A letter home from study abroad
October 3
I woke up at about 8:20 after about 4 hours of sleep and, in a fit
of whimsy, turned on the hot water in the shower. Why bother with such
things any more? I knew there was no hot water. I grabbed a glass of tea
in the dorm's stolovaya and threw on a jacket and boots. Today was our
trip to the Red October candy factory!
Once we got there, we had to change into slippers for our trip
through the factory museum. The focus of the curator's talk was on how
well the workers have always been treated at Red October, even before the
revolution, when it was called the Elenim chocolate factory. At various
times, they've had specials schools, choirs, a symphony and lots of
special benefits for the workers. Some current workers are third
generation employees! Apparently, since becoming a private factory, Red
October has been tremendously profitable.
Before being allowed in the factory proper, we were required to
don long white lab-coat like affairs (halati) and little white hats.
I assumed that the instruction: "Girls, if you've got long hair, you
should tuck it up inside your hat" applied to me and attempted (to
several people's great amusement) to do so...but I couldn't get my hair
into the tiny hat. so, I just put it up in a bun.
To get to the factory, we had to walk through a maze of corridors,
many of which featured really nice stained-glass windows. We passed the
factory shoe repair center and an advertisement stating that sugar could
be purchased inside the factory in 50 kilo bags for 250T.R. (50 bucks)
The first room we visited was the caramel room, where our guide literally
scooped up several handfuls of wrapped caramels from a moving conveyor
belt. They were still warm! Throughout the half-hour, enough candy was
forced on us to make just about every one of us sick.
At the end of the tour, we took off our white coats and were shown
to a huge conference table set with tea for twenty and more candy and
chocolate. Our entrance was filmed by a TV crew from a local station.
Supposedly, we'll be on tuesday at 9 pm. After we through the remainder
of the candy in our bookbags, we headed home.
I spent the afternoon vegetating and hacking and reading and
generally doing nothing. In the evening, I did more of the same...except
I took a break to watch a chunk of Desperately Seeking Susan on TV.