transitional housing center

August 20-21

I have spent the last two days at the Transitional Housing Center. In the kitchen, I worked with Vera, one of the home's moms. She's 28 and she's engaged to one of the young housing center graduates. She loved to talk, so my Russian really got stretched today. Finally, after I got used to chatting with her and understanding her Russian, the boys who live there came in and wanted to speak Spanish with me. That was really hard for me to switch back into Spanish, but apparently they've been going there for a couple months every year serving at an orphanage in Madrid. These Russian boys with perfect Castillian accents and cuarenta principales phone rings was just too much.

My favorite thing about walking to the transitional center, I've been meaning to write, is that it makes me feel a bit like an international spy. I pass by a special forces training center, a military school and the FSB (formerly known as KGB) building every time I go. I've never seen so many military personnel as I see here in Ryazan every day. The FSB building is perfect, too. Huge, ominous, black and gray.

Tonight, Sergey, Katya and I made our way to Spassk and watched the “concert,” met up with Mike and Pasha and then we all went to Sergey and Katya's house for pizza and hanging out. Good times.

Thank the Lord, I finally got my pin number from the bank!! I was so upset about the number situation, I finally got my Paypal account cleared and I paid for more Skype credit and I called the bank and she said it wasn't in and I let her have it, well, as much as I do, and, whaddaya know, it was in. Kim went to pick it up and she emailed it to me. It's the same as it was before, they just reset it. Oh, Spain...