After this tour, we finally got our bags and changed very quickly before heading off to the Shorashim school, a Jewish day school in the city. There are about five hundred children who attend this school and not all of them are Jewish but we had only Jewish classrooms. Josh, David, Danny, and I led two seders, first one for 11th graders and second one for 9th and 10th graders. The first group was incredibly rowdy, loud, and disrespectful. We had planned a group discussion with them during the seder to make it a bit more interesting and creative and the first group could not handle it. It was a very frustrating experience especially because we could not discipline in English and had to rely on Zina to help us quiet them down in Russian. Oy! The second group was a joy. They were wonderful and very cooperative and had a great time with us. Thank goodness it went better than the first group. It was hard for four of us to lead. There were “too many cooks in the kitchen” at times and therefore I usually stepped back to listen and watch so that we did not overpower the classroom of high schoolers. After the seder, we helped the teachers clean up and then we headed out for a late lunch with the rabbi, Michael, for sushi. I know sushi in Russia-we were a little worried, but it was sooooo good! We loved it and we were so hungry at this point that we would have eaten just about anything. It was pretty wonderful. Over lunch we helped Michael plan out the community seder we were helping him lead that night. We quickly went back to the hotel room to change and freshen up and then headed to the community center to get ready for the community seder.

There were about eighty people at the community seder and the four of us were in charge of telling the Passover story so we had a bit of time to prepare something before the seder began. We really had a fun time with the whole thing and Michael’s kids were a distraction and were so adorable during the seder. After the seder the four of us decided to go out for ice cream on our own since Zina had gone home at this point. Little did we know, that we really were relying on Zina and that NO ONE speaks English. David and I were really thirsty and you cannot drink the tap water in Russia because it is really dirty so we ordered water at a little market. We got six bottles of water finally after a bit of struggling but they were all sparkling, oh we were so frustrated. Then we went out for ice cream and all ordered differently than what we wanted but we ate it anyway. So goes the language barrier.