Autumn has already claimed its right of occupation in Zaporozhye, but we still could not yet let the summer disappear completely.
With this in mind, we, the volunteers from the Zaporozhye Orphanages, decided to organise a trip for our children to the sunniest place in Ukraine- Sevastopol City. Also known to Ukrainians as a hero-city since it is a home - based location to Ukrainian Navy.
After successfully overcoming some bureaucratic obstacles, a group of ten orphans from the Zaporozhye Orphanage House No3 were set on their mission of " pursuing summer".
Although there were many children wishing to join the trip, due to our limited financial capabilities, a competition was held. The chosen few were either those who illustrated exceptional results in our educational programme, or those who had never travelled outside Zaporozhye.
The trip was supervised by two of our volunteers and the Orphanage's principal Ekaterina Pavlovna Sharikova.
The result was two-fold. On the one hand, the summer seemed to have disappeared from Sevastopol also. As we were chasing it, it insisted in running away somewhere more south, probably Turkey or Egypt.
On the other hand, the trip was a complete success as it left a sea of wonderful, warm memories in the participants' hearts.
Amongst other things, our children inspected the whole of Chersonis and visited the "Sea-World" exhibit where they got acquainted with dolphins, crocodiles and even sharks.
A trip on a bay left an unbelievable amount of positive emotions. For the first time, children saw big army boats and even spotted a submarine.
Everyone was excited to take pictures with Navy men who are a rare sight in Zaporozhye. Sevastopol's Navy men were happy to oblige.
At 6pm, a little tired from the sight-seeing but full of wonderful impressions, our children went to the cinema as there was a couple of hours to spare before the departure home. Somebody slept through the whole feature- I am sure by now you can understand how precious that couple of hours of sleep was.
Finally, at 23.30 local time, the train was set on its own mission of bringing our lovely children home.
Thus, we had to let the summer go, but as some say, it is not the final result, but what you do in the process that counts………….
PS A paradox regarding prices was encountered in one of the Sevastopol's cafes. A cup of tea was priced at 3,5 grivnas($0.7), whilst a full course meal was just 10 grivnas ($2). Tea, perhaps, is such a great source of profit at this place that they could afford to price their lunch so low.
