SUMMER!! For a week, and A Night at the Museum.

May 23, 2017

We have had a glorious week!  Three days of summer!!  And it came earlier and hotter than last year.  

This is the photo Ken took last year on May 23.  The tulips were just opening

May 15, 2018

This year they were all open more than a week earlier.  And it was over 80 F for three days in a row.  Volunteers were calling the office and asking if they could buy fans for their apartments.  It only lasted three days, but we are still mostly in the low 70's, so more summer days than we had all last summer put together.  

Flashbacks--a couple of things that could have gone in earlier blogs, but we didn't have them yet.

Video skit from Zone Conference on May 10: "Misinterpretations, Missionary Style" with Elder Houston, Elder Franckowiak and Sister Rawson









May 8 at the cemetery, Ken was caught taking pictures.








So, here is the photo going the other direction of Brother Zaretsky photographing Ken.  (That's Sue in the navy suit closest to the camera.)

Sue started out Monday morning packaging up the 451 pages of privacy agreements to be shipped off to Moscow for permanent retention.  First, she had to scan them all.  It took about an hour for the machine to do the scan, and than another 30 minutes to copy it to a USB drive.  Sue was antsy that it hadn't worked while waiting for that copy.  But all is well.

Elders Niles Herrod, & Scott Jensen, Mark, Sue, Ken

Monday night we had company for dinner, as often happens.  Mark is a composer and sings in the choir for one of the Russian Orthodox churches here in St. Petersburg.  

Most of the week was pretty quiet, except for the concrete saws.  We had rain on Thursday, but it didn't stop the workers.  Winter is hard on streets.  Potholes are common, but workers come around and fix them!  

We enjoyed watching the "Tonka trucks" outside Ken's office window and next door from our apartment balcony.  

They don't bother to block off the street and ask people not to park there.  The workers just dig and clean and repave around the existing cars.

Saturday was "Night at the Museum" for the Hermitage out at their storage facility, an annex north of the downtown area.  Sue was asked a week ago to make arrangements for some extra volunteers.  They needed people from noon to 6 pm to help with set-up, and then three companionships to be there in the evening to greet guests and help with logistics.  The event went until 11 pm, but our Elders had to leave by 9 pm to get home on time.

President Rawson, Sue, Sister Rawson, Ken, Elder Peck, Sister Peck

We went over to the Hermitage storage buildings in the evening with the Rawsons and Pecks to see what was going on.

The storage facility is several very large buildings, and we got a tour of a few rooms where they have put samples on display.  The complex also includes the restoration labs for oil paintings,  furniture and carriages.  We saw original clothes that belonged to Peter the Great in the early 1700's, and these dresses that were Catherine the Great's. (1729-1796)

Diplomatic gifts given to various Tsars and current Russian rulers are also stored here. This is one given to St. Petersburg from Indonesia in 2003 for the 200th birthday of the city.  It's hard to tell from the photo, but this is about 10 feet tall, and all carved from mahogany.  It comes apart into four pieces for transport.

We loved the big gallery full of carriages.  There were all kinds, from little two-person ones, to much grander.  We liked the one with two back-to-back "sofas" that could carry six women for driving around the gardens of the palace.  

And then there was Catherine's grand coronation carriage.  It's so big that it has to be taken apart to get it through the big garage door at one end of the room.

We also saw rooms full of furniture and icons and tapestries.  Our guide said the museum doesn't even have a full computerized database yet of all the Hermitage collection--said to be more than 3,000,000 individual items.  It's all a work in progress.