Thursday 19th October
We went on an excursion to Sviyajsk Island by minibus, with Space Scouts George and Anne and our guide, Gary. Unfortunately we got pulled over by the police and the driver was missing a vital piece of paper (the 5 documents he had weren't sufficient), so he had to get his boss to come out with the right one. We waited for 40 minutes, but eventually got on our way. It was very cold and windy on the island. There was our first mention of Stalin, as the monastery had been used as a labour camp, and there was a memorial to the victims of Stalin. It was quite odd, there are statues of Lenin all over, but Stalin doesn't get mentioned. We couldn't see inside the monastery as it was shut for renovation, but we did get to see 3 churches from outside - a wooden one, a stone one, and a brick one. We got to go inside the brick one, which was covered in icons. We had lunch - noodle soup, salad, meat triangles and apple pie. We got back to School 33, where we were greeted by children in dress, and got the tour of the school. Then we had a meeting with teachers, talking about Scouting/Guiding and introduced them to various games which encouraged teamwork. Jenny and I went with Aida to the 'Leader of the Year' ceremony which was out in the middle of nowhere. We did start wondering if Aida was going to blindfold us, tie us to a tree and let us make our own way home...(as her scouts do for a badge!) One of Aida's scouts, Nastya, who had translated for us earlier in the week was taking part in the competition, and this was the launch event. There were songs and dances in Russian, then Jenny had to make a speech encouraging people to be helpful even after the awards were over (the award is for self-presentation and for doing a community project). Friday 20th October
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