A Little Boy With Gloves - Children's Hospital

Today, at the Children's Hospital, we went outside. I didn't bring my gloves because I didn't know we were going outside. A little boy pointed to my hands and pretended to be shivering. "I forgot them," I said, pointing away, and stuffing my hands in my pockets. It's amazing how much one can communicate without understanding each other's language. The little boy took off his left glove and handed it to me, and I almost died. "Nyet, nyet, spasiba!" I said, giving it back to him. It was one of the sweetest things I've ever been offered. This little kid has nothing and yet he offers me the glove off his hand. It sounds like a story one reads. It seems like something that happens to other people. It seems like a fairy story, maybe, a folk tale. But it happened to me this morning, at about 11 am. Even now, writing it, I am overcome with a feeling I can't identify, but feels like joy, sorrow, aching, love, all at once.
The three of us have a great thing going here, me and the other volunteers. We took a walk to a local grocery store today after our afternoon placement, and, only sweating a little bit, I was actually able to purchase bread and cheese.
The old Russian groceries are stuck in time, in a fabulous way. There are four windows/counters - one for meat, one for produce, one for cheese and one for bread.
First you go the window where the stuff is you want, wait in line, and you tell the lady what you want. She writes something down on a little piece of paper. Then you go to the fifth window, which is the cashier. You wait in line, then pay her, and then you take the receipt back to the window, and then you wait in line again, and give her the receipt and then you are allowed to collect your goods.
This process took only a few minutes to understand. At first, the three of us just stood by the door, trying to figure out what was going on by watching other people. But people kept knocking into us coming and going, so we finally were fairly pushed fully inside the store, and after pointing and saying "Pazshalsta," (please) and then the one good phrase in Russian I know how to say perfectly (I do not understand Russian, I'm sorry!") we were somehow spit back out onto the slushy sidewalk with a loaf of bread, wheel of cheese and two pastries that turned out to have a yogurt topping.
Yesterday, while we were waiting for the tram, I told Cortney that maybe people couldn't believe we wanted to go to Russia because in America, we still think of Russia as this big, dark, scary place. And then it kinda struck me as we were standing there in the near-deserted tram stop, with all the dead trees and shut-up kiosks, that it is big dark and scary. Cortney quipped, "You're really not that far off," and we all laughed like crazy, because it is totally true and yet still much much more than that otherwise we wouldn't be here.
It's cold and big and dark and scary. And it's also where, if you forget your gloves, a little boy will offer you his.