my new friend...
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Thanks, Domo, you crazy orc-killing warlord, for being the best thing that happened to me that last week of July.
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Kitezh: a legendary village becomes a real-life dream
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
My first week back in Moscow after the Trans-Siberian trip, was spent mostly trying to track down a mysterious and elusive NGO that had previously agreed to participate in my research, but now was seemingly playing hard-to-get or was possibly no longer in existence. When my fruitless detective work became too frustrating, I escaped the city to explore a couple of the ancient towns that make up the “Golden Ring” to the East of Moscow. The fresh air, 800-yr old churches, and home-cooked borsch felt refreshing after a week in the monstrous capital of Russia.
The following week, I decided to head out to Kitezh where my friend Elisa’s older sister, Cory, has been living for the summer. I caught a ride with an 18-yr old kid who was making money off bussing people out to Kaluga in his dad’s minivan. He made the three-hour drive in two and dropped me off at the bus station where I waited for a minibus to take me another two hours to Baryatino. From there it was a taxi ride out to the tiny, isolated village of Kitezh.
In a word, it was surreal; a tiny communal group created specifically to foster orphaned children. They are almost entirely self-sustaining and are raising these children in a very healthy, familial environment. The entire village is involved in the education and social development of the children, they eat all their meals together, are involved in building, farming, etc. They put me to work as soon as I got there and I loved every minute of it. It turned out to be a very educational and eye-opening experience for me on alternative solutions to the issue of orphans in Russia.
For more on Kitezh, check out these two articles [one and two] and their website.
(Kitezh is the name of a magical town in Russian folklore.)
hello chinese-russian shoes, i love you
My fav $3 shoes from the Chinese market in Vladivostok. I bought a few pair of these as I was leaving the mission five years ago. Then, when Jeff Parker returned from Vlad a year later, he brought me four pair. I finally retired the last of these as I returned this May to the same Chinese market to buy another batch. (No worries, Craghead ol’ boy, I grabbed you a pair too!)
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