First Assignment

I did my first assignment this morning at a hospital for menatlly troubled children ages 7-14. We had 2.5 hours with them to do a preplanned activity, teach them some arts and crafts and then a little play time. The size of our class was 17 children. We had 5 teachers--three volunteers who have been here for a month and this is their last week and three of us who are in my group. Me, Bryan, a semi retired 40 year teaching veteran of the New Jeresy school system, and Joann a 10 year Wall street vetern who lives in Scottdale AZ and now buys and sell real estate in the winter and travls in the summer. Since there were two Bryans at our assignment one of us had to change our name for the kids and I volunteered. My new name is Boris, the same as Bryan in Russian, It is proniunced as BA-Russ.
The depth and the range of emotions I felt today are undescribable. I felt extreme happiness and worth helping in such a small way, small and worthless when I relected on some of the things that bothered me so much a few weeks ago, sadness and helplessness for some of my kids, and so many other mixed up emotions it will take me days or year sto sort them all out. Tomorrow I go to the Deaf kindegarden in the morning and then the a transitional orphanage shelter in the afternoon. So two new placements for tomorrow.
This afternoon we took a field trip to a small Russian village which was incredible. It was about an hour out of Yaroslavl, way out in the country and was so neat. Our host was was the local village historian and we were greated by her two of the local elementary school students. They were dressed in 19th century russian clothing and had baked us a wlecome love of bread. We toured the village, a 200 year old home that is still lived in, and then they prepared us a traditional Russian meal. I have some incredible pictures as soon as I can find a computer that has a USB port so I can download them.

Thanks for reading
Boris
Baa (like a sheep) rus (like the beginning of rooster)