Our weekend...

Well, we're back in Moscow safe and sound. Had a nice weekend with the my friends parents who live in Yaroslavl. It was about 4 hours on the train to Yaroslavl which is north of Moscow and its about 6-10 degrees colder there. Friday in Moscow was about 32 degrees (1 to -1 C) and then in Yaroslavl it got to -10 degrees yesterday morning. BURRR...but it made for some very beautiful weather attributes I've read about in Literature and never seen called Hoarfrost.



I want to tell you about what we did Friday and then about our weekend.

Friday, we went with our new friends from Washington, DC to see St. Basil's in Red Square. It kept being closed when we tried to see it, but we hung outside until they opened at 11am with Paul and Donna. We really clicked with this couple and they are so sweet. I hope we get to see them again before we leave when they come back after the 10 day wait. They just had court last week on Thursday, but decided to go home between.

St. Basil's was beautiful and interesting building. We also saw the sun come out which was so nice.

















Our hosts met us at the Train station on Friday and we took a taxi to their home. They live in a small apartment in the edges of the city and Alexander works for one of the local universities as a historian. Andy and he got on beautifully becuase they could talk history all day. Larissa is a school teacher and was extremely sweet. Both were so generous with their time and energy. They cooked us all the meals while were there and it was SOO good. It was nice to have home cooked food and not restaurant food or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

aturday we went to the Yaroslavl Jazz Festival. They had 3 sets of players of jazz. Set 1 was a local band from Yaroslavl, Set 2 was a Moscow Free Jazz Band, and the 3rd group was an excellent ensemble from Moscow and the US. Their pianist was a guy named Keith Javers from Philadelphia. Guy could majorily play the piano. The tenor sax was played by Oleg Kireyev who has the #1 jazz club in Moscow. They are headed on tour to Europe and the U.S. Keith was so suprised so see someone who was American in Yaroslavl (he didn't speak any Russian himself)and so pleased to talk to us. He signed my CD I bought and his buddy Oleg gave us two more of his CDs to take back to Alabama. He plays world music as well as Jazz. So that was very cool.

Alexander gave us a tour of a few historic churches in Yaroslavl which date from between 1682-1692. Apparently during this period, Yaroslavl was a huge funnel from west Europe for trade traffic and made their fortunes that way. Other centuries the city had mercantile success with grain and tanneries. They lost all of that when St. Petersburg was built in 1703 and the traffic from Europe came through there and then lost the mill trade after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 because there were so many aristocrats and bourgeousie. Before 1900 they had a about 100 beautiful churches in the city, but they lost many to fire and many others were bombed out in WWII. About 30 are left in the city. Interesting thing about the church in these pictures is that the big building is for worship in the summer and the smaller white building is for worship in winter. Has 3 foot thick walls.





We also saw the Yaroslavl montastery and walked along the Volga on Saturday. Then walked along on Sunday morning when all the Hoarfrost was out which I just thought was amazing.





It was neat to be outside in this freezing weather and see the activity of the average Russian people as they walking along the Volga embankment. Kids on skis doing cross country type skiing, parents pushing children in sleds (no way to use a regular stroller when the ground is iced 3-6 inches thick), people out on the Volga with large augers cutting holes in the ice for fishing, kids tobogganing. That was fun. Unfortunately, my coat zipper has died. It won't zip and it was REALLY cold. So we went into the Yaroslavl city museum where they had wonderful Russian artwork.

We left on Sunday evening and arrived back in Moscow about 9pm. We came out a Belorusakya and we saw the KFC...so we broke down and ate there. That was actually the first time, but it was inexpensive and really good. Actually better than I have had recently at home. They play techno music and try to make KFC look cool which is kind of funny.

We got back to the hotel to a call from the other couple we had met at the Baby home last week. They are from Toronto Canada. They are adopting a 15 month old little boy who runs around and is very stable on his feet. They are also staying for the 10 days wait like us. They are getting their son the day after we get Alina. So we decided to meet them for lunch and as today was Monday all the Museums and major attractions are closed. So we did a tour that was in their guide book looking at the metro stops.

Many metro stops in Moscow are considered major works of art as they were decorated during Soviet times to commemorate WWII, the bolshevik revolution, Soviet unity, the arts, many other things.







Well, hope you enjoyed our update. Tommorrow we're probably going to either the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum or the Victory Park and WWII Museum. Love to you all.