From Moscow to London

After four and a half years in Moscow, I find English life quite a change. Now, whenever I need any school materials, I don't have to wait until the next time we go to a Western country. I can go up to our local village any time I want -- it's only a five-minute walk. We don't have to store things away for when we don't have anything in winter. We don't have to be careful of what we eat, saving all the nice things for special occasions. It is a great change to see friendly, helpful, and willing faces behind counters, and well-stocked stores. I would like to see a Russian's face as he walked into one of our supermarkets.

My younger brother and sister are in reptures over our local sweetshop. In Moscow the only thing they could visit was a konditerskaya (candy store) which had only poorly-wrapped, stone-hard toffee (if you could call them that) that pulled your fillings out if you attempted to chew them, and plastic bags of yellow, pink, and red sweets with extremely hard shells. When you bit into them , the centers were filled with too-sweet red jam. Our local sweetshop here in England has shelves and shelves full of colorful arrays of chocolate, toffee, lollipops, and everything we have craved for the pats four and a half years.

But there are a lot of things I miss about Moscow. The main thing, I think, is the sense of community. Now, we live in one family in one house of our own. There is no communal place for the children of the block of play. In Moscow we lived in a building where everyone loved to help each other, and outside we had lots of friends from different coutries, and we could to go see them whenever we wanted.

Still, we had to leave Moscow sometime. The more I stayed there, the more I got to love it. That was the same with all of us. I guess that's what will happen with England.