Catch-up by Numbers!

The past few days I've lacked internet due to the password changing without notice.

So, what's new in Orion?

1. The gold colour of the school! It was blue, yellow and green plastic cladding, but they decided to paint it a colour more in keeping with the rest of the village so it's painted earthy gold. It looks lovely.

2. New major effort on the vegetable patches. Dimitri, at the grown-ups only meeting after the village meeting on Sunday, talked about how the garden was going to waste and covered in weeds. This has led to a big push this week to get them all weeded and hoed and tidied up. Lol hoes. This also has meant that we've talked to the children a lot more.

3. Pizza magically appeared. After discussing the awesomeness and absence of Domino's here on Thursday, as if our wish had been granted, pizza was served for dinner on Friday and it was Pepper and Ham flavour and amazing :D

4. We realised that all the Milka that the shop sells is gone off: the record for most gone-off is held by my chopped-nut bar, which went off back on the 29th of May. This begs the question of what it was doing until the time it went off, and for those extra few months it was hanging around until September. Our best guess is that the entire shop is stocked by lorry accidents. It is still edible though!

5. We went outside the village again: Katya and us two volunteers took the Kindergarteners down to the river. The river is what happens if you turn right out of the village, walk a tiny bit down the road until you're pretty sure there's nothing interesting about to appear, and then turn down the hill. The river itself is pretty, and used to be deeper and better for swimming in until they built the road over, so now it goes through a tunnel (if I understood correctly!). In the winter they go skating on the frozen river, and skiing down the snowy slope. So cool. But apparently we won't see any good snow in November unless we're very lucky.

6. Our trip to Moscow should be on Monday, but we haven't checked if it's still happening. One way or another, we hope to go very soon. We are conspiring to go to Кофе Хаус (English people, that just says Coffee House), where one can choose from a vast menu of delicious cheesecakes, and Шоколадница - which, to the uninitiated, is this chain of chocolate cafes where you can buy hot chocolate that is literally just a cup of melted chocolate. Om nom nom.

7. Yesterday we mostly used Vicky's Magic Painting book to amuse the Kindergarten and ourselves. The ones Vicky and I did this evening will join our families, the Daleks, and the terrifying deer and other forest animals painting on our walls.

8. Storms are terrifying: the wind howled and the rain lashed the windows - the lights flickered on and off and there was even a short and terrifying power cut. Suddenly I felt like I was 5 again.

9. Yesterday I had rather a rubbish day, but I know why I was feeling rubbish and I'm taking proactive steps to fix it. Therefore, today has been like the opposite and everything is just dandy. Huzzah!

10. Vicky and I have Prince Ali from Alladin stuck in our heads, reeeeally bad.

11. Discovered another Incompetent Englishman thing: we can't peel sausages as quicky as the Russians.

I think that just about covers it. Nyusha the kitten disappeared for a few days, but we came back from dishwashing to find her all on her ownlies in a very playful mood. She loves to chase my owl necklace :3 She's now snoozing inconveniently on Vicky. D'awww!

:)