The Farewell Party
Trip Start
Sep 13, 1997
1
13
22
Trip End
Oct 02, 1997
Lake Ladoga,
Russia
Wednesday, September 24, 1997
It is so small that I even forget if I spell it correctly......
It's a short stay before our lunch. We took a stroll around the village, had a our' of their supermarket and street-side market (In fact, there is only one selling stand with two or three rolls of ham). It doesn't look fabulous or attractive but has a feeling of a quaint New England town. An old lady told me she had a chance to visit local elementary school and it looks just MISERABLE- small , dark, and very run-down. She said there is no school in the U.S. looks so horribly managed (even in Baltimore?). Oh, I guess I'm lucky because I missed the bad part of the place we visited again....
It's the last day before we reached St. Petersburg, so there were a lot of activities going on on-board. We had the last lesson of "Modern Russian Politics." We can know how much modern Russians dislike those people from other republics of former Soviet Union (Ukrainian, Estonian) than, let's say, Chinese, American, or German. Then it's captain's farewell party and farewell dinner (you bet! We had caviar and vodka again for dinner). The captain Yuri gave every lady a nice red rose and my mom got one too. I was glad that I wasn't offered one or my mother will threat to have my hair cut again (too beautiful to be a man!). After the dinner, it's the FAREWELL SHOW! What the interesting part is, most of the programs were performed by our fellow passengers, sort of like what we did in summer camp back in high school and college.
What surprised me is that these passengers in their 60's and 70's were willing to act like clowns to please us. I guess they had a lot of summer camp experience back to their youth too.....
But I wasn't invited to perform.
