inside Rhodes

“CLEAR!!”  *overly used sound effect of the cardio-paddles*

“Bingo!  There we go!”

Sweet love of all that is good, Colin is alive!  There would be no words for my neglect.  Criminal… perhaps.  Total and utter would also be apt.  But nonetheless, here we go!

So I have a TON to catch you up on – most dire would be my time in Russia.  I mean, I was there for seven weeks this summer altogether.  But after my trip to Nizhniy Novgorod (east of Moscow), I moved in with my host family in Velikiy Novgorod (south of St Petersburg).  My apartment was PERFECT.  It was a 5-minute walk to the downtown, and my host mother abdicated her personal room for me to use.  I didn’t have a roommate!!  For the first time in 3 years, no roommate!!  It was wonderful.

But my host mother, Nina, was an adorable woman, an amazing cook, and a genuine sweetheart.  She also spoke ZERO English, which was the point of living there.  But she refused to talk to me on a simpler level to match my linguistic capabilities.  Instead of asking, “Where are you going?”  she would ask “Where will your travels take you today?” or something along those lines.  CRAZY HARD to keep it all straight.  And I failed constantly at these constant linguistic exams.  But she’d smile, shake her head in encouraging disappointment, then laugh.  I miss her laugh!  It was sooo happy.

But she lived in the apartment with her son, Sasha, and her sister, Linda.  Sasha was a recent graduate of NovSU, the regional university, in mechanical engineering and now works for a mobile telecommunications company as their cyber protection guy.  He did speak English (he had 10 years of schooling), but he hadn’t used in 10 years.  Despite the gap, we had wonderful conversations floating in and out of English/Russian about poetry, politics, daily life, and sports.  He was a professional outdoor volleyball and indoor basketball player as well, so he was quite active.  Linda (my host aunt) is a dentist, so she was busy quite often.  But I managed to have a few conversations with her, mostly about my thoughts on American politics and events.  Very kind woman.

Overall, my family couldnt’ have been better, including my host pet – Fima (otherwise known as Fimchka in the apartment).  It was the perfect place for me to live for 7 weeks.  The food was always amazing, and the conversation was always brain-melting.  So it was the best combination of suicidal-thought-inducing Russian language complications and simple joy.

But I was in Russia as part of the Mertie W Buckman International Internship program at Rhodes, which is meant for International Studies majors only who wish to work abroad.  It’s a huge distinguishment within the department, and I was honored to be a part of it.  My fellow participants worked in Honduras (during the coup!), Vietnam (in the Mekong Delta!), Senegal (St Louis), Spain (in Basque country!), Argentina (rural Buenos Aires).  We recently presented on our experiences to the Rhodes community, and I was blown away by the work that was done over the summer.  Truly amazing.

I worked with a social rehabilitation program, Podrostok, for at-risk children.  Basically, these are children who have been flagged by the government as “at-risk” – meaning that they are assumed to be given up to the orphanage system in the near future.  So I worked for the center for children ages 7-13, all of which had at least one parent but were believed to soon become orphans.  So the purpose of the program is to help the children adjust to orphanage life and not suffer from the change in environment.  Similarly, institutionalized children who have been adopted can also go through the system to help them adjust to “normal life”.

So it was an emotional job for sure, but I was surprised at the quality of the program.  A child cannot be accepted into the program without a positive psychological screening, so all the children were mentally and emotionally sound, preventing the entire system to be replete with behaviorial problems.  And there are 3 psychologists on the staff that regularly interview the children to ensure that the program is not causing excessive mental trauma.  But the system does have its flaws, as there are many more at-risk children in the Novgorod area, but it requires either a criminal history from the parents or a willing enrollment by the parents who acknowledge that they are on the verge of becoming unfit parents.  So it can be a very humiliating process admitting that the economic situation of your household may cause you to give up your child into adoption.  As a result, there are children who should/would be admitted into the program but simply are not.

But I worked with a group of 27 children, aged 7-13, and I led them through various excursions throughout the city.  Everyday we would have 3 excursions to local museums, parks, attractions for the children to play and learn during the summer months (they usually have school during the appropriate time of year).  I would also serve them their 3 square meals and occasionally teach short lessons on English language.  It was certainly a trying experience, as the children took a while to warm up to me (emotional disconnection is the most popular coping mechanism for the children) and trying to keep them quiet during a 2-hour museum tour can be quite exhausting.  But I loved the children immensely, and I often ran into them while I was walking around the city, and we’d always stop and talk for a little while.  So cute!

But it was an emotionally exhausting internship.  I’ve worked with children in the past, but working in a foreign language was so much harder.  I wasn’t able to be really articulate, and I felt like I wasn’t able to depart as much “life wisdom” as usual – particularly for the situation these children found themselves in.  Because of the way universities work in Russia, if these children make above a “B” in their high school work, they can expect for their college degree to be free or at least with very low fees.  So even if they’ve been left by their parents or just disadvantaged, there’s still the opportunity to go to college or enroll in the trade schools in the city.  Whether academic or vocational, education is available to them.  But since my kids were so young, it was very hard for me to really be able to communicate these long-away goals to them.  So I felt like I wasn’t able to make the deepest impression, and it was really difficult to leave.

In my final week, I actually had to start working less and less each day, because the pyschologists had found that a couple of the kids had become too attached, and they needed to adjust to life without me – HOLY CRAP SO SAD!!  And I had the same problem, because I had 3 kids (two boys, one girl) that I wanted to take home with me.  They were sweet, attentive, caring, and just genuine.  Ages of 9, 7, and 7.  Perfect!!  hahaha.  But unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.  And on my last day, I walked away just after lunchtime and I said, “Doss veedonya” [goodbye] to the kids and they latched on to my arms, practically screaming ”Doss veedonya, Colin!  Goodbye, Colin!  Bye, Kolya!”  I said all that I could and just started walking away while they kept yelling at me down the street.  As I turned the corner, I looked back and all the kids were waving at me…  and I lost it.  I started bawling and I decided to walk home, rather than take the bus, so that I could collect myself.  It was soooooooooooo sad.  I’m having flashbacks, and it makes me want to curl up and sleep.

But overall, my time in Russia was amazing.  I got to travel to Staraya Russa, the only city where Dostoevsky owned a house.  And so I got to walk through his house and see the desk that his wife wrote down the dictation for The Brothers Karamasov.  SOOO COOL!!!  And I also got to travel to Pskov, another ancient city in old European Russia.  But of most interest to me was the Pskovova-Perchersky Monastery, the only monastery to remain open during the USSR (and therefore the longest, continually-running monastery in Russia).  The monastery is easily top five holiest in Russia and claims huge figures in the Orthodox Church as its previous monks since its opening in about 1450.  I even was able to walk in the caves underneath the monastery where they bury their monks and archbishops.  The monks there were amazingly kind and open to us foreigners.  SOOOO amazing.  I also got to see a Russian ballet perform Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” (unbelievably amazing) in St Petersburg and see an opera in Novgorod.  So the arts were also replete throughout my time as well.  SOOO GOOD!!

But after 7 weeks in Russia and 6 months abroad in total, I returned to the States at 2PM on August 15th.  I spent 3 days in Texas (including the day I arrived), and then I drove to Memphis to start my final year at RHODES!!!  But I’ve taken up a lot of time as is, so I’ll catch up my life at Rhodes with my next post and leave you with a TON of pictures.  Sounds good.  And if you want to see any of the pictures, click on the picture, it’ll redirect to a new page, then click on it again and you can zoom in REALLY CLOSE to my pictures to see some details.  If you just absolutely love a few.