One of my roommates came to Russia simply to have a break from school. She had no previous experience with kids, and she said she came to see how she meshed with “little people.” Throughout the semester, her reasons for being in Russia changed. I asked her one day if there was a specific time when it changed for her, and she told me a story about one of our kids, his name was Elia. Let me give you a little background on Elia. He was probably our number one problem child. We had a really hard time getting him to pay attention, he had a huge temper, and was known as a trouble maker. One day we were all in our different classes teaching rotations, and her class was doing an activity that used paper clips. They started talking about shapes and how the end of the paper clip was round, and Elia asked her “what is this shape?” She was surprised to hear him ask a question because he very rarely took interest in the activities. She looked over and saw that he had bent his paper clip into a heart. She said that’s a heart. He smiled and looked down at it and handed it to her. For you, he said. Her heart melted. It was the first time that she realized how much she really did love these kids, and how much they loved us too. It was going to be really hard to leave Russia.

Kristin Green