No translator

I went to work this afternoon with a whole long list of things that I want to get done this week which I have been working on over the weekend with the aim of starting the week as I mean to go on and arranging meetings and getting things moving forwards... But no translated.... And I have been told that she will now not be working any Mondays on top of Wednesday and Thursday late afternoons so there goes any illusion of a full time translated. Not really sure what to do about this - there are very few people with any English here let alone of a standard to interpret spoken English (I had lunch beside an English teacher today and ended up speaking Russian first and then the English as she knew words but not sentences) so we will have to see what can be worked out. Having a meeting tomorrow to discuss work so will bring this up but need to tread carefully.... Anyway I digress.... So no interpreter... This is not unusual but I had a few things I wanted to discuss so I managed to hold my own in conversation with a little sign language as well but we moved on to discussing creating seminars for schools about drugs. One of the main things I am here to do is to get the various volunteer Centre in the area (ie the different towns) to work closer together and as I know two of the four towns already have drug awareness programmes I tried to explain that we could speak to themt o find out what they are doing, what works and what does not work in school... And this fell onto deaf ears and I was told the toehr volunteer centres are bad ... I was expecting this but found it very frustrating not being able to explain the clear benefits of not reinventing the wheel but building on other peoples work, working together and so on...Very, very frustrating especially as I was ignored but I suppose I would have been ignored with an interpreter as well! Anyway it made me realize that while I can cope on my own and get a lot more across that I thought I could I do need someone there to help me give reasoning and depth to my suggestions - there is only so muc you can do with limited vocab and sign language...I feel a lot less stressed now and tomorrow I can start on my list!

Went to a wedding over the weekend. Two days of partying and drinking. The second day starts at 10am with vodka shots. I put into action all my training at the start of my placement about how to avoid drinking myself into a hospital but by 1130 most were steaming. Then the party games began and the wedding turned into a kind club 18-30 meets the generation game for the next three hours....All quite fun but a little surreal! One fun part is that the whole of the rooms is covered in shredded paper... More later being taken away for tea... abck now from tea... and then the bride and groom must with a dustpan and brush collect all the rubbish and while they are doing this money is thrown onto the floor by the guests. As the bride and groom are collecting the money more is thrown into the piles that tey have cleaned up and it keeps on coming. This went on for over 30 minutes and the bride was looking less and less impressed although the amount of money being thrown was vast - notes as well as coins... and then just as they were about to finish the plate that they collected this all in was uip turned and they statrted all over again - part of the fun. It wwas great to watch and I throw in my chnage as well..