A Real Week

This is a "normal" week.  Actually quieter than most.  The Mission President is gone off to a leadership conference for all of Europe in Turkey, and we are alone in the office all week. So, we thought we'd write about our real lives instead of the touristy adventures.

Also, this is the week that is real winter at last.  We were mostly in the 20's & 30's Degrees Fahrenheit--until Monday.  Temperatures have plummeted.  Monday when we left our apartment about 9 am it was -1F outside.  Windchill to -13F.  Brrrr!!



First thing Monday morning Sue had to go to the grocery store.  We'd missed our usual Saturday shopping trip because we were gone to Petrozavodsk.  We have a "babushka cart."  Babushka is the Russian word for Grandmother.  All us little-old-ladies pull one of these to carry home the groceries.  The building behind Sue is our apartment building.  The lowest balcony on the right is ours.





Then Ken had her turn around in the same spot.  The building you can see at the far end of the street is the backside of our neighborhood grocery store.  Well, there are lots of grocery stores in the neighborhood--one or two on every block.  

 This is the one we like best for quick trips.  It has a lot of stuff in a very small space!  The name of the store is a play on words. 7Я is "Family". Я is I.  Just семь is the word for the number 7.

Here is the kitchen where Sue cooks and Ken does dishes.  Ready for breakfast! Dishwasher, sinks, stove, counter, pantry,  microwave, cupboards, fridge and table, all in a very small space.

On Monday evening we had the Shaikylin family over for dinner.  We met their daughter, Yulia, over a year ago, because she was living and working in Palo Alto.  But she got married last fall and has moved to Los Angeles.  We also included Virginia Edlefsen, from Malad, Idaho.  She is here studying Russian for a few months and just happened to rent a room in the apartment directly upstairs from the Shaikylins!  We knew they were in the same neighborhood, so recommended that she contact them to find out the best bus to get to church.  They were surprised to find each other in the same  building.  We also had Elders Mortensen and Wallace.

Dinner Guests:  Ken, Sue, Elder Wallace, Virginia, Elder Mortensen,
Sister & Brother Shaikylin, and their son, Ivan.

Whenever we have company for dinner, we line up in front of the Murphy bed for a photo because just across the room is the dresser, with mirror behind.  Ken can set up his little tripod and see how it looks on the phone screen in the mirror!

This is also Sue's dressing table.  We put a mirror there so she can dry her hair in the mornings while Ken is in the shower fogging up the mirror in the bathroom.  :o)

But some days when Sue is doing her hair he's still in bed.  Studying Russian, he says.  (Duolingo on the phone.)

It may be cold, but at least the sun is shining!  It felt like we didn't see more than a couple of hours of sun in all of December and January.  This week it's been bright and glorious almost every day!  Notice how long the shadows are.  But the days are getting noticeably longer.  Sun is now up before 8 am and goes down after 6:30 pm.  We are no longer going to the office in the dark and coming home in the dark.  Hurray!






Here is our front hall where we get bundled up.  Lots of room for coats and shoes.  (Never!! wear shoes in the house in Russia!!) Here you see coats, shoes, boots, slippers, scarves, hats, shoe cleats, changing chair, mirror and door phone next to the front door.












And we each have a small basket to empty the pockets each evening.  It's the spot for keys, nametags, passports, etc.  We like this and are going to do the same thing when we get home.  You always know where to find the little things.










This is the elevator lobby of our building.  Our mailbox is the top one on the left--we are the first apartment on the second floor.  Ground floor is offices with their own lobbies on the other side of the building.  This is the size of the whole lobby.  The elevator doors are just on the left.  We only use them when we have lots of stuff to haul upstairs.



Ken wanted to post a bunch of photos of our commute, etc., but he already did a great video of that.  If you want a refresher, go back to our blog post of April 29 and watch again.

There are three doors on the outside to our section of the building.  The one on the right is to the elevator lobby, the one on the left to the stairs, and the one in the middle is to the trash bins!  There used to be a trash chute opening on each floor, but they are welded shut now.  And crazy Elder Allen doesn't bother to wear an overcoat when we are just walking to the office, even though the temperature is down in the single digits F!

Mostly we spend all day in the office sitting at our desks.  Sue is in the main lobby of the office as the receptionist, here meeting the UPS man.  Sometimes for variety she sits on the big blue ball.

Panorama of the Mission Office lobby.  Ken's office door is on the right

We are alone in the office a lot of the time, but we like it when we are interrupted by the arrivals of volunteers.  Here are Elders Muhlestein and Bohman visiting from the suburb of Avtovo to turn in their rent money.  It's the beginning of the month, and Elder Allen is collecting money to be held for Sister Efimova, our amazing mission apartment manager.  It's an interesting system here.  Only Russians can rent apartments.  The LDS Church here has a "Local Religious Organization" and the president is a Russian.  He, personally, signs the leases on the apartments.  But the young volunteers are supposed to actually pay the rent.  They, or their families, contribute $400/month towards their mission.  That's the same amount world-wide.  That way it isn't more of a burden on families with a missionary in Palo Alto, where it is expensive to live than on a family like us who sent our sons to South America where it is very cheap.

Anyway, the Mission gets an allocation from that for each missionary--enough to pay their rent & utilities, and $225 cash for them to use for food & transportation.  The $225 goes directly onto their ATM card each month.  Ken sends more funds to the cards individually depending on how much their rent and utilities are.  Then they pull the rent out in cash and bring it back to him or deliver it to the landlord.  Ken gives rent and utilities funds to Sister Efimova.  She delivers it to the landlords in St. Petersburg.  

That's the big interruption in the day.  Other than that, we stare at IMOS a lot.  This is the "International Missionary Organizing System" or some such....   Nope -- had to look it up.  "Internet Mission Office System."  Pronounced eye-moss.



The main screen has a line for each person with basics of where they are serving, and start and end dates of mission.




You can click on their name and see all the details.  There are also a bunch of other tabs to see parents' contact info, or all the cities where they have served, or payments made on their ATM card.  Then there is a whole other set of pages about apartments--address, size, rent, etc.

One interesting piece of IMOS is the Transfer Board.  This is like an electronic bulletin board.  President and Sister Rawson with the two Assistants use it to decide who will be living where and be companions with whom in the future.  Each dark blue heading is one of the two zones.  Each light blue group is one District, corresponding to one of the wards or branches.  President can drag & drop people around to different cities with different companions.  When someone is going home he can drag them up to the top out of either zone, and their name line turns red.  When someone new is coming in their name line turns green.  The little letters in the corner of each picture are their positions:  Zone Leader, Sister Training Leader, Junior Companion, etc.  They can do different scenarios and save them as drafts until the day Transfers are announced, usually on Monday before Transfers that happen on Wednesday.  "A Transfer" is six weeks, and is a standard unit of time measurement on a mission.  Ask a Sister how long she's been in a city and she'll say "three Transfers."


We often come home for lunch.  This day was "cup-a-soup" packets made using our "Chiynik."  That's an electric tea kettle.  It boils hot water in about 30 seconds.  Amazing!!    

And PB&J.  We can easily get peanut butter here--it just comes in small jars.  The pouch holds the jam.  Lots of stuff comes like that.  In the US we've only seen it for baby food.  In Russia they are used for ketchup, mayonnaise, salad dressing, etc.

Tuesday afternoon Sue had to go to the US Consulate to pick up some passports.  It's about a 30 minute trip each way--10 minutes to wait for a mashrutka  (minibus), 10-15 minutes on the bus, 5-10 minute walk from the bus stop to the Consulate.  Sue went home before the trip and got boots, hat, gloves--but forgot to put on her longjohns.  The knees got really, really cold.

Half of the mail closet

One of Sue's jobs is to take care of the incoming mail.  It comes in fits and spurts.  Our driver (and Second Counselor in the Mission Presidency) Kostya goes to the Main Post Office downtown once a week or so (more often before Christmas!) to pick up packages and letters sent to the Mission PO Box.  It is downtown where there is no place to park, so he usually goes late at night.  We come into the office in the morning and find mail!  It gets sorted onto the shelves for each district.  Anyone who comes into the office usually heads first for the mail closet.   

Thursday night we were feeling too lazy to cook or do dishes, and we hadn't been outside all day, so we walked the 1km down Novocherkasskaya Avenue to the Subway by the subway (Metro) stop for a Subway sandwich.







 We smile at the signs, because in Russian САБВЭЙ is pronounced "Sahbvay" (there is no "w" sound in Russian) and СЭНДВИЧИ is pronounced "Sendveechee."  In Russian the plural is very often made by adding an ee at the end of the word--the backwards N.







Now, it's your turn to read "Russian."    Hints:

C is always pronounced like an S. 
P is always pronounced like R (but rolled).
H is always pronounced like N. 
The others are the same as English. 






Friday we did our usual Hermitage Service, helping at the entrance turnstiles.  To get there we usually take the #7 Trolley Bus.  That's the electric bus attached to electric wires overhead.  Here is Sue waiting at the bus stop.  It's just across the street from the Семья grocery store.








Afterwards we decided to walk the city a bit.  On the way in, just as the bus to the Hermitage went over the Fontanka River bridge, Sue saw lots of people down there walking on the ice, and Sue wanted to do that, too.  So, after our shift, we did it!


But first we walked about 2km back to the Fontanka River--which is totally frozen.  We saw people cross-country skiing on it!  It's the perfect place to do that in the middle of the city.  Along our walk Ken took this photo of a frozen downspout.  The ones here are huge, much larger than those in the US!  But this time of year they are just solid ice.











We finally did get back to the river and found a ramp down.  A nice young man helped Sue get down the 2 ft tall "step" to the river level.  We walked down to Nevsky Prospect and took a photo of the famous Horses Bridge from a different angle than usual

We stopped and had dinner at Две Палочки.  That means literally Two Sticks.  It's a Japanese style restaurant chain in St. Petersburg.  We've seen them all over, but never eaten there.  The food was OK, service not so good.  They were having a special on "hot chocolate" so we ordered two, since we had been walking outside for an hour and were about frozen.  It wasn't chocolate at all, but a hot, creamy pineapple something.  Too sweet for Sue.  Ken thought is was OK.

Saturday we cleaned our apartment.  We sorted out some drawers and cupboards.  We had pills in three places, and books in a kitchen cupboard, and the pasta and beans hiding behind the toothbrushes  (which are in the kitchen because that's where we have filtered water).  It was time for some rearranging.  Sue brought in the mop from outside on the balcony--still frozen from the last time it was used.  She vacuumed and then mopped all the floors.  All the sidewalks outside are "gritted" with a sand/salt mixture so shoes are filthy.




Ken cleaned the bathroom and the backsplash in the kitchen.  











We are so glad to have our new dryer!  Ken took this picture standing in the tub.  :o)






Saturday afternoon we took the babushka cart and walked the 1.5km (1 mile) to Okhta Mall, filled it with groceries and took the complimentary mini-bus home.  The bus was so crowded that Ken barely got on with the cart.  He was standing on the bottom step of the doorway, and had to squish over to let the door close behind him.  Lenta 'hypermarket' looked like Costco on a Saturday--people everywhere and long lines at the check-outs.  When we came last year this mall was almost brand-new and pretty deserted.  The word has gotten out and now it's a busy place.  A Starbucks opened a few weeks ago, and we saw a sign today that a new KFC is going in soon, right across from Starbucks.

This weekend is Stake Conference.  That means that all the congregations in greater St. Petersburg get together for church instead of meeting in their smaller groups around the city.  We had a special meeting for the men in the afternoon, and then all the adults in the evening.  Tomorrow morning will be the main meeting for everyone.  Ken worked with Igor, our Stake Technology Specialist, to set up Skype for several outlying branches.

This is Sue writing.  I really felt a strong spiritual sense in this meeting tonight that the LDS people in Russia are doing well.  They are a small but mighty group.  They love their Savior Jesus Christ, and are trying to follow his example and commandments.  There were six different speakers at the evening meeting, and each was as strong as anyone I've heard in the US.  It is a privilege to be here and share of their good spirits.