Admin day

Today was admin, which, along with day off (yesterday), we realise is important to keep stress levels manageable. Mainly, we are making desparate pleas for more sponsors - Bob is trawling Facebook sites that will let him on. We know that there are lots of sponsors still out there, mainly on the government's matching site, Reset, which we can't get into. We don't know the reason (although we could make a guess!), but some of these sponsors have been waiting for months to be matched with a Ukrainian family.

We also met with a Ukrainian student, M, who is just finishing his equivalent A levels and is hoping to come to England with his mother and sister. All his lessons, and now exams, are online - first it was because of COVID and now the war. He is very bright and his English is pretty good so he would do well. We have written to Nelson and Colne College to see if he could have an online interview for a place there. He helped us with obtaining Ukrainian mobile numbers so that we can communicate other than via WhatsApp.

M also talked about a friend in the town where he used to live, which is now occupied by Russia. He spoke with almost disbelief about seeing the place where he spent his childhood being bombed and overrun by Russian soldiers, who now treat his friend (another 18 year old) with contempt and sometimes abuse.

We had a cooling afternoon walk in the shade of trees in the nearby square/boulevard. There is an area of benches where people play chess - the crowd in the photo is around a competition between a young girl and an old man. Bob said they were pretty evenly matched but the game was going to go on for a while. 

Finally, we had good news from A, living with a sponsor family in Rawtenstall, who has been offered a job as a shop manager how good is that?!
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