Day 2: Wednesday, July 9 - From Edna

We arrived safely yesterday and today was our first day of sightseeing. We saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Red Square, Lenin's Tomb, the outside of The Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed, and the GUM (pronounced "goom") department store. We also had lunch at a Russian restaurant where I had blinis (Russian pancakes with sour cream) and the boys had borsch (beet soup) and pelmeni (dumplings stuffed with meat). We rode the Metro (subway system) and visited The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. My favorites were the outside of St. Basil's and the inside of of Christ the Savior.

This morning on European news we saw that there were protests yesterday in Red Square regarding the placement of missile bases by the U.S. near Russia. The protestors had signs with the face of President Bush in a circle with a slash through it. We were hoping our friends and family at home wouldn't see the story and become worried. Today when we were at Red Square the protesters were gone.

Tomorrow we'll be seeing the Kremlin and the museums and churches there. The Bolshoi Theater is under renovation, so unfortuately we won't be able to see a ballet there.

It hasn't been extremely hot here (only around 72 degrees), but the humidity is 98%. We drank a lot of water during our many hours of walking today, but we didn't notice the Russians drinking water at all. We're used to everyone in Seattle carrying around water bottles, but I guess that's not a universal practice.

We have an amazing helper and tour guide named Olga. She is the administrative assistant for the Director of European Nazarene College. She picked us up from the airport, helped us get settled into a hotel for the first night, helped us get settled into the district apartment we're now in until Friday, and today gave us a personal tour of some of the most famous sights in Moscow. Everything here has been so much easier with her around. I'm sure we could have navigated our way, but not nearly with the ease and assurance she provided. Olga is really sweet to the boys and they love her already, and Emmy calls her "our angel."

Many things in Russia do not work very well, so today for about 15 minutes we were stuck in the elevator of the apartment building in which we're staying. At one point even the lights went out for about a minute. I must also add that this is toward the top of my sister's worst-fear list. Thankfully we all remained calm, largely because we didn't want Jacob and Zachary to be scared! We were so grateful to have Olga with us because she called the operator and could communicate the details of what was happening in Russian.

Right now there is no hot water in the apartment. Apparently in the summer and without warning, management turns off the hot water to entire buildings in order to do maintenance to the systems. It is uncertain when it will be back on. It could be tomorrow, or it could be in 3 weeks.

One thing I noticed right away was that almost every building (stores, apartments, hotels, etc.) has "security guards." These guards are unarmed men who just basically stand around (or often sit!) and watch what is going on. It's quite mysterious to me, but likely a remnant of Soviet days when everyone was really watched.

Tonight Charles and I walked to the market (grocery store) that is about 100 yards away from the district apartment. It's on the first floor of one of the industrial-looking apartment buildings, and it was quite an experience trying to shop for groceries that were labeled with the Cyrillic alphabet. We were grateful for the 20 percent of packages that were labeled in both Russian and English. I think we did fairly well looking at the pictures to figure out what the items were. Our only mistake was that we bought carbonated water instead of regular drinking water. We should have bought water bottles that said "still" on them.

Zachary continues to show his ability to have fun wherever he goes. On the Metro he was imitating some of the people who were resting and he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. Jacob loves Russia and says he wants to buy a summer home here. It's a huge blessing to have my sister Emmy along to help out with the many details required to mobilize our family.