Happy New Year

On New Year's Eve, a few of the senior missionaries took off on a walking tour of downtown Moscow, with the intention of eating at a famous deli. Well, we never found the deli, thanks to my misinterpretation of a map, so we will save that for another day. But we did have a nice lunch (I had babyback ribs, Russian Style and they were great). The cost of the ribs was between 6 and 7 dollars! Every once in a while you can find a deal!

The following are pictures we took as we walked through the city. I tried to give you some idea of the preparations for Moscow's New Year's celebration, a Moscovite's biggest celebration of the year. The last one in this series is a video of fireworks outside our window. Imagine fireworks like this by the thousands going off all over Moscow (all night long!). That's New Year's in Moscow! This video was taken at approximately 2:00 a.m. Chris and I were awakened in the morning at about 7:30 a.m. with other local bombs blasting!!
Coming Out of the Underground Cross Walk and Entering the Red Square Area.
Our Group
The Metropol Hotel (One of the Oldest and Grandest Hotels in Moscow
Inside the Metorpol
An Interesting Building
Mom Inside the Ritz Carlton Hotel
Happy New Year in a Big Way
Snowman with Coins (People lick coins and put them on the ice scupture. There were about 10 of these!)
Statue of Moscow Founder (850 years ago), but still in the spirit!!
Happy New Year in a Small Way!

Later that afternoon, we all went home to the Price's and ate all of their chicken soup! What a great improvised dinner! We were going to play games but settled on conversation instead! After dinner, we then went to the Ireland's to watch the fireworks. They have a great view of the city. We left there just before 10:00 p.m. and got home at just past 11:00. We actually could see more from our apartment, because we are further north, but we just see some things smaller, unless, of course, the fireworks happen to be in your backyard!

At just a little past midnight, I found a streaming video channel from CNN on the computer showing the Moscow New Year's celbration at Red Square. It was great seeing the performers on the stage that we had seen earlier in the day. And it was a lot more fun seeing it on the computer, in the warmth of our cozy apartment.

On New Year's day, Chris cut my hair with the new trimmers we bought in Tallinn. She did a great job! Then, she frosted her hair, while I put our receipts together for the last 10 days. Later, we invited the Price's for dinner and played Pedro (well there was no football)!!! They caught on pretty fast. We had stuffed celery with cream cheese and olives, salami and cheese, brownies and ice cream, M@Ms, and more chicken soup, that we had made the day before! Since no two chicken soups are the same, we didn't mind having it two days in a row.

Today we are going to see Catherine the Great's Palace in Moscow. While she never visited there, it was still built for her!! Talk about extravagance!