Shopping twice in one week!

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So we heard that the blog is too long and some people don't want to read all that.  This week we'll take a different tack.  The pictures will come first with short captions, and then if you want to read the rest it's there, but it can be skipped.  We want to write all this because it is our record of the mission.




As we walk the short distance to work, we look out the driveway towards the Neva River.  St. Petersburg has lots of old buildings built from 1700 to 1900.  But it also has some interesting new ones.  This building across the river is all glass and makes us think some spaceship is about to take off. It's a new government building, still under construction..

Wednesday Sue took Ken back to ОХТА МОЛЛ--Okhta Mall.  The "X" sounds like the gutteral "kh" in Yiddish or Hebrew.

First we went to the Food Court for dinner.
These are the places we did NOT eat! (They are pronounced just like they are spelled.)

 Instead we got "Blini," which are crepes with a choice of filling.  This one has mushrooms, chicken and cheese.

We also tried "tacos."  The shop had small flour tortillas, but they filled the soft shell with roasted pork with tzatziki sauce, cherry tomatoes and whole leaves of lettuce.  It didn't look like the picture on the menu that showed guacamole and salsa!









And here is Lenta, a very large grocery store that has anything you'd ever need.






And on Saturday we went to Ikea. This Ikea is like Ikea anywhere--except in Russia it's spelled ИКЕА.  There is no letter "I" in the Russian alphabet.  That backwards N sounds like a long ee.






Now here's the long version:


Sunday

A quiet day.  Attended church from noon till 3.  Decided not to have translation.  There are receivers with headphones so that someone can simultaneously translate and we can listen to the English.  But then we don't hear the Russian.  We are trying to learn Russian, and to do so we need to hear it spoken.  We can both identify a few words here and there, but not much.  It will come with time, so they say.  Ken feels particularly overwhelmed because he cannot seem to remember the words or memorize phrases, let alone pronounce anything.  It is very humbling to be illiterate, deaf and dumb.


Monday

A quiet day.  But as Sue was about to leave the office a young woman came in and said she had an appointment with two Elders in about an hour.  We couldn't leave her in the office by herself, as we were the last ones out.  So Sue asked her if she could help.  Her name is Kristina, and she has been accepted to the intensive English program at BYU for Fall Semester.  She needed help applying for her student visa, as the application is all in English.  Sue told her she'd help.  It took FOUR hours!!  The Elders did come at 7 pm, and that was good, because they could help with translating some of the passages. Sue is amazed anyone ever wants to go through this process.

First Kristina had to pay one fee online -- $200 -- for one form that was already done.  Once they had that receipt, they went to the US State Department site to apply for the visa.  It starts with all the standard questions--name, age, parents, work and school history, information about program accepted to, etc.  Not hard, but very detailed.

Then the last section is several pages of "security" questions.  Sue and Kristina were just laughing so hard!  Who would ever answer "yes" to any of these?  A few samples:  "Have you been involved in money laundering?"  "Have you ever been a prostitute or are going to the US to be a prostitute?"   "Have you ever engaged in terrorist activities?"  "Do you donate money to terrorist groups?"  Ken said they have to ask so that if you come in and they find out you lied, it's easier to deport you.

After they finished all of that part and uploaded Kristina's photo, she had to pay another $160 online in US dollars for the visa.  Then she was finally ready to make her appointment for the in-person visa interview at the US Consulate here in St. Petersburg.  She was here from Kaliningrad and was hoping to go in during the next day or two, but the first available appointment was not until June 2!  So she flew back to Kaliningrad and will have to return to St. Petersburg next month.

It was almost 10 pm before we headed home and had a peanut butter sandwich for dinner.


Tuesday

Tuesday afternoon is usually the office staff meeting with President and Sister Childs, the two Office Elders, the two Assistants to the President, and the Office Senior Couple--that's us.  This week President Childs told us, again, who our new Mission President will be in July--we hope!  This is the third try.  The first two are not able to get Russian visas.  President Brent Rawson was supposed to go to the Adriatic Mission, but it looks like he will come here.  He works for Exxon Mobile--no previous Russian ties though, and no US Security clearance.  We are hoping the Russian visa givers will think he is OK.

In the afternoon we were scheduled for another trip to the US Consulate to pick up our second passport copies.  They are needed to allow us to move around while our visas are reprocessed. We walked with Elder and Sister Archibald through the block to catch the "Marshrutka" mini bus.  We decided to try using it this week instead of walking all the way.  In the winter we won't want--or be able-- to walk the route.  This was the Archibald's last week in St. Petersburg with us, so the plan was to visit the consulate and then go to St. Isaacs Church/Museum, which should now be open because it was not Wednesday!  While waiting for the bus, Sue had a sudden wave of nausea and knew she should not get on that bus.  She headed back to the apartment with Sister Archibald, and had a few hours of "Tzars Revenge" and then was fine.  Sue forgot to wash the eggs on the outside before cracking them at breakfast.  Won't do that again.

After taking the bus and picking up our passports, Elder Archibald and Ken walked from the Consulate down one of the main streets (Liteynly Avenue) to Nevsky Avenue past some historic sites to find CitiBank. It is right on the corner of Nevsky and the Fontanka River Canal, where a number of the riverboat tours start.  We needed US cash for emergency funds. Well, CitiBank doesn't issue small bills and in fact doesn't even make change. There are only ATM machines, and they only issue one-hundred-dollar bills. It's best to have smaller bills--twenties preferred. So they walked across the canal toward the Metro station to find foreign exchange shops, which cater to tourists wanting rubles from dollars. They found one but had a hard time explaining that they wanted dollars for dollars. They finally got one place to give five twenties for one new one hundred--they don't accept "old" wrinkled bills. Another finally gave us two fifties.  Ken needs to work on getting small change.

Across the street was Gostinyy Dvor, the first big mall in Russia dating from the 1850s. It is huge, full of small swanky shops selling extremely expensive wares.  It reminded Ken of a cross between Nieman-Marcus and airport duty-free shops.

In the evening we had a good Skype visit with Keith.  He has bought an old 1980's VW Bus!!  He's going to fix it up as a traveling photo booth to take on his DJ gigs.  It's orange--Sue's favorite color.  It will be named the Pix-Mobile or some such.


Wednesday

Wednesday after work, Sue took Ken to the Okhta Mall across the Okhta River Canal to pick up the dry cleaning and do some grocery shopping.  We walked down to the park, caught a special Okhta shuttle bus and drove the few blocks over there.  See pictures above about our dinner in the food court.

The Lenta grocery store is in the basement.  It is huge and has everything.  Throw out all your old images of Soviet-era bread lines.  They are gone!  We walked first through the gardening section, and Ken stopped to examine the seed packets.  We have a nice balcony, and he's been contemplating a small vegetable garden.  We are taking to heart the words of President Kimball in April 1976 Conference: "Even those residing in apartments or condominiums can generally grow a little food in pots and planters."  So Ken bought tomato and lettuce seeds.  That night about 11 pm he went out to the flower garden plot next to the lawn behind our apartment and scraped up enough soil for an egg-carton.  It's rich soil, even had a worm.  He planted the seeds and put the carton in the windowsill.  One day soon we'll find a garden store and buy pots and soil to get the balcony garden really going.

However, here the tomatoes in the store are actually quite good!  They aren't bred for color and traveling ability.  The store-bought tomatoes taste as good as home-grown ones.  They say we get our produce here from the "Stans," former Soviet republics in the south: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc.

While wandering the aisles of the store I asked Ken to look up the Russian word for Shampoo.  He said шампун.  We both laughed--that is pronounced 'shampoon."


Thursday -- quiet day at office.

Ken still feels a bit overwhelmed handling finances.  Sue has an easier job and is seeming to get a handle on it. He has been listening to and reading in the Book of Mormon. For the last two nights he has been paying attention as King Benjamin delivered his two-day long speech about the  meaning of life and the role of the atonement of Christ, the act that enables us to overcome our weaknesses and obtain a personal relationship with Christ.  It's profound and very moving. Ken, already humbled by the magnitude of his job, was more humbled by the experience of listening to the sermon. This is not the first place to learn about Mormon teachings, but it is the core.  For those who are prepared to drink Gospel teachings from a firehose, here is the link: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/2?lang=eng  ... .

In more mundane activities, Ken got to prepare his first incident report for Church Security.  That's one of his jobs.  Ken was reminded of a comment several years ago by a Russian student of comparative religions who observed that this church must be true because it seemed everyone was opposed to it, without justification.  In this incident two volunteers in faraway Kaliningrad had an encounter with a drunk neighbor and his friends that could have gotten ugly if the volunteers had responded differently.  As it turns out, they did exactly the right thing as prompted by the Spirit and diffused a confrontation.  Not a big deal.  But it had to be reported.  Ken felt like Sergeant Friday of Dragnet fame, writing a police report.  The follow-up by our wonderful Sister Efinova was handled with a few phone calls.  (She handles all the apartment leases, remodels, rents, utilities, etc.)  She called the landlady who lives in Moscow, who loves having our volunteers as tenants and who was very upset about this.  These two 'babushkas' (grandmothers) got after the offending young men, and all is well.  Everyone in Russia listens to the babushkas!  And especially to Sister Efimova.  She doesn't let anyone get away with anything!  We love her dearly already.

In the afternoon we had our weekly district meeting.  There are six great Elders and two great Sisters in our district.  We also had a visit from Sister Anna Grishina, who is from St. Petersburg, but just finished serving a mission in Samara.  She shared with us a lesson on prayer.  If God knows everything about us and all that we need, what's the purpose of prayer?  It's to put our will in alignment with God's Will.  (Once I know God's Will, then I know what I need to do.)   She quoted President Monson about how we need to Recognize, Trust, and Follow the Spirit in our lives. (And this is exactly what the volunteers in Kaliningrad did!)  And we will be protected.

Thursday night we had a Skype visit with Rachel.  She was talking to us while fixing breakfast, and we had just finished dinner.  Living half a world away is interesting....


Friday

The Archibald's went back to Novgorod.  We're now officially on our own.  But the good part is that they are only a phone call or email away--and they are in our same time-zone.

Friday evening we Skyped with Sue's mom and sister Carol.  It's hard to be so far away, but it's good to be able to visibly visit so easily.  We think about our pilgrim and pioneer ancestors who moved from England or Switzerland or Denmark to the New World of America and never saw their families again.  Letters could take months, if they got there at all.  We have so many blessings from modern communications.

Ken asked if we couldn't do Skype in the morning our time, and evening in the US.  But that means we would have to be up at dawn here to talk to them late at night.  And dawn in St. Petersburg is now at about 4:30 am and getting earlier every day.  More about that below.


Saturday

It was time to find Ikea.  We took the trolley bus a couple of miles and then were supposed to take a big city bus.  But the K269 Marshrutka--privately-owned mini bus--pulled up to the stop and had a sign in the window for ИКЕА, so we got on.  This is the same line that Ken took, going the other way, to get to the Сonsulate on Tuesday.  So coming home we just took it the whole way back.

We had a good shopping list for Ikea.  Sue wanted a decorative mirror to hang over the dresser in the bed/living room so she can do her hair there in the mornings.  Drying hair in the bathroom while Ken is in the shower just doesn't work.  We also wanted some dark curtains.  The ones in the apartment are fine--but see-through white with pink flowers.  Not so good when the sun is up at 4 am and doesn't go down until after 10 pm.  Sue generally wakes up about 4:30 to put on the airplane-provided sleeping mask and goes back to sleep for two or three hours.  And we bought new bathroom rugs (the old ones were just plain ugly), plus cloth placemats and a tablecloth.  We will be here for two years, so we want a comfortable home feeling.  Everything in the apartment was plastic, and Sue likes nicer than that.  Was Sue raised by her mother, or what?  :o)

On the way out we stopped for hotdogs--standard Ikea fare at 50 cents each.  But they don't have the yummy cinnamon rolls here.  (Boo Hoo.)

That evening we walked down the Neva River to the confluence with the smaller Okhta River.  The walk was 8-9 pm, and the sun was still high in the sky.  There is a sidewalk along the buildings on our side of the river, then a big four-lane highway, then a walkway along the river.  We finally figured out how to get over there--but it's about a mile down the road.  So by the time we got there we didn't want to get on the path and have to walk back.  We know the nearest place to get off going south is a mile south of our apartment.  That makes it a four-mile round trip to walk along the river path.  We'll usually stick to the sidewalk on our side of the highway.  While at the river's edge we watched as three fishermen dropped umbrella nets into the river.  We were warned that one does not eat freshwater fish, with good reason.  However we were duly impressed with the cleanup efforts after the long winter.  Workers are diligently cleaning up the roads and walkways all over.  At 8 o'clock at night on a Saturday, workmen were power washing the center divide barrier on the highway bridge!


Random Observations:

We see lots of little little kids playing on the playground equipment bundled up in coats with mouse-fuzzy ear caps.  There are lots of little mini-parks in the middle of all the apartment blocks.  When the weather warms up, they will really be full of kids.

The doors all have high thresholds--2"-3"--that you have to step over, or you trip.  Is that to keep out the water?  Or for weather sealing?  Lots of things here would not be ADA compliant, but there are ramps and such for baby strollers on the steps of the Metro!

The air here seems deceptively dusty, but we like the fresh air in our apartment.  As a result there is an accumulation of noticeable dust on all horizontal surfaces--desks, floors, even papers.  Weekly cleaning is a must.  Water here carries a lot of sediment, so drinking water is filtered through three stages of filters.  After six months they are swapped out, black with sediment.  Another good reason to clean bath and kitchen often. Heating is central--really central.  Huge steam-generating plants pipe steam into radiators in all the buildings.  The only regulation is a valve.  We expect the heat in the city to be turned off in less than two weeks.  Normally it is turned off the first of May, but this has been a cold week.  We shall see how we survive the spring chills.  Hot water bottles come highly recommended.

 :o)