Today, I chose to work in the museum instead of in the school so that I could finish transferring one of a kind audio tapes from the museum to mp3s.  This was a welcome break from the non stop activities of the previous day, which included a visit to the local schools and the youth group, which although incredibly fun and insightful, left us all exhausted.  We were all extremely impressed by the accomplishments of the Vytegra's students, and we were very surprised to find that their English was much better than our Russian, or at least my Russian.

My guide was very insightful and I think we both learned a lot from each other.  Some of the things I learned from her included:

1) Wedding rings in Russia are worn on the right hand instead of the left and share the same myth about the blood vessel running from that finger all the way to the heart.  (I had learned this because she had asked me what my silver ring with elephants on my right hand meant)
2) Russians find it strange that Americans are always drinking water or have bottled water on them.
3) Dean Martin's "Make Me Sway" is an incredibly popular song in Russia, as well as "O Susanna"

When we went to visit with the Russian youth group, we were put to shame yet again as the kids completely destroyed us in dance battles, but as many members of our group put it, they did have the home field advantage.

Today, however, I went to work at the museum and afterwards, joined back up with the group to visit the Klyuev museum and the church in Vytegra, shown in the pictures above.