kids, church and a touch of russian ballet

It was wonderful to see Maya and Tristan again this morning! The mosquitos feasted on Jeff and I while we played with them as it was warm and wet outside. We gave the kids drinkable yogurt this morning and Tristan did not care for his, so Maya drank both of them! Maya has been scared to get up on any of the little bikes or tricycles--anything where both her feet didn't touch the ground, but today she wanted to, and although she couldn't quite reach to push the pedals all the way around and the back wheel was completely flat, she sat up there happily while we pushed her all around the grounds. We brought a little piano toy today and they had so much fun pushing the buttons on it and Maya loved to dance around to the songs--mostly sway actually. :)

At one point it started to rain, so we took cover in one of the group pavillions. The kids loved playing with the toys there, and Tristan put on a Dora backpack that Maya had found in one corner of the play area. This backpack was part of our donations on our 1st trip, so it was fun to see they were using it!

After our visit, we grabbed a bite to eat and headed to church. We came out at a different exit from the metro station than we had before, so I pulled out our map, and before I could even chart out our route, a Russian couple stopped and through some mix of Russian and English asked if we were headed to the Mormon church! They were headed there themselves, so we could just walk with them. What a blessing! Their names were Andrei and Laura and he spoke a bit more English than her. We found out that he has been a member for 15 years--right after Russia opened up, and she has been a member for 5 years. They had been married 2 years.

After we got there it was wonderful because there were a few American missionaries, a couple of American ex-pat families in the branch and a few American students doing internships. One of the students was Jonathon, who we had played cards with on the train! He and the missionaries translated for us and when I went to Relief Society, there were two sister missionaries. One of them was from Kiev and she did an excellent job of translating for me. It was wonderful to be in church again and feel the spirit of these people! Everyone was very excited for us when they heard what we were doing in the area.

On our way to the metro station we found a Pizza Hut! It was the first one we had seen here, so we stopped for dinner before heading out to see the ballet, Swan Lake. The ballet was exquisite, definitely world-class. The dancer who played Odette was phenomenal! She had these amazing arms that were so expressive and beautiful and actually captured the essence of a swan. I think her elbows were even double-jointed. The court jester was also an incredible dancer. We both enjoyed him even more than the prince. He had the most engaging grin, and his dancing was more energetic and just full of raw power. We had great seats and sat by a friendly business man named Pavel who was from Poland. He seemed a bit embarrassed that he had come--telling Jeff it was more for culture than for fun, but in the end he enjoyed it just as much as we did.