Kitezh Children`s Community - Kitezh newsletter – 1st

Newsflash

Andrew Aikman, a British Volunteer, carpenter, English teacher, with two grown up children who lived in Findhorn Community for twenty years came to spend a year in Kitezh in June 2006. This is a taste of his experience.
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Kitezh newsletter – 1st – 14th January

Sunday, 31 December 2006

Kitezh newsletter – 1st – 14th January

Hello, dear friends!
We want wish you a Happy New Year once again, we hope it will be both lucky and fruitful for you!
Thank you for your confirmation of the fact that you want to continue to receive our newsletter.

From the 3rd to the 12th January, during the winter holidays, we had a week long role playing camp in Kitezh. Apart from our own Kitezh children, many children from Moscow and from orphanages in the Kaluga region took part. Our student friends from Moscow Pedagogical University helped us to organise the camp. Several Kitezh graduates also came to help us and to spend their holidays with us: Valya Kanukhina, Natasha Tukhovskaya, Andrei Zhuber, Alexei Molchanov and Lena Stefutina.

The role playing game was called “Space Pirates of the Desert”. The story was set in a far distant future, when mankind has explored space and visited other planets. However, the earth is ruled by cyborgs and only a few, brave people are free from their rule. They call themselves the “Space Pirates” and their aim is to destroy their oppressors and the technocratic civilisation, and to return human values (such as art, feelings, free will) to mankind.

The week of the camp included a fantastic general knowledge quiz on the history of sea-faring pirates, a search for space artifacts in the forest, a long hike to the old estate mansion (which was turned into an abandoned Space base), a nighttime “Walk of fear”, and a final battle in which all the children and adults summoned all their strength to fight until the bitter end.

All these challenges were overcome, the cyborg ruler himself was beaten, artificial intelligence was destroyed and mankind rejoiced. At the farewell disco, the leader of the cyborgs had been rendered so harmless that he even agreed to pose for photographs with anyone wanting a souvenir snap!

One of the most significant points of this camp was the fact that not only our Moscow students led the games, but that the young members of our Children’s Council Vassya, Margot, Roma, Slava and Zhenia were also a key part of the organization. All of them showed true leadership skills.

In general, one can say that our winter holidays were spent very happily, but that they passed all too quickly!

While the children played, the adults certainly didn’t sit still. Following an invitation by some journalists, the Head of the community Sergei Khlopenov went to St Petersburg for several days to take part in a talk show on the theme of eco-villages. Sergei managed to kill two flies with one stone: he made several new contacts, and also found some time for sight-seeing in a city he has never visited before.

At the same time, Dmitry Morosov took part in the Annual Pedagogical Conference organized by the famous educator Amonashvili in Moscow, during which he led round table discussions.

A young psychologist called Anastacia from Abakan in Siberia came to visit us. She showed great interest in Kitezh, and also in the potential idea of students from her university coming to do their work experience in Kitezh.

And finally to the weather... This whole week in Kitezh (as in the rest of the world) we have had extraordinarily unusual winter weather: the trees have buds on them, the hedgehogs are waking up, and the snow seems to melt almost as soon as it hits the ground. We’re hoping that the reason for these strange meteorological effects is in actual fact the wonderfully warm relationships which we nurture in our community.

But we’re slightly weary of angry ecologists who may not share our positive outlook on these matters. However, we continue to live and to enjoy the warmth (please forgive us for this, dear readers…..and ecologists).

Next week our new school term begins. It’s already become obvious, because the children are starting to hoard new exercise books, pens and other stationery items.

The children are setting their sights on new academic achievements….(and on completing their holiday homework before term starts!). All this excitement and preparation suggests that this school year will be both interesting and intense. So do stay in touch with us!

From the happy and well-rested “Third Persons”

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO OUR FRIENDS!

We wish you all much joy, success and adventure for the coming year!

We also want to share all the latest news from Kitezh.

One of the most important events was Christmas which was celebrated in Kitezh by our volunteers. But for Kitezhans themselves, December 25th is associated with another memorable occasion: the birthday of Sergei Khlopenov, the Head of Kitezh. We greatly enjoyed both these celebrations. In Kitezh in the last two weeks there have been many comings and goings: nearly everyone from Orion came to Kitezh either to study, or to teach or to socialize. Before New Year itself our student friends from Moscow University came to celebrate with us, and to help us run our winter camp. Other friends from Moscow also came for New Year, as well as our dear regular visitors: Nathalie Kennedy, Francesca Hewitt and Martina Cavicchioli.
During this whole time we continued to rehearse our New Year show…
And now, we can finally reveal our big New Year secret: following endless rehearsals, we put on a spectacular and extraordinary new show, the musical “Cats” in English! This time the musical was not shown in its entirety, but the whole show will be shown in the future. We want to mention some real highlights from this performance: the amazing and complicated choreography, which was harder than anything our children have attempted before, the fantastic make-up, and the professional costumes which were especially sewn for the show, the unique set design, and the fact that the children learnt the songs by heart and sang along with the real musical score.
We want to thank Julia Liubimtseva and Maria Krivenkova who were responsible for this wonderful New Year present. We saw the New Year in singing and dancing!
And as we begin this coming year we’d like to take a moment to remember all that we’ve achieved in the last 365 days: The first important date in Kitezh’s calendar was of course New Year 2006 and the role playing winter camp “Atlantis”, in which four ancient civilizations attempted to pass on their culture to try to save Atlantis’ dying civilization.

Educational trips to Orion and Moscow during the winter holidays, which included a visit to the Pushkin Museum, a Catholic cathedral and the philosophy school “New Acropolis”.

We survived intense cold of less than minus 30 degrees in both Kitezh and Orion, so much so that our heating system froze, and it was even necessary for some of us from Orion to evacuate to Alexei Jarkov’s warm house.

6th February – A group of students from the Psychology Department of the Russian State University for Humanities came to Kitezh for a week of practical study.
23rd February – The premiere of our play “Joan of Arc”, starring Christina Kononenko, and directed by Anastacia Khomakhova and Maria Krivenkova.
1st March – our water tower collapsed.
3rd March – Russian Spring celebration “Masslenitza” and the first meeting of Kitezhans with representatives from the company Skankod
5th March – The Head of Kitezh Sergei Khlopenov was presented with a medal by the Governor of Kaluga for his Services to the Kaluga region.
8th March – Women’s Day celebration in cowboy style!
15th March – Our children made a trip to the Anglo-American school in Moscow where they shared about life in Kitezh.
21st March – We were visited by the Youth Council of Kaluga region.
27th March – Our new water tower was erected.
29th March – Educational trip to Orion and Moscow with visits to the Tretyakov gallery, the Roerich museum and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall.
4th April– We performed “Joan of Arc” at the children’s theatre festival in Kaluga.
6th April – Educational trip to Orion for a week of Intensive English lessons with the 5th , 6th, 8th class.
14th April – Visit to Orion from the “Hash House Harriers”.
16th April – The publication of Dmitry Morosov’s third book “Raising children in the Third dimension”
21st – 9th May – Grant-funded educational trip for Anastacia Khomyakova and Evgenya Rhyazhskaya to Scotland and England.
22nd April – Maria Krivenkova gave a speech about Kitezh to the Efremov society.
1st May – May day celebration
May 5th – Young people from the “Yes Club” (Young English Speakers) visit Kitezh.
May 21st – Our friends from the company Skankod helped us to beautify Orion after the building works.
29th May – 4th June – We planted all the necessary plants in the reed beds in Kitezh and Orion which provide an ecological water cleaning system.
29th May – Our foster mother Tamara Pichugina was awarded a medal of “Acknowledgement’ by the Kaluga region.
1st and 2nd June – Sergei Khlopenov and Zhenya Rhyazhskaya did a presentation on Kitezh at the Pskov conference on children’s therapeutic villages.
2nd – 3rd June – Maria Pichugina and Maxim Anikeev present Kitezh at the University of Petrozavodsk
3rd June – We put on the play “Master” written by Kitezh graduate Alexander Sarukhanyan, and starring Roma Azamatov
6th June – A film crew from the TV company “Mir” visited Kitezh
16th June – Visit to Orion by children whose parents work for the company “Rusal”
24th June – Big community celebration to celebrate the anniversary of Kitezh (13 years) and Orion (2 years). A performance of the play “The Master – A few years later” written by Kitezh graduate Valentina Kanukhina.
July – August – Role playing summer camps “Star Wars” and “The World of Rokanon” with the participation of Moscow students, children from orphanages and friends from Moscow.
Summer – We made trips to an Ecological camp at Kinozersk National Park, a Kung Fu school in the Crimea, the Altai mountains and the beach at Krasnodar.
Summer – Many building works were carried out: in Orion, we continued to make improvements to the school building, we started building a third house and the summer dining room was completed. In Kitezh, we renovated the Pyramid house and we built an extension for the First Obitiel.
September – Some new children arrived in Kitezh: Sasha Argunov, Slava Klimov, Sasha Yeremin and sisters Vera and Nastya Lapinov. Some new adults also came to live in Kitezh: Misha Shurov, Yesin Omar, Lena Chulkina, Volodya Gorokhov. Nine students graduated from Kitezh and began their further studies in Kaluga, Oblinsk and Moscow.
October – A few Kitezhans took part in the training “Leaders of the World”
October 16th – 29th – Beverley D’Acourt from Scotland gave an Art Therapy training in Kitezh.
November 1-12th – Educational trips to Orion and Moscow with visits to the Gogol Theatre and the Bashrushin Theatrical Museum.
Autumn holidays – Our older students went to Moscow to do work experience at the company “Skankod”.
6th -8th November – Irina Morosov, Sergei Khlopenov and Maria Krivenkova made a presentation at the Nizhgorod Pedagogical University.
14th November – Trip by Kitezhans to the Anglo-American school.
13th – 14th December – Dmitry Morosov and Vladislav Terentyev made a trip to a village for foster parents in Voronyesh to share their knowledge and experience.
December – The launch of a new programme in Kitezh to support and educate foster parents.

And those were the events of the past year in Kitezh. And as we say farewell to the year gone by, we look back on it with slight nostalgia, because it represents such a big part of our lives, 12 whole months, 53 weeks, 365 days, 8760 hours, 525600 minutes, 31536000 seconds… and because we know that this time will never come back, and is now gone forever! But then again, why look back? Let’s look forward, and strive ahead to great new adventures!

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!
The Kitezhans

Dear friends! We, the authors of the Kitezh news, have decided to carry out a survey to find out who are our regular readers.
Our newsletter is now two years old and in this time our address book has accumulated a large quantity of “dead” addresses.
So we are asking you to help us and write an email to the address This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it to say that you want to receive our newsletter in the next year.
We are looking forward to your emails, since we don’t want to lose our readers!
Your Kitezh friends.

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