Making New Friends

Close to the Frunzenskaya Metro Station is a fruit booth we have visted so much this summer the lady inside recognizes us. Her produce is delicious and always arranged so neatly. She doesn't speak any English but with the point and smile method of communication we have become good friends. As the weather is getting cold and I'm sure her stand will not be there much longer -- we asked her if we could take her picture.

Wax Museum Visit

We visited a wax museum which is located close to our apartment. It only cost the two of us $4.92. Some entertainment is very inexpensive.

Some of the figures we didn't recognize and we couldn't read the Russian signs but...

Some we did.

These are the three "great powers" that signed the treaty ending World War II. Churchhill, Stalin, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A close up of President Roosevelt

Vladimir Putin 2nd President of Russia now the Prime Minister of Russia

Milhail Corbechev

Do you recognize one of these guys????

Sight from Saturday's Stroll

The weather this past Saturday was still nice enough to take a walk, so we decided we better visit some more sights of the city. (My Blog is like a trip that just never ends!!) This is the military building and theater. It looked like from the advertisement in the front they were all plays--which I would love to go to, but it would be a little hard to enjoy if you couldn't understand a word they were saying.

This says, ....(something) theater and Belarussian Army

This is a government building where President Lushanka's office is located. I quickly took a picture when the guard had his back turned.

We found a fun place where people were selling things that had made. Lots of artists had their painting for sell, a little hand sewing, and this lady made dolls. She is holding the one I bought. You can tell from her coats that the weather was pretty cold.

This limo was parked in front of the catholic church waiting for the wedding party to come out. It's so long it almost looked fake to me.

This fancy building is actually a....

WC (bathroom). Fancy on the outside gross on the inside. Actually we didn't go inside, but I haven't found a public restroom in this country I would want to use unless I really needed to.

This is a tree just outside our apartment complex. We are waiting to go inside because there was a very drunk young man trying to get inside and he was having a very hard time. Finally a man came out and "gently" had him step aside so we and another girl could go inside. He was so drunk when he tried to step down the one small step we have, he fell on his back. Some of those situations are so sad. Sergie said when he went to the hospital to get some stitches most of the patients were drunks that had been picked up off the streets. Alcohol is definatedly Satan's tool of ruining a person's life. But doesn't Max make a striking pose.

Meet My Doll Family

I hestitated putting these pictures on the blog because they are gifts for our grand daughters when we arrive home. They are a very popular souviner in Belarus and with 11 grand daughters who could resist.

This one I bought for myself.

Village Architecture

We see a lot of abandoned homes in the villages where the owners have either passed away or living in boarding homes and their children have gone to the cities to live.

There were a lot of homes in this one village that had porches on them. We decided maybe they were built by the same builder, of course employed by the government.

Then there is always the guys in the neighborhood the really spends time in his yard.

The Roads...

Our travels our very interesting. We start out on a four lane road going out of the city of Minsk and then sometimes....

it gets smaller...

and smaller....

until we are actually driving on cobble stone.

But we ended up in the neatest little village of...

Where we asked this sweet little lady for directions to the Retirement Home.

Nailed to this old wooden building in the village was a....

mail receptacle.

On The Road Again

We closed two projects in Vitesbyk this week. The church donated needed equipment in a Boarding House for 300 residents and a Retirement Home for 30 residents. I took some fun pictures of things we saw "on the road."

The fields are green and you would think it was summer except it is cold, rainy, and cloudy. In the fall the farmers plant radishes which they plow into the ground in the spring fertilizing the earth for next year's summer crop.

This tractor was really stuck. They have received a lot of rain and we saw

puddles of waters standing in the fields.

I guess that is why the little babushkas still use manual labor. The bundle on her back is as big as big as she is. I don't even know where she was taking it or how far she had come. She was a long ways away from anything.

This wood pile will be used this winter for one boarding house--this and coal is their only means of heating their buildings.

And of course a road trip isn't complete without seeing a few churches.