A Visit from the K's!

For those of you who did not know, this past week Matt's family (his parents and younger brother) visited us in St. Petersburg for about a week!
We saw many sights and played much euchre. It was a lot of fun to have them here. As someone living in one country with many friends and family in another country, you get used to having two worlds. So it was surreal at first to have parts of both worlds in one place, but we loved being able to show them our new home and how we live here.
I'll let the pictures explain the major events of the week. :-) (We did see all the major sights like the Bronze Horseman and such but there won't be pictures of everything since we have already put up our own photos of all that.)

His family arrived on the 29th of May, the day after the birthday of the city. So we went on a walk and were able to see the columns lit for the second time since we moved here. They only light them for special occasions so that was a nice welcome.

It was rainy and cold so we headed back after walking around the spit of the island. However, we were greeted by something that was good and bad. The bridges were being raised during the day (below) for the water parade on the Neva. This is something even Matt and I hadn't seen yet and so that was great. The downside was that we had to walk back many blocks to a bus stop. Not how we meant to greet them after a long day of flights. :-)

Matt's dad in our apartment.
The next day after they arrived I had tutoring until noon so Matt took his family to the school. Unfortunately, my room has been rearranged and turned into the library (since I'm moving upstairs to teach high school next year) and many of the rooms are covered in plastic to protect from dust. But they were still able to see the building and Matt's room as it usually is.

Above is the males of the K family.

Below is Matt and his brother with his mother.

Matt and I outside of the school.

So once I rejoined the group at the school we went to the Smolney Convent by water taxi. I'd never been here before so that was a nice first for me. It is used for different concerts and such currently but Smolney was originally the first girl's school in Russia, built by Catherine the Great.
We were told we could go up in the bell tower so after many many steps we had a windy and wonderful view of the city.

The picture above is me opening our front door. I have said to various people that when we moved here I was concerned that I would ever be able to open the door. So if you look you can see why. :-) I have to put my weight on the door with one arm and turn the huge key with the other.
Every time Matt or I have been to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra (Monastery) Rimsky-Korsikov's grave has been under a big wooden box. So when we went with Matt's family everyone was very happy to see it uncovered. Matt's dad teaches music and jazz and is a percussionist and his brother is studying music performance for trumpet so the Big Five was a highlight for them.
Later in the week, we went to the Peter and Paul Fortress, another first for me. As you can tell from the pictures, the first day was gloomy and bleh but every other day was clear, bright, and blue.
This is the room in the cathedral at the Fortress dedicated to the Romanov family. After Nicholas the Second stepped down, his family (wife and four children) moved to Tarsky Selo. They were later moved to Ekaterinaburg and shot there in the middle of the night. Their bodies were buried in the woods and damaged. Their remains are grouped under the marble pillar on the left. They are considered martyrs to the Russian Orthodox Church and were sainted.
Peter the Great's remains and sarcophagus.
In the back right corner, Catherine the Great's remains and sarcophagus. To the left of hers is that of her generally hated husband, Peter the Third.
Thursday Matt and his family went to the Hermitage and his mom took pictures so we stole them. (You have to pay to take pictures there.) Above is one of my favorite things in the Hermitage, the peacock clock. It was a gift from Potemkin to Catherine the Great. On certain days they wind it up and the peacock dances and there are other woodland animals around it that do various things. The white room it is in (below) is also one of the prettiest in the building. It has tons of white marble and small curling staircases to the balconies.

Another of my favorite rooms is the Golden Sitting Room. The display they have in it is of cameos but the room itself is much more impressive. It is covered in gold leaf and the fabric of all the furniture also has gold stitching. Personally, I think the rooms of the Hermitage surpass the art.
A street sign for our street. The Cyrillic is the top and it is transliterated to Latin characters underneath.
A picture of Teremok, one of two main bilini chains here.
This photo bears witness to a rather epic series of events. For Matt's brother they brought an air mattress. All was fine for several nights and then one night he announced that he could hear air hissing out of it. When he went to refill the mattress, the little pump broke. So we had a leaking mattress and no pump. He did, however, figure out that he could bridge the connection points of the batteries with cutlery and it would work. So every night was a new level of trying to rig up the pump and tape up the mattress. :-)
Sunday we had dinner with the Gerigs (below) and before we arrived at their place we went to the Chezmin Church. In the words of Matt's brother, it looked like a huge gingerbread house. But it was small inside and had several old icons. It was lovely and reverent.

On their last day here we saw some big sites like St Issac's (above) and the statue of Nicholas the First (below).

Then we went to the ballet Sleeping Beauty at the Mihalovsky Theater. (I cannot explain the blue dot. Sorry!) The cast bows below.

So we had a week full of visiting and just enjoying being together again. It was a blessing to have them here!

Field Day

Greetings Again!

The hours of daylight grow longer, the leaves have returned to the trees, and the school year is officially over after tomorrow's graduation ceremony. It's hard to believe that school is done and harder to think about the fact that many of the students we have grown to know and love won't be back next year as families move, go on furlough, students graduate, etc. It is definitely a bittersweet time of year, but we can look back on our first year of teaching, marriage, and living in Russia (how's that for a busy year?) and see a constant stream of God's blessing and guidance.

Before the school year could officially end, we had to have once last event: field day! All of the students grade K-8 got to participate in IA's field day today. We held the event on Yelagin Island, an island in the center of the city that is set aside for recreation and enjoyment with no vehicles allowed. The island has walking paths, canals for boating, playgrounds, fields, and several gorgeous old buildings that have been restored in recent years. The grounds were beautiful as grass and leaves have finally returned from their long winter hiatus. Flower beds were filled with gorgeous tulips and it was a bright day with a brilliant blue sky.

The students were divided up into six teams based on colors (red, grey, white, black, blue, and purple) that tried to include an equal balance of students from all grades kindergarten through 8th grade (the high school students were busy sleeping away after last night's prom:-)). The day started off with a treasure hunt and continued with sack races, a water race, an eating race, and an egg toss before culminating in a game of tug-of-war. The parents and teachers were so inspired that we had our own shot at tug-of-war after the students. The dads and male teachers went head to head with each other, which inspired the Korean mothers to take on the female teachers and other mothers. All I can say is that our Korean mothers are strong as they sent our teachers down to defeat:-)

Here are some pictures from throughout the day!


The chairman of IA's school board giving out instructions for the treasure hunt.


The beautiful neoclassical palace that stands on one end of Yelagin Island.


Flowers!


Misha (elementary school aide), Amanda (making an ugly face), Jarod (science teacher and basketball coach), and Katya (2/3rd grade teacher and our Russian language teacher)


The sack race!


The water race. Students had to fill their mouths with water and run to fill a bucket at the other end.


The food race. Students had to run down to this bag, take one item out of it and then eat it all before the next member of the team could run down. The first team to eat all of their bag won. I'm glad that I didn't have to eat any dry ramen noodles:-)



The egg toss! One of our little elementary school students got hit square on the head by an egg, which shattered all over him. He thought it was very funny; I was sad that I didn't get a picture of it!



Tug-of-war, everyone's favorite game!


Me, struggling mightily in a losing effort for my team of teachers and dads.


The female teachers, pulling as hard as they can!


And the victorious Korean moms!

And one last final scene from field day: a video of two of our student teams playing tug-of-war. The video quality may be poor, but the excitement is still palpable:-) Thanks for reading!



-Matt

Victory Day

Hello!

This past Monday, May 9th, marked one of the most important holidays in Russia: Victory Day. Victory Day celebrates the victory of the Soviet Union over the Germans in World War II (or as it is referred to in Russia, the Great Patriotic War). The Soviet Union suffered more people killed and more devastation during the Second World War than any other country, and the tremendous suffering of the war and the subsequent defeat of Germany are subjects of great national pride and remembrance.

Throughout Russia, the day is celebrated with fireworks, parades, concerts, banners, and speeches. Moscow and St. Petersburg are home to particularly large celebrations. The Second World War is particularly important to St. Petersburg because of the three year blockade that the city suffered from 1941 to 1944 in which over a million residents of the city died, mostly from starvation. The war and the blockade are deeply embedded into the city's memory, and both of these events are remembered each year on Victory Day. While the war has reached near-mythic status in Russia to the point that some of the realities of the conflict have been obscured or are intentionally looked over (something that is by no means a uniquely Russian feature when it comes to nations remembering their wars), the annual parade is a major event, and Amanda and I went to watch it down on Nevsky Prospect.

Crowds lined up all along Nevsky Prospect to cheer for military units and shout words of thanks to surviving veterans from the war. It is difficult to imagine that it was only 66 years ago that the Second World War ended. Standing in the middle of downtown St. Petersburg it feels like an eternity away from a time when all of Europe seemed to be on fire and engulfed in the flames of war. I pray that such times will not soon return to the earth.

Here are some of the pictures that we took!


The Russian flag and the Victory Banner, which was raised over the Reichstag when the Soviets captured Berlin.


Nevsky Prospect lined with flags and banners for the parade.


More street decorations commemorating the end of the war.


The ribbon of St. George (here on Amanda's purse). This ribbon was once part of the Order of St. George, the highest military honor of Tsarist Russia, which was reintroduced during the Second World War and has become one of the main symbols of Victory Day. These ribbons were handed out all over the city in the days leading up to May 9th, and the orange and black colors featured prominently on many banners around the city.


A military marching band, one of several which were part of the parade.


Jeeps carrying veterans.


Current soldiers carrying flags.


Trucks representing veterans from the different regions of St. Petersburg. This particular truck is for the Vasilievsky region, where we live.


The banner reads "Communist Party of the Russian Federation." The Communist Party still exists in Russia, a dwindling but controversial reminder of Russia's recent history. The Communists march in the parade each year. The Communist Party is not nearly as powerful and influential as it was in the early 1990s (and of course much less influential than it was during Soviet times), but continues to exist. Many Russians, particularly older ones, look back on the Soviet Union as a period of security and stability and wish for a return to communism. While most younger Russians have no desire for this, feelings about the Soviet Union remain mixed and complicated 20 years after its fall.


Several portraits of Stalin were carried by members of the Communist section of the parade, bringing to light another complicated part of Russia's history. Many people in Russia still revere Stalin as a powerful leader who is viewed as being responsible for Russia's rise as an industrial power and for its victory in the Second World War.


Crowds of people packed into Palace Square for more Victory Day celebrations.


Palace Bridge decorated in honor of the day.


The Rostral Columns at the end of Vasilievsky Island (where we live) were lit for the day. The columns are lit for special occasions and holidays.


Part of the large crowds that turned out for the celebration.

Thanks for reading!

-Matt