Summer in Orion - My Russian Year Abroad in Videos

So my year abroad is officially over... It feels great to be back home with family and friends, but making these videos has made me nostalgic already and part of me wants to go back to Orion right now!

I hope these videos give you a real insight into my three months spent in Russia, and as always thank you for watching, and thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read my blog / watch my videos over this past year - it has felt great to share a truly special year with so many people.

Nick

Finally Some Videos - Thanks to Lizzie Broadway

Unfortunately I still haven't been able to upload any videos of my time here because the internet isn't good enough. However, my friend and fellow volunteer Lizzie is now back in the UK and she has uploaded these great videos about her time here in Orion.

I hope these will give you more of an idea about our time here in Russia and some of the things we get up to here in Orion - enjoy! 

http://youtu.be/fv-FNzzLMso

Birthdays, Banyas and a Super Cute New Roomie

Hello!

So since my last blog post a lot has happened… not only am I now legally allowed to apply for a provisional licence to drive a large heavy goods vehicle in the UK (I’m 21), but Gaff the kitten moved into my room for two weeks, I’ve been to Moscow for a day trip, won an award at the ‘KinOrion’ film festival, experienced my first Russian banya, and Orion has also celebrated a landmark age of 10 years

Gaff exploring his new surroundings outside

Our 10th birthday decorations for the White House 

Lizzie and I looking happy chopping cucumbers for the Orion birthday celebrations

A mini Nottingham uni reunion as past Orion volunteers Marina and Fabienne came back for the birthday

I’ve been here for over five weeks now and already I feel like time is going too quickly and I have a feeling that I’m not going to want to leave at the end of August. The past two weeks here were very quiet as some of the families were on holiday in the Crimea (the reason why the kitten moved into my room), but this meant that our days were very relaxed and we had lots of time to get to know the children that were still here. Here is what a typical day has looked like for the past couple of weeks:

6.00 – Gaff wakes up and jumps on my bed, only to be swiftly thrown off

Gaff in the morning

9.00 – I wake up

9.30 – Morning exercise with Lizzie

10.00 – Breakfast and then washing up on alternate days

11.00 – Morning work (gardening, cleaning, painting the classrooms, making veniks for the banya or hacking the dangerous ‘Borshevik’ plants to death)

13.00 – Perhaps a Russian lesson with Katya or free time playing games with the children

14.00 – Lunch

15.00 – Activities with volunteers (teaching languages / drawing / craft)

16.00 – Teach Katya French (Katya is a foster parent, teacher, psychologist and the volunteers coordinator here and she is very keen to learn French and so I have been having one to one lessons with her)

17.00 – Free time until dinner, usually spent playing endless games of Uno or volleyball with the two Maxims or being taught how to skate on the ripstick by the younger Maxim

Maxim skating round on the ripstick

19.00 – Dinner

20.00 – The evenings here are varied, although recently we have been having some Russian film nights at Katya’s house (baking some sort of cake or very sweet treat beforehand is obligatory), or we will play outside until it is time for tea and lots of biscuits and sweets at around 22.00, either in the white house or with a family (despite the British stereotype, I think Russians drink far more tea than we do)

A day trip to the waterfall included picking wild strawberries

One of quite a few little snakes we have seen

As I said at the beginning of this post, I celebrated my 21st birthday here in Orion on the 17th June. Despite managing to ruin/organise my own surprise party, I had a great day. It was my first birthday away from home and it did feel slightly strange at first but when I was given a card made by the other volunteers and signed by people living here in Orion, all my slight ‘missing home feelings’ went away and I realised just how at home I feel here. We spent the rest of the day making biscuits with Sonya and Masha and then after dinner we had the ‘surprise’ tea party in the White House for me and Josephine (another volunteer whose birthday was the day before) where I received some adorable gifts from the children that came with an individual ‘toast’ from everyone at the table wishing me a future full of good health, wealth, success and free from scandals. By the end of the day I had spoken to my parents and me and Lizzie had drunk the bottle of Crimean champagne that I was given by Masha and Anton (heads of the community) and I felt very happy, thankful and so lucky to be living here in such an amazing place. (I promise I’ll soon stop being soppy about how much I like it here…)

Birthday baking

A Коля cake (Коля/Kolya) is what I'm called here

In my birthday glasses with everyone at the tea party

The day before my birthday was our day trip to Moscow, and it was great to see most of the main tourist sites and have a pizza and a beer in a restaurant, and now I can’t wait to spend 4 days there with my family when they come to visit at the end of my time here in Orion.

 

Expect more touristy snaps of me and my family in August

After hours of making veniks from birch tree branches, we finally got to experience an authentic Russian banya and in the hottest steam room I have ever been in, drinking a very hot cup of herbal tea, I was beaten by the fruits of our labour. 

The venik making in progress

After each short session in the hot room, we came outside to pour cold water (they called it warm, but it was definitely very very cold) over ourselves and then we went back in to drink more tea and sit and sweat. I’m hoping that we have another banya soon because although my description of it doesn’t sound like that much fun, it is definitely something you need to experience to understand how great it is and as Yura explained, the Banya was indeed one of the main reasons why the Russian soldiers defeated France in the Patriotic War of 1812.

Dima and Yura bringing us a Birch tree delivery

Cleaning the banya the next day was the perfect phototunity with the venik and obligatory banya hat... 

There are lots more things that I have been up to that I haven't been able to mention in this post (my laptop has no Internet at the moment, so doing this all on my phone hasn't been that easy), but all the photos below show some more of my adventures here in Russia. The only one that maybe needs more explaining is the Irish dancing - performing an Irish dancing routine that we learnt in 3 days in front of around 40 people for Orion's birthday celebrations was perhaps one of the most surreal things I've ever done.

Dima and Gaff

A rehearsal for my Irish dancing debut

An apple crumble cooking session with the children

Artyom putting all 6 kittens on Lizzie

Our sushi evening

Making sushi for the first time

The new 'ploschadka' playing area that I have been helping to paint

I have also just had news that I'm moving house! I'll be moving from the White House to Flagman which is where the heads of the community Masha and Anton live with their family (and Gaff!!). It's about a minute walk at most from where I am at the moment, but I'm really excited to be moving in with a family because it will be a great opportunity to improve my language even more.

If you want to keep even more up to date with everything I'm doing here, Instagram is probably the best way (nickmslater - link at the top of the page), and once again credit goes to Sergei for the professional looking photos from Orion's birthday. 

До свидания! 

Welcome to Orion - Добро Пожаловать в Орион

Hello!

Before coming to Russia I found it hard to describe to friends and family exactly where I was going and what I would be doing in Orion, and now that I'm here it is maybe even harder to do so because this place really is somewhere that you have to experience to truly understand - but nevertheless I will try my best to give you a taste of my life here in this amazing community.  

looking happy despite having to take the compost down to the chickens

an evening game of football (it doesn't get dark until about 11pm here!)

Orion is the 'sister community' of Kitezh which was founded in 1992 during Peresroika. Slightly smaller than Kitezh, Orion is 2 and a half hours by car from Moscow in the rural Kaluga region and will be celebrating its 10th anniversary this June. Both communities are best described on the Ecologia.org.uk website, "Kitezh and Orion are non-profit communities of foster families whose aim is simple: to give abandoned or orphaned children a real chance in life" and as well as theraputic education, a sustainable and environmentaly friendly lifestyle is also key to each community. The video below is a sped up walking tour of Orion that I filmed on my second day which despite its bad quality should still give you an idea of what it's like, although the weather on that day was awful compared to the 30ºC days we've been having recently!

a handy map of Orion taken from the website, I'm currently living in 'The White House'

The 10 or so houses here in Orion are home to foster families who live and study here permanently, however during the summer months it's the school holidays and Orion becomes a unique summer camp for local children who come to stay. Currently we are in the middle of one of these camps, referred to here as a 'game', which lasts 12 days. The theme for the first game this summer is 'Film Film Film!' 

I may do a later blog post explaining the intricacies of the 'game' but to briefly explain, Orion has been turned into a film studio called 'КинОрион' (KinOrion) that is under threat of closure by an evil American film tycoon who wants to buy the whole film studio and knock it down. All of the children have been set tasks over the 12 days, culminating in a film festival where they willl show the films they have made with the hope of persuading the evil tycoon to leave them alone and realise that money isn't the most important thing. The effort and detail that has gone into the organisation of this game is incredible and there have also been professional script writers, actors and musicians leading masterclasses for the kids. I feel so priveliged to see this game in action and take part and although it has at times been very hectic in the kitchen (especially for Olga the chef) it has been great to have so many children around in the first couple of weeks.

lizzie painting the КинОрион sign

in character with the film tycoon, planning our destruction of  КинОрион

showing that bribing children with (fake) money is not the answer

My role here as a volunteer is pretty diverse. Currently there are 4 other volunteers from the UK and also some Russian volunteers and as a group we have jobs such as washing up and cleaning to do on a regular rota, but our other jobs can be anything from chopping down birch trees to gardening or drawing with children to playing characters in live action performances of the backstory of the evil tycoon in 'Film Film Film!' (the start of this live performance can be seen below). 

taking part in an acting masterclass with the kids

After only a few days here I felt like I was at home and myself and the other volunteers couldn't believe that we had really only just arrived. My language is still feeling very rusty and I'm often finding myself trying to speak French instead of Russian, however I can see that I have already improved in my two weeks here and so hopefully I will just continute getting more confident and learing more useful vocabulary such as "I'm allergic to mosquito bites" and "bleach for tie-dye tshirts".

'che guevara' an his army ready to play capture the flag

action shots

Also, apart from a couple of rainy days, the weather here has been amazing and we have been able to spend a few afternoons down at the 'beach' (a local river) sunbathing and swimming with a bunch of local Russians often giving us funny looks for being so obviously 'not from around here', and also probably because last time we were there we filmed an underwater drowning scene for a film project we have been given...

the river

chopping down birth trees in the sun

Today we are doing some more filming / gardening / cleaning and so I should probably stop writing now. This has taken ages to do because the slow internet isn't great for uploading photos and unfortunately this also means I won't be able to upload any YouTube videos whilst I'm here. However, I'm filming loads of stuff and I'll probably upload it all when I'm back in the UK! I hope to write some more specific blog posts soon on things such as the food and maybe a day trip to Moscow, but for now I will leave you with some of the cutest kittens you will ever see...

до свидания!

PS. all of the great professional looking photos are taken from the Orion vkontakte page (https://vk.com/album-38007057_196112412) thanks to Sergei! And here is the official Orion website if you fancy a look http://www.orionfuture.org/engabout.php

The Best and Worst Things about my French Year Abroad

Here is my final video blog from France!


à bientôt (see you in Russia!)

Travelling

Whilst I still love teaching and living in France, I can’t deny that my small town life in Oyonnax is sometimes hard, and so when I've been given the opportunity to travel and explore other cities, I've definitely made the most of it. I have profitéd, as one would say in franglais. 

During the first two weeks of March it was the school holidays here in the Académie de Lyon, and so in this this post I’m going to briefly run through what I got up to.

Family weekend in Lyon

Although giving my parents the hour long walking tour of the beautiful concrete tower blocks of Oyonnax was tempting, we all decided that a weekend in Lyon would be slightly more interesting, and although I don’t live there I know it pretty well by now and so it was great to show the family around.

posing naturally on the vélo'v

family snap at the roman ampitheatre

Berlin

With Paula and I wanting to lose our German virginity (purely in the ‘first time visiting the country’ sense), Berlin seemed like a great choice for a city break – especially seeing as Erin speaks German and has been before, and my friend Lucy from university was living there for her year abroad. Apart from the 16 bed hostel room that smelt of feet, the trip was a success and we had a brilliant few days taking in all the history as well as the cheap cocktails and amazing chicken from Hühnerhaus. 

 

berlin zoo is amazing

being attacked by a cute goat in the petting zoo

lucy probably laughing at my terrible German

the amazing chicken

erin throwing some shapes at the brandenburg gate

east side gallery

The Netherlands

With Paula and Erin flying back to France to then go back to Scotland, I flew straight from Berlin to Amsterdam to stay with Bridie for the weekend and then I went to Utrecht for the week to stay with Henry. Both of them are studying in the Netherlands for a year, and since my visit the thought of going back there to study after Nottingham has definitely crossed my mind. I had already had a brilliant short trip to Amsterdam after exams last year, and so to continue exploring the city and it's amazing collection of vintage shops (this time with a bike and some local know-how from Bridie) was great, especially since my stay coincided with what seemed like the hottest week of the year so far. Before Henry told me that he was studying there, I had never heard of Utrecht, but it’s the 4^th largest city in the Netherlands and it’s only a 30 minute train ride from Amsterdam. Again I was lucky enough to have someone lend me their bike, and so whilst Henry and his friends had lectures and exams I went out to explore and shop. I did actually go along to a French lecture with some of Henry’s friends which was really interesting and also made me realise how much I had missed speaking in French!

bridie in vondelpark

henry in the monastery garden in utrecht

at the top of the tallest church tower in the netherlands

cycling around utrecht with henry and rachel

I'm now back in Oyonnax, trying to get myself back into the habit of teaching by day and planning lessons by night. Thank you again to Lucy, Bridie and Henry for their hospitality and for giving me an amazing taste of their own years abroad. They have also helped my 'countries been to on my year abroad' total hit 6 (France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands) and it's not long to go now until that will be made up to 7 by Russia...

à bientôt