Topaz 2016 - Russia Tuesday 18th October
A few days ago we did the TV interview and this is the address to view or download the interview as it went out to the 3 TV stations in Volgograd.
An early rise at 6.30 to find our bus to Rovnoe, which turned out to be a minibus but part of the public transport system. A very hot journey and the road was pretty rough as we speeded to our destination.
The Terrain was mostly scrub land with some areas of trees, the main road was metalled but you could see the unmade side roads leading off into the distance.
We past through small villages with traditional wooden or brick houses, some set in compounds. An area where the red army was based was pointed out to us.
It is really interesting to get the perspective of our Girl Scouting leaders on the local situations, when talking about housing she told us most people would like to live in the city where there is more work but housing there is prohibatively expensive so in many cases families stay in more rural settings.
We arrived around 10.00 to a guard of honour as we walked all through the school which has pupils from 7-18 years, all children from the local areas attend this school. The have a very strong sense of identity with the community and the school.
Tea. Chocolates, fruit, and cherry cake were served in a sewing area. It was interesting to see the lovely craft work of the pupils and how they are encouraged to keep up traditional skills. The building was fairly old but apparently watertight, some facilities were rather different from the city schools !!!!
Headmaster, Victor. Bomzarenko. welcomed us warmly and gave the history of the school, ably interpreted by Marina and Katie. He was very attentive and interactive all during our visit.
We set up for 22, A mixture of boys and girls aged 13-17 joined us for guiding fun. Session was led by the story of the “Scarlet Flower” and pupils did activities at a number of stations. They were really responsive and thrilled to succeed at each activity. Where spoken language did not work sign language, facial expressions and actions were really effective. some activities included food and we discover a much greater preference for sweet tastes. Every event has included lots of photography, young people all have their phones, even here.
We were entertained to a really interesting Lunch which included a mixture of soups, savouries and fruit companied by locally made fortified 3 year old wine!!! We only sipped a little of this.
Now for the sessions with teachers, they seemed a little apprehensive at first but really threw themselves into the sessions learning about Girl Scouting, team building and parachute games in good suits and high heels.
The team followed this with a royal tea party with crowns and goodies from UK and specially iced cakes accompanied by stories of our Royal families connection to Guiding.
During the tea party some pupils conducted an interview about our visit with Marina translating once again. This was for the school news paper. The girls asked a lot of very pertinent questions recording the interview on mobile phones. It would be interesting to see the outcome.
School has 600 pupils aged 7-18 some from Belarous / Korea /
On our arrival some of the pupils wore cadet uniforms which they were very proud of.
We were taken on a tour of Rovnoe a town with 4,000 population
Head Teacher and Depute were very attentive, depute was Katia’s mum Marina
We saw the River Volga at its Widest point 12k, this can freeze over in the winter!!
We visited more Monuments but the most remarkable was the water melon Monument, we were all giver replicas of this to bring home to uk and a real one to take back to the hotel for breakfast, this was so big we could hardly lift it!!! But it did taste good.
At the tiny museum was saw rooms set up for the local historical, clocks, Germany and a Water melon display - impressive but fun!!
The exhibition was started the ex head of school and the school staff are very proud of it.
The staff and teachers at the school were truly delighted that the Topaz team had taken time to go so far from the central of Russia to visit their real community. We left feeling the future might be good for Girl scouting in this area.
Marina became an honoured member of UK Trefoil making her promise in Russian
We returned on the rocky road to Saratov on the school bus taking about 21/2 hours then dinner and bed!!
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