Sights and Family in Chelyabinsk

We began our day with breakfast in the Victoria. Here is a photo of our hotel. It is very nice with a living room, 2 bedrooms and a kitchen -- all the comforts of home without the cleaning. Yes! :o)

Next, we ventured out to go downtown to show Alek some of the sights in Chelyabinsk. Alek was absolutely thrilled because we decided to ride a trolley bus (old times for us, but something new for him!). We charted our course and picked out one of the trolley bus numbers that we knew would take us downtown to the central district.

Our first goal was to go to Detsky Mir (Children's World), a small franchise from the famous toy store in Moscow, and buy a toy for Alek, Yasha, and the children at Yasha's school. It was quite fun looking at all of the different toys, but honestly, we had a hard time finding something that was uniquely Russian as most of the toys were ones you could also get in America---just a LOT more expensive. We settled on a Russian Police Jeep for Alek and a 3-D puzzle of St. Basil's cathedral for Yasha. We also bought Alek a Cheberashka. Here he is peeking out of the bag!

Our second goal was to show Alek many of the sites in his home city. Here he is with some of them.

Alek in front of Detsky Mir (the blue letters on top of this building say this in Russian).

Alek in front of the "Organ Hall" which used to be a church before the closing of all churches in the Soviet Union....and just recently, it was voted to be restored and opened for worship again! Alek with the obligatory Lenin statue in the background...every town in Russia (and in Ukraine we discovered) seems to have at least one.Alek at the orginal Chelyabinsk City gate.

We needed to be back home by 3:30pm because Lena was picking us up. So we decided to give ourselves a little extra time because we knew from past experience that there are no schedules for the buses here! We waited about 30 minutes for bus 17 to come and finally, 13 came and Scott said, I think 13 takes us to the hotel too. Yes it does...but only after making a stop at the bus station for re-fueling and, oh by-the-way, they make everyone get off to do this, walk 2 blocks down the street and then catch the same bus coming out of the station that we were just on and paying again. I am sure they warned us of this when we got on the bus, but we still can't understand much Russian!! This happened to us when we were here before, so this time, it was not as distressing...we just go with the flow!

Oh well, an hour later we were at the hotel and Lena was by to pick us up within 10 minutes of our arrival. No nap today! :o) We then went to see the progress on the new building that the Chelyabinsk Church is constructing here. Pastor Sergey, the Senior Pastor, met us at the site to give us a tour. Lots of progress on the outside from when we were here last and some progress on the inside. We understand with lots of government inspections, new construction just takes time here. It was good to see all of the progress of the building, but also to hear about the growth and new church plants from this, the "mother church."

From there, we rode a bus to Lena's apartment. She and her husband Igor have a great view out the 12th floor. Olga and her husband Tolya also joined us for dinner. Igor made his homemade borscht soup and Lena also had pizza for Alek (we ate some too)....everything was very delicious. Here is a photo of our dinner party (from left: Scott, Lena, Igor, Alek, Lynn, Olga, Tolya). At one point I told Lena how special it was that both she and Olga had invited us to their homes for dinner. She smiled and said that we did understand Russian culture...this indeed is a privilege reserved for those who are considered family. We have certainly been treated that way since our arrival.

Tomorrow we will end our stay here with a visit to the church where we will see Pastor Andrei for the first time (he just arrived back in Chely today from the States) and we shall also visit with Larissa and Tatiana our translator and facilitator from Alek's adoption. More tomorrow.