Winter Pictures

We have a lot of snow! News reports have stated that St. Petersburg hasn't had this much snow for 120 years! The window shot is snow piled outside my office window, the Fontonka River frozen over (runs through downtown St. Petersburg), back yard photos from our apartment. It's very difficult to walk around now so we are having to use a backpack to carry our groceries home. It's too difficult to pull our carts.

We had a very noisy New Year's Eve. Neighbors started letting off fireworks at 9 p.m. and continued until 4 a.m. Russians celebrate Christmas and New Year from January 1 - 10. Joe and I were invited to have a day out with friends so we left our apartment about 9:30 a.m. Walking around the corner to our bus stop there were people drunk, others trying to talk to us but we have no idea what they're saying, bloody snow that we walked around, and when we used the ATM to pull out some money it didn't give us the cash, but it took it out of our checking account. It was very, very cold so we used these signs to forget our day trip and walked back to our apartment to stay safe and warm.

We had a very nice Christmas dinner with all the missionaries finished up with a very comical white elephant gift exchange, musical chairs, and singing.

We wish everyone a Very Happy 2010! We look forward to serving this year and for the Spring thaw to venture out for more exploring.