he is Victor, we got to park in what I can only imagine is an illegal parking zone and walk right up to the entrance. He distributed the tickets (at which point he should have realized what he had gotten himself into because we were already missing Greg and we had only walked from the car to the entrance). The second we got it it was like we were a bunch of monkeys with ADHD. Before Victor could attempt to yell at half of us the other half were all gone and in 14 different locations. I’ve never seen someone turn so red so fast. I thought he was going to blow up the stadium. I didn’t blame him.
We finally got to our seats which were AMAZING and pumped ourselves up while Victor left us to have a smoke and calm down. The game started with the Canadian and Russian national anthems, a tiny snow princess, and more English than I had heard spoken outside the home base in the entire 2 months I had been there. The first period was slow but within the first 3 minutes of the second Canada scored twice. Now, I haven’t been to a lot of sporting events (read: 1) but I’m pretty sure that it was not just the fact that I was new that made these goals so awesome. The one and a half Canadian flags were raised up for about 0.5 seconds, the Russians started their cheer of “WE ARE HELPING” and the stadium started raining maple leaves. Then the cheerleaders (yes, cheerleaders at a hockey game in neon costumes) would start up one of their cheers. By “cheers” I mean roughly choreographed dances that one of them seemed to be making up as they went but it seemed unclear to all parties involved who exactly that one cheerleader was. In the end, Canada won, the Russians had more energy than I would have ever expected a losing team’s fans to have, and we snuck out of that stadium speaking as little English as was humanly possible. It was fabulous.
We started out with another double babies day. To make this even better, Natalya (another one of the translators) ensured that we were with our respective groups all week so we got to be with group 6 again. The last double babies day, Becky had only come for half so she had yet to experience the full intensity of a double babies day. What made it even more... fun... was that the kids had been getting a rash from the cushions they put down in the little play house (I’m so surprised... the babies throw up all over them and they look like an orange and brown grandma couch so you can’t tell and they’re almost never cleaned) so we were only allowed to play in the big one. This is especially difficult because when they’re in the big one, they’re technically not allowed to sit/crawl on the floor so they’re confined to a little elevated play pen or our arms and once they figure out that our arms are even an option they would rather be in a pit of porcupines than that play pen. At least we figured out that we could put Masha in the baby walker, Vanya in a stroller (since he’s 2 months old and perpetually upset), and that leaves one of us with Rita and one with Sveta. Even by the end of that, our arms were exhausted... and then we had to go get the big kids.
If I thought it was rough with the few bigger kids I had the other day I had no idea what I was about to be hit with on Thursday. We were given four kids: Katya, who is content anywhere (read: playing peek-a-boo under a blanket) until suddenly she’s not, Anya, who is tiny and quiet, Micha, who is twice the size of any other kid and only wants to be cuddled, and Varya, who is almost as big as Micha and is perpetually maniacally laughing and then bursting into tears. It was like wrangling a tiny petting zoo filled with animals that want to eat each other. I’ve never seen someone look as tired as Becky looked. At one point I was dancing in front of a pen of children, going through and fluffing each chin as they hysterically laughed at me. It was probably the highlight of my life. Then I looked over at Becky who looked like the living dead and it was as though they could smell her weakness. They became as obnoxious as possible and whoever I wasn’t giving my full attention to would throw a fit. Thank goodness we had to give them back and got Sveta and Masha back to walk around with and play with. It was my own little slice of heaven.
That night, Victor decided that he wanted to take us to the Russia vs. Canada hockey game at the Locomotive’s stadium either because he wanted to make himself crazy or because he was blissfully unaware of what exactly taking a group of Americans (more specifically, a group of Lily’s) would entail. Because he is Victor, we got to park in what I can only imagine is an illegal parking zone and walk right up to the entrance. He distributed the tickets (at which point he should have realized what he had gotten himself into because we were already missing Greg and we had only walked from the car to the entrance). The second we got it it was like we were a bunch of monkeys with ADHD. Before Victor could attempt to yell at half of us the other half were all gone and in 14 different locations. I’ve never seen someone turn so red so fast. I thought he was going to blow up the stadium. I didn’t blame him.
We finally got to our seats which were AMAZING and pumped ourselves up while Victor left us to have a smoke and calm down. The game started with the Canadian and Russian national anthems, a tiny snow princess, and more English than I had heard spoken outside the home base in the entire 2 months I had been there. The first period was slow but within the first 3 minutes of the second Canada scored twice. Now, I haven’t been to a lot of sporting events (read: 1) but I’m pretty sure that it was not just the fact that I was new that made these goals so awesome. The one and a half Canadian flags were raised up for about 0.5 seconds, the Russians started their cheer of “WE ARE HELPING” and the stadium started raining maple leaves. Then the cheerleaders (yes, cheerleaders at a hockey game in neon costumes) would start up one of their cheers. By “cheers” I mean roughly choreographed dances that one of them seemed to be making up as they went but it seemed unclear to all parties involved who exactly that one cheerleader was. In the end, Canada won, the Russians had more energy than I would have ever expected a losing team’s fans to have, and we snuck out of that stadium speaking as little English as was humanly possible. It was fabulous.
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