Week before Christmas

FINALLY SNOW!!!

This is the soccer field for the elementary school.  It cracks me up that there are all these kids in their snow pants, boots, gloves, hats, coats, and scarves running around playing soccer as if it were summer!  

Dinner pre-Christmas Caroling with the missionaries. 

 One of the many crazy malls here.  It reminds me of The Capitol in the Hunger Games.  

Walking home...

This sign says, "Russian Doctor".  I guess he is having a 50% off sale.  I wonder what kind of a doctor it is.  Cracks me up!!!

The dirt on the roads here is unbelievable!  I wish you could tell from this picture how terribly gross it is.  From the back of this car, you cannot tell that it is white.  They put a weird mixture of chemicals and dirt on the roads instead of salt.  It magically turns snow into mud.  It is also impossible to get out of your clothes.  I asked some Russian ladies once how they get it out, one of them told me to pee on the clothes...I told her I didn't think I could get anyone in my house to do that.  She told me to pee in a spray bottle...  I think we will just wear dark clothes for the remainder of the winter.

Super cool tree.

My new food processor (thank you mom and dad).  I christened it with chocolate cheesecake!  I loved the processor AND the cheesecake!

 Best Buddies at the Ambassador's Mansion

This week...

This year Dalton is playing percussion and Seth is playing the Saxophone.  The concert was for grades 5-8.  (I was pretty proud of myself for remembering all of the elements of the Formal Uniform.  No tan pants this time!  I did notice 2 other kids who had on tan pants and I felt bad for their poor mothers!)

Grocery Shopping

This store is Wal Mart on Crack.  It is Black Friday shopping every day of the year.  I have to psych myself up to go and reward myself for making through.  

The shopping carts are chained together.  You pay 10r to use the cart and when you bring it back, you get your rubles back.  

When shopping here, it is the unspoken rule that you leave your cart at the end of the isle and go get your stuff and then carry it back to your cart.  

The week AFTER Thanksgiving, sweet potatoes...

How many rubber gloves do you need to choose from???  

SOCKS!!  I am in so much trouble!!  

And, here is my reward for making it through that mad house AND getting through traffic!  2 weeks ago when I went shopping, it took us 2 hours to get home!  2 HOURS!!!  1 hour to get there, 2 hours to shop and 2 hours to get home.  5 hours for your weekly grocery shopping is too much!!

This is the best treat in Russia!  It is a little bit of heaven.  The best thing I can think of to describe it is a bite size cheesecake.  This one has caramel in the middle.  Yum yum yum!!!

There are ginormous Christmas trees everywhere!  You can see the Russian White House on the right side of the tree.

This is our new church building.  Our ward meets on the third floor.  It looks a little sketchy but, it is actually great.  We really like it.  It is very close to our place.  It only takes about 15-20 mins to get there as opposed to 30-45 mins.  Hooray!

Ward Christmas Party

African's Christmas dance

Korean Christmas dance group (Plus Elder Melchor.  They asked him to be in the picture with them.  Perhaps one of them has a crush on him...)  

Our family sang Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, chinigan style but, since we were performing, we didn't record it.  It is probably best.

Here is a documentation photo.  When we first moved here in January 2014, The ruble was at 31.  It is now at 59!  When we were here in 97, the ruble was at 13.  It jumped to 33 over night causing a ruble crisis.  We are unsure what this means for the locals and those getting paid in rubles...

This vending machine sales phone accessories.  Cracks me up!

This Week in Moscow

 Christmas is coming!

This building cracks me up!  The entire building is covered in vertical hanging strings of lights.  It's a popular thing to do around here...

Gorky Park 

Ice skating season has begun!

And of course, we must get donuts and hot chocolate afterwards!

 We have a new grocery store here called Globus.  It is a much more pleasant experience for me!!  You can imagine my surprise when I saw this little sign!  It says, "without gluten"!!

My parents made this darling quilt for us!  I love it so much!!

This is a 5 lane street.  Right after the wall on the right, there is a right turn.  The two lanes on the right are the turn lanes.  But, everyone uses the third lane as a right turn lane as well.  Never mind that there are only 2 lanes to turn into.  The third row, just cuts in front of everyone else.

When you pay at a register, they refuse to take the money out of your hand and refuse to put your change in your hand.  They put it in this little tray.  Every register has one.  If by some freak of nature a counter is built without one, they put a dish out.  I find it secretly funny to just hold my money out and not put it in the tray.  They whole time the cashier is pointing to the tray and I pretend I don't know what she is talking about and I lay it down somewhere else.  I have to find joy where I can.  

License Plates 
An interesting thing about Russian license plates, there are no letters that are unique to the Cyrillic alphabet For example ф ш ж ю, these are all letters that are not used in the English alphabet, are never found on their license plates.

I was at the store the other day, killing time, and I wandered past the magazine rack and I found it curious that the magazine names are in English but the rest of the magazine is in Russian.  Why not put the magazine name in the Russian alphabet too??

I thought this was funny because some words in Russian can be sounded out in English.  This can of corn looks like an English word but it is actually pronounced Naparew.  It is funny how we sometimes try sounding out an English word in Russian and sometimes we see Russian words and read them in English.

Metro
This is metro Komsomolskya.  It is AMAZING!!  I was out looking for a new craft store and this was the metro stop I got off on.  Can you believe the beauty and detail put into this station???  The pictures are all mosaics!  It is truly breathtaking!

Check out these stairs!!  This is in the building where the craft store is.  They are metal and amazing!

A great cross stitch find at the craft store, $10.  For $10 you can have hours of enjoyment while stitching this fabric porn. I have a great cross stitch of Putin but, for some reason or another, I am unable to download it onto the computer.  Hmmm. 

Hat or Hair?

First of many Christmas puzzles done!!

Activity Day boys.  We covered journals with Duct tape and talked about our ancestors.  They also planned a party and for refreshments the wanted Root beer floats and Warheads.  I'm not sure parents loved it!