We were met at the boarding school with the traditional Russian Bread and Salt. A very strange but cool tradition, whenever you come to a new place, you are met by the host with a freshly baked loaf of bread that has a vat of salt in the middle. You break off a piece of bread and dip it in the salt. Very tasty. The kids here are dressed in traditional Russian folk dress. They were so cute!!
Cable car up Mashouk Mountian. This is a central mountian in Pyatigorsk.
View of Pyatigorsk from the top of Mashouk.
Monument on Mashouk... can't remember what it was for.
Jeremy (the grad student) riding a donkey.
WWII monument.
This is an Orthadox Cross. The top slanted line was where the victom's name was displayed. The bottom line was where Christ's feet were nailed.
Spasky Cathedral. This church was built by the same guy who designed Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. It was also blown up during the Stalinist era. The communists couldn't blow it up at first, because it had so much lead in it. So they set a huge fire that melted out all the lead, then they blew it up.
Statue to Pushkin, the greatest Russian poet ever! Russians love them some Pushkin.
Statue dedicated to Lermontov, the seccond greatest Russian poet. He was stationed in Pyatigorsk for a while when he was in the army. He even talks about it in his book, Hero of Our Time. Unfortunatly, he was killed in a duel when he was still very young.
Julia, our intrepreter, Alexander, the pastor of the United Methodist Church in Pyatigorsk, and David.
A concert at the church after the service. These kids were so cute!
At Kislovosk, a small town about an hour away from Pyatigorsk that is known for its porcelin.
David on the mountian cliffs in Kislovosk. The wind made amazing caves at the top of the mountian including some very interesting holes in the cliff.
View from the top of the caves in Kislovosk.
Jeremy with a funny hat on.
The Castle of Love and Trechery. The story is: there was this rich man who had a daughter. She fell in love with a local pesant boy, but her father had another man in mind for her to marry and forbade her from marrying the pesant. They decided that since they couldn't get married, they would commit suicide together. So they went to the top of the mountian to jump off, and the girl was scared. She told the guy to go first and she would follow him. So he jumped off and died. And after she saw him die, she decided that it wasn't that big of a deal if they couldn't get married, so she went back into town and aggreed to marry the man her father had picked out for her. So now there's a saying in Kislovosk, which is "ladies first!"
Church in Kislovosk.
Our group in the park at Kislovosk. It's a calendar that's made out of flowers and changes every day.
Kids at the Social Center that we went to visit. The sang and danced for us, it was so cute!!
Kids at the orphanage we went to visit. It was really nice, but still sad since these were all kids who didn't have families or else who did have parents who couldn't support them.
Kids from the evening vacation Bible school that we did while at the boarding school.
Graduation day for the seniors at the boarding school.
Masha, a little girl from the school who was really nice to me!
The kids put on a little puppet play for us. Then they taught us how to use the puppets.
Some of the neighborhood kids from last year's Vacation Bible School. It was so great to see them again!
Father Vasily, the Pastr at a local Orthodox Church. He was a conact person with the UMC for a while.
We took a ski lift to the top of a mountian in a little town called Dombai, about 3 hours away from Pyatigorsk.
Pretty mountians.
Jeremy on a camel.... yeah I know, wierd...
On the ski lift again.
Us on top of the mountian.
Down the ski lift.
We went and helped out an old woman clean her windows since she couldn't do it. Then we sat with her and she showed us a lot of really old pictures of her family. She was one of many children, but is the only one still living. The pictures she had were old, black and white. It was so neat to see all the pictures.
Family we ate dinner with and had ministry with. They were very nice. The little girl played piano for us. She's only 11, but was very talented. I was impressed. And they had a beautiful garden which had all kinds of fruits. They made fruit juice from all the fruit... very yummy.
Son of the woman I lived with for a while in Pyatigorsk with his dog, Ceasar.
All of Tanya's pets! They were so cute!!
Tanya and her son Max. I lived with them for about 4 days.
Laura and I with Svetlana, our host for the extra week we were in Pyatigorsk.