Hugo Chavez, Zoo and a New Job

Last Thursday I went to a lecture on the situation in South America. Normally, I’m not really interested in South America, but the invitation proclaimed that Hugo Chavez, who came to Moscow to meet Mr Putin and Mr Medvedev, would also hold a speech. Therefore, my colleague and I sent the organisation an e-mail to register for the lecture. The lecture was supposed to start at 4:30, but the whole event was badly organised, so it took us an hour to get into the lecture hall, because the security guards started to check the passports and bags of all guests only when the lecture was already supposed to start. First, some Russian experts on South America talked about the situation in South America until it was the turn of Hugo Chavez. He has a really deep voice and is an excellent speaker. However, throughout the lecture I didn’t understand what he was saying because he spoke in Spanish and it was only translated into Russian. Therefore, I didn’t really know whether I should clap. Because sometimes he talked about North Korea and I didn’t want to clap when he was saying that it is the best country of the world. So I just didn’t clap. And he also criticised the United States several times and said how great Venezuela was. But at least I can say that I’ve seen Hugo Chavez. Yeah!

On Saturday I went to the zoo in Moscow. They only important thing to mention is that the living conditions for the animals are pretty upsetting. The cages are small, seldomly cleaned and the animals just sit around, look sad and are bored.

Yesterday I went to a refugee centre in Moscow. When I came to Moscow our country coordinator told me that I will also work in this refugee centre. I had thought that only the other volunteers would work there, but it sounded interesting so I was excited and happy to have the chance as well. We’re going to work in the centre one or two times a week after our regular work and help children with their homework or just teach them how to study. Every volunteer can choose what he wants to teach and he or she will get one child to take care for. I believe that next week I will get a call by the head of the centre to find out when I’m going to start my work.