They're Finally Here...Pictures From Russia!

Yay! I know you've all been dying to see my pics from the motherland, so fear not dear readers, the wait is over. Of course I can't post everything, but I'll try to give you a good look at what we did, where we went, and what we saw.

This is us on our first day: St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square in Moscow. It is my absolute FAVORITE building that we saw in Moscow and I loved it.













































I'm not sure what the name of this building is, but also on Red Square and it's very pretty too. It reminds me a little bit of a giant gingerbread house.

















Our good friend Lena is so nice! Without even having to be asked, she stopped to help this lady freshen up her lipstick.















This is at a park in Omsk. Me, Adam, Sasha, and Lena. They are our favorite friends in Russia. Hopefully they will be able to come America some day!















I love this shot. This is at a little park/amusement park/zoo thing and it is an ancient ferris wheel contraption. I wish we would have taken a picture of it from the ground so you could see it straight on because it really was pretty frightening, but everyone else rode on it and we didn't see anyone die while we were getting our tickets, so we figured, "Why not!"



















The view from the top...Does Adam look a little scary scared to you?
















We felt very patriotic here. This is also in Omsk at a World War II park. I LOVE the huge statues in Russia!




















I tried to get Adam & Sasha to be cool and pose like this guy, but they weren't very good sports about it.



















Here is Adam with his good pal Lenin in Novosibirsk. Almost every single city in Russia has a statue of Lenin similar to this one.




















This is a view of that same statue from the back. You can see the other statues beside it and get a better idea of how big they are.





















Yay! One of my favorite pictures. This building is a puppet house that was close to our hotel. How cool is that?!















I was so excited about this too....a pack of wild dogs who were running by in front of our hotel. There are stray dogs everywhere and they're all intermixed so you'll see a dog that has the face of a german shepherd and the body of a weiner dog...it's crazy.
















Here's Adam on our train to Krasnoyarsk looking very content reading my Us Weekly.



















You kinda have to look close at this picture, but it's really awesome. All the towns along the railroad have their own water towers, and this was one of our favorites.
























This cute little church is at the top of a big hill in Krasnoyarsk and you can see the whole city from there. It is a good hike, but very worth it.




















I hope I'm not incriminating myself by posting these pictures! I swear, we didn't take any and we only took the pictures...nothing more! Yep, it grows all over the hillside. The people we were with didn't even know that that's what it was until we told them. They just thought it was a wild weed. Haha! I guess they are right.































This is us hiking to Stalbuoy. It's like a state park and they have big rock formations and stuff. Let me tell you, this was no easy hike. It's probably about 3 miles to the top (where all the rocks are) and those Russians can hike! They walk super fast...all of them...babushkas, little kids, everyone. I had to tell our friends that I needed to take a break and they were like, "Yeah, we usually take a break up here a little ways." They are much more fit than lots of Americans because they walk everywhere all the time so I had to inform them, "No, I need to take a break now" and proceeded to sit myself down on a log. What is that you see in the picture you ask? Yes, that's snow. It's snowing. In the middle of August.














Finally, after more stops than any of the Russians had to make, we made it to the top! I'm kinda annoyed at this guy for messing up our cute picture, but he's our friend so we'll Photoshop him out forgive him.


















This family LOVES Adam. Ok, all the people there love him, but them in particular. He helped teach the wife (the husband was already a member) and she was baptized. He was able to confirm her and then they were able to go to the temple as a family and be sealed. They didn't know we were coming to Russia so when we showed up at church, they were so excited they invited us right over for tea and scrumpets!















This was in front of our hotel in Krasno. These are youth in the church (all about our age) who are good friends with Adam. Back row from left to right: Costia, Adam, Sasha. Front row from left to right: Lena, Olya, and Lena (Sasha's girlfriend). The statue is of Chekov, a famous Russian author.


















Ok, that pretty much does it for the first 4 cities. I wish I could post all of the pictures we took, but that would take me all night and let's face it, I've got to make brownies, so this is all I am able to do. We have TONS of pictures from St. Petersburg so I'll post them tomorrow in their very own entry. Paca!