Last week we were able to go to the St. Petersburg Nutcracker Ballet. It was so marvelous, from the building, outside and inside, to the scenery and the performance. All of it was breath taking. It cost 300 rubles a ticket, and is sold out every night it is here. Only Russians are supposed to be able to buy tickets but one of the Branch Presidents who works in tourism was able to get us some tickets.

This little lady living at the rest home was so cute.
When I took her picture, she kissed my hand.

Saturday afternoon we went to a baptism for a young man from China who is here studying the Russian language. There is a whole group of youth from China living in the same apartment but they didn't know each other until they came here. Jiang Wei was the second to get baptized since coming here. There were 21 Chinese at his baptism. One of the talks was given by a young lady in Russian and was translated into English by a missionary from Switzerland whose native language is German and was then translated into Chinese by the first Chinese fellow who joined the church. I would call that one international meeting.

I spoke to soon it is cold now, 9 degrees F. but to the Russians it is -13 C. So that means cold to me in any language. Saturday, Jan. 3 was the busiest day we have had since we have been here. We went to a Christmas Program put on by Ovtovo Branch at a Rest home clear on the very outskirt of St. Petersburg.

There are 93 rivers and creeks,20 canals and more than 100 lakes in Saint Petersburg. It is sometimes called "Northern Venice", Today the city stands on 42 islands. St. Petersburg was founded in the mouth of the Neva River where it spills into the Gulf of Finland. There are 539 bridges, 342 are in the city itself. There are 22 drawbridges, and eight over the Neva River(one of the bridges is the picture on our blog with the frozen water). Here is a picture of a frozen canal with the building lined streets.

We have done a lot of walking around the city and exploring the different communities. It is amazing all the buildings and statues. When they were first building Saint Petersburg there was a law that all the houses had to be be built along the streets, according to plan and not at random and the law prohibited any spacing between buildings.

Happy New 2009!!!! Well a new year has begun, time to start over on our resolutions. It isn't as cold as I thought it would be, cold but not freezing, not yet, it might get colder later in January. We never see the sun, it is always overcast. I am always lost, every time I walk out of our gate, I am lost. I can never remember which way is North, South, East or West. Tom says it is because we never see the sun. I go out and turn the wrong way every time. I am worried if Tom ever leaves me I will be walking around trying to find my way home forever. But believe me I would ask for directions, probably wouldn't understand them but I would still ask.