Hello again from Moscow.  I have not blogged for several days because we went to Istanbul, Turkey on the 18th and did not return 'home' until Sunday evening the 26th.  I think I will do three of four posts to accommodate the mass of pictures we have.  The system takes forever uploading pictures, so I'll do them in batches.  We had a very nice time and were impressed with Istanbul.  

We are standing on where a Roman hippodrome used to be.  The Blue Mosque is to the right of the picture.  The gentleman in the middle is our guide, Vulkan.  He was wonderful, communicative, friendly, and knew his history.  That's Marlene in the middle, and the lady taking the picture is Marina Sokolova, our trip planner.

Some young men have surrounded us and are trying to sell us books about Istanbul.  They were pleasantly aggressive.  Not too bad.  Istanbul was, as you know, Constantinople.  Constantine, the Roman emperor  who converted to Christianity made Nova Roma his capital in about 350 A.D.  I read somewhere that Rome had become almost uninhabitable at that time--dirty, smelly, etc.  So the emperor decided to start over.  The Greeks had been there first, so the Romans came next, followed in 1453 by the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks.

The Eastern Orthodox church lasted 1,000 years longer than the Roman empire, that was kaput in about 450 A.D.  The church is still around but the empire is gone or course.

Vulkan is explaining to Oleg (our Moscow super duper travel guy), Marina, and Cenk's  (Jenk's, who is Vulkan's boss) something about the Blue Mosque.

These first series of pictures comes from our first day in the city.  We came on Saturday, ahead of the Tuesday start for the meeting so that we could get a sense of how far things were from the hotel, how far it was between venues, etc.  We did not enter any of the attractions on this day, but just got perspective.  We are leaving the Blue Mosque area and are going to walk about a half mile to Hagia Sophia, a Christian cathedral,  started I think in about 400 a.d.  The dome has collapsed about three times in its 1,700 year history, but it may be the oldest functioning cathedral in Christendom.  The minarets you see adjacent to the church were added by the conquering Muslims, but they left the building mostly intact (except for covering most or all of the Christian art in the building.)  Throwing up a few minarets to surround the building was a lot less expensive than starting from scratch.

This is a vendor selling a kind of sweet, hot, milk drink on top of which he sprinkles a little cinnamon.

Vulkan treated all of us to some of it.  The temp was about 40 so we were were glad to get something hot to drink and to warm our hands.

You know how picky I am about food.  I liked this quite a bit.

Here is the Hagia Sophia again.  The Romans invented the unsupported dome.  This building dates from about 400, as I mentioned. The Blue Mosque, behind us now, dates from the 1,500's.  It's dome was copied from this building that is a thousand years older.

This gentleman is a friend of Vulkan's and is one of some small number of artists who are trying to save a painting form called 'marbling.'  They create an image on a pool of water, then place their paper on top of the paint, and then (carefully, I'm sure) pick the paper off of the water.  The effect is quite unique.  He, with amazing skill, is writing in calligraphy 'Istanbul.'  He did this free-hand of course,  I was astonished at his skill.

We had no idea of what was going to happen next but he gave each of the ladies (Marina and Marlene) his work.  We will bring our copy home and show it to you.

On Sunday we headed for the Istanbul branch for church.  We got there too early so Vulcan had his driver take us around the neighborhood and we ended up at this lovely overlook of one of the bodies of water that surround Istanbul.

We made it to church and had a wonderful sacrament meeting.  The four missionaries spoke briefly in Turkish, then Elder Neuenschwander and President Schwitzer spoke.  The missionaries had been in Istanbul since Tuesday.  They are learning 100 words a day and making amazing progress with the language.  These are your typical Primary children and Young Women.

Marlene at the front door of the meeting house.

The chapel is a converted villa.  The branch has about 120 members.  On this day, with all of the guests, missionaries, etc. there were probably 50 people in attendance.

These are the missionaries (probably not in order Christensen, Huish, Redpath , and Seymor) the Cakir's (he is the brand president) the Canfield's (humanitarian missionaries), Sister and President Schwitzer, and Sister and President Nuenschwander.)

The missionaries and the Schwitzer's.

The remains of a 1,700 year old Roman aqueduct.   We drove under it a dozen times

The roof top courtyard of a McDonald's.

We caught a beautiful, sunny afternoon.  

Life is good when one has had a Big Mac in Istanbul.

Here is a recent photo of the Kiev, Ukraine Temple.  President Schwitzer was there this week and someone who was with him sent this picture to memorialize the visit.  Looks toasty warm.

Good Saturday morning from Moscow.  It's all the way up to -2 F, but our hopes are high because the prediction for Sunday morning is now -21.  But what is a Moscow winter without a little chill in the air.

We have had a somewhat subdued week, except for Tuesday evening.  I got the worst head cold in the history of mankind, staring on Monday.  But the worst of it was over yesterday afternoon.  Our presidency were all off doing mission tours this week so I was able to work two half-days and not fear being fired.  Marlene has it this morning, but of course she is not suffering nearly as bad as I was.  I would put the pain scale number at 11, for LeeAnn's benefit.

Tuesday evening I cowboy-ed up and went with Marlene and the Walker to the previously arranged performance of the Sound of Music.  I was shocked that they did the play in Russian!  Aren't there copyright laws or something to protect us Americans from such affronts?  Let the Russians write their own plays, I say.  Wait.  I think they might write their own plays.

Well, in any event the thing was marvelously done.  Those folks can sing and dance.  It was first class.

There is a lady in the office, Marina Kharlmova, who in responsible for the Russian edition of the Liahona.  She is a very gentle and sophisticated lady.  Part of her life is to know what is going on in the arts scene in Moscow,  so she got us tickets for the play.  We are hopeful that she can get us in the Bolshoy Ballet before our term is up.  That will cost us a bundle, but we are not likely to make it back here a 2nd time.

Well, here are some pictures and a little commentary.

I am hauling our weekly groceries home from the store.  It's about an eight minute walk from the apartment to shopping center that includes the grocery store.  It was pretty bitterly cold, hence the chin warmer kindly provided by Rebecca.

Our state-of-the-art dryer.

Marlene's creative urges on display.  She had baked something so the over was warm.  No point in letting that heat go to waste.  She is getting so skinny that she could be wearing those PJ's and you would not notice the difference.

Walking to work at 7:50 a.m.

Our apartment building viewed from the Area office about a half mile away.  We enter the building on the right had side, about an inch from the right margin of the building.   The beauty salon that saved Marlene's life is on the other side of the building, around the left side.

The lovely building to our left as we look out of our windows.  We thought  originally that it is another apartment  building, but lights are on in the windows almost all night long.  We will have to explore there when conditions improve.

The view to our right which is our building close-up.

We are ascending a very long escalator coming off the Metro on our way to the play.  There is an optical illusion that the folks going the opposite direction are leaning way back.  I don't think the picture captured it well.  Plus it's a little awkward to take people's pictures w/o asking permission

We are waiting for the play to start.  We are in a very large foyer.  There are photographers offering to take the pictures of patrons, and there is a pretty busy bar off to the side of the foyer.

The Walker's came with us.  MaryAnn is still in love with her borrowed fur coat.

The joint was only half full so the operators kindly offered those of us with cheap seats, seats closer to the action.  We ending up right on the center isle, row eight.

The couple on the left are the Palmer's.  Sister Palmer has relatives who connect with Marlene  back to the original group who entered the valley.  The couple on the right are the Cook's.  They know Erv Holmes.   Of course everyone know Erv Holmes.

Hello from Moscow.  It's Friday about 6:00 p.m.  We came home early to meet one of the nice men from the Area Facilities staff.  He is coming to change one of the three filters on the kitchen cold water tap.  One filter gets changed each quarter, the second every six months and the third annually.  I don't think everyone gets this done for them.  Either we are special of they don't trust me to do it.

This week went quickly.  I think that is good.  We hardly looked up from our work and find that another Friday has come.

I took some pictures last night and one today.  We hope you like them.

This is the stake center, high council room, we have shown you previously.  The senior missionaries meet for dinner and 'fun' each Thursday evening.  This is just our 3rd opportunity to go.  Marlene is in charge and is sitting next to the Moscow Mission President, President Sorenson.  He is a gentle soul and very nice.

The gentleman in the white shirt is the area doctor, Dr. Hatch.  He it is who advised your mom on how to care for the wound she got on about her 2nd day here.  It is doing very well, by the way.

This is what you see when you first walk in the door of the stake center.  I think  all the chairs are these metal ones.

Here is the exterior door to the stake center.  I believe I am correct in saying that the Church has thus far only been able to lease buildings, at least in Moscow.  They tend to favor old schools to renovate because they can be made in meeting house much easier than most other buildings.

This is the view to the right of the front door.  The chapel is way off the beaten path and out of sight of most people.  The Church is in the process of looking for sites to buy, and they are hoping to situate them where the public can see them.

A concrete/block structure next to the stake center.  Lots of 'unfinished' exteriors here.

This is left of the front door.  We meet in an old building with a feature something  like this, a little roundish thing .  Maybe school choirs used to sing in them.

All toilets are flushed by a device on top.  One either pulls it, or pushes it.  They thoughtfully 

almost always have a little scrubber thingee so you can clean up after yourself, or the guy ahead of you.

The doctor is presenting tonight.  He preached about old people and exercise.  I was too busy resting to hear much of what he said.  

These are the Gronnings.  They are headed home to West Jordan in about a week.  They bore tender testimonies, particularly Sister Gronning, about how much they did not want to come to Moscow.  But, after all the chickens are counted they feel blessed to be here.

The president again, with two suspects.

We are headed to the metro to go 'home.'  We came and went with the Walkers.

We pass through this short, busy, street on our way to the Metro stop.

Here is one sandwich seller.  Smells good, but we are cautioned to not  eat from such places.

A closer look at the 'meat?' cooking on a spit.  This is immediately across from the other shop.

The metro entry building.

We bought our dinner at the Subway store you can almost see just a little left of center.  It is so cold the  camera is beginning to fog up.

We are descending to the train level.  This escalator is probably 75 yards long.  We have been on longer ones.

We are waiting for the next train.  One seldom waits more that two minutes for the next train to come.  I think they must be about 150 yards long.

Not very crowded.  It did get real crowded when we got into one of the inner rings.

The lady in black typifies many younger Russian women:  Tall, thin, fur coat, high-healed boots, cute hat.

The train cars.  We are on the Green Line, one of the oldest, and the cars are old.  But, they motor along.  It's hard for me to tell because the tunnels are mostly dark, but I guess we get up to 60 or 70 mph regularly.

Just outside the metro stop where we get out to walk 'home' is a pretty glitzy shopping center.  Just after this spot I turned to take a picture of a Burger Kind advertisement (for the shop on the 2nd floor, and some grumpy guy with a patch on his coat signaled that I was not allowed to take pictures of the Burger Kind sign.  Maybe McDonald's pays him.

When we walk to work we pass immediately to the right of this Papa Johns  to get to the back door of our office building.  The sign says' Papa Johns" in Russian letters.
We had an interesting experience on Thursday, I think.  The back door is supposed to be unlocked at 8:00 a.m.  We go there about 1 minute to 8:00.  I had been taught by my predecessor that if I would do one medium ring and two short ones the guard would come and open the door, even if it was a little before 8:00.  Well, at about the stoke of 8:00 a middle-aged Russian woman joined us at the back door and signaled, "Why isn't this door open?"  We shrugged like the doofesses we are and she started pushing the button, with that insistent ring that everyone recognizes.  Nothing happened in about 15 seconds, so she push it continuously for about a minute.  Nothing happened so she leaned on it continuously for about three more minutes, as which point the guard opened it.  By now it is about five minutes after 8:00.  We knew there would be an argument, and there was.  He gave as good as he got and she gave him all he could handle.  It was kind of funny to watch.  Make Marlene nervous.