Krasnoyarsk was a city further east than St Petersburg or Moscow. It was a place that did not have the luxury of a metro –  (a Russian train system in big cities short for metropolis), or fast food places, or international schools.

Before I was old enough to go to school, my education was a mixture of home school, Russian preschool, children's centre, and art school. All places that I loved going to. Mum taught me to read in English, which really helped. Soon enough I was reading very big books. In a nutshell, reading saved me from appearing to have lived under a rock all my life when I came to Australia to school for the first time. I learn so much about the other world that it helped we with where I am now. The Art School I went to stirred my passion for drawing. I wish there was something like it here in Darwin, but there just isn’t. Russian have been much more interested in the arts, and there just doesn’t same to be much I can learn over here. So I’ll just practice and learn form other artists for now.

But it takes a while to find these amazing places.

One of my earliest memories form coming back to Russia was when I stood outside the front of my future kindergarten , proudly holding up five fingers to indicate my age. I don’t remember which lady stood on the top of the flight of stairs, but she was probably one of the women who looked after the children. The stairs had a dozen steps to a door with a bright poster boasting of a kindergarten.

The kindergarten teachers where really more like babysitters were very busy women. And they were very busy because they were looking after a lot of children. They were looking after children from little babies up to seven years old. Kids often go to kindergarten since they were kids since often both of their parents are at work. Russian kindergarten probably translates better to day care.

Which is why several years later I was staring at the wall of Robyn's kindergarten, confused. I could only see the picture of about twenty kids. Just 20? I would have expected… hundreds. I was jealous, feeling it wasn’t fair, I felt that Robyn didn’t deserve such a fancy kindergarten. But that logic doesn’t make any sense – it is the same logic the old ladies used in Russia when they didn’t like me lying down the grass. Because they never got to.

I don’t blame the kindergarten teachers for not giving me the attention I needed. They were exhausted. They could not afford to invest into one child who needed some extra help since I didn’t know Russian and had a difficult time fitting in. With that effort they could help several relatively normal kids. It made complete sense to them and seemed the most ethical thing to do since they simply didn’t have what it takes to give these children what they needed.

I suppose if I could speak decent Russian my time at the kinder wouldn’t have been to hard. But I was a foreigner, an outcast, someone no one was willing to carry the burden of. I’m happy to know that God is like  my shepherd. And he would not leave a single sheep behind.

Paris once told me that if a sheep wanders off other sheep would follow it. That happened to some poor farmer once when one sheep fell of a cliff and all the other followed it. So if this sheep was not worth following in the other sheep’ eyes, then he or she really was an outcast. But Jesus went after that sheep. So in his eyes, no one is not worth saving.

I was probably at this kindergarten for about 3-6 months. Mum was concerned for me being so left out. But this time did not last forever. Soon enough I would go to a new kindergarten, though. And this one I would love so much my brother went there too when he was old enough

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