Fall in St. Petersburg

A collection of photos I've taken while walking around St. petersburg this season...

Pictures from Finland

So, I thought the site could use a new look...and I was inspired by Kristi's new Fall motif.

here are some of my pics from my latest trip to Finland. This time I was there for 5 days and and again spent the time at the home of Jukka and Saara. Saara was in portugal this time around though, so Jukka played host. and he did a great job, although he repeatedly stated, 'i'm not a cook". We had some fun times including mushroom-picking in the forest with his daughter and son-in-law and biking to church, biking around the lake and biking to meet up with Kyle (who somehow arranged for me to stay there the first time around even though none of us had ever met - Praise God). In all, we biked about 35 km on Sunday and I must say that old Finnish man put me to shame. I was beat!

Jukka, at the start of our mushroom-hunting adventure




Mushrooms - Close up


Mushrooms - What they look like when you're trying to find them!


Cold!


Lunch break


The Scenery




My yeild






Jukka - "I'm not a cook"


I discovered that men are pretty much the same all over the world - they like their grills. This is Jukka's grill. And I must say, would put most American men's grills to shame. I wish I had a better picture of it, but let's just say that it's made out of brick, tile, and CONCRETE and it took 3 men to lift the sides into place...and it is freaking HUGE. So, the "non-cook" and i grilled sausages over the open flame.

Central railway Station - Helsinki, Finland


Center City

Things I have learned since moving to Russia:

* If you don’t walk FAST, you’ll get run over.

* NEVER cross the street unless the cross walk light is signaling “GO”, because again, you get run over.

* If you can’t understand Russian, people yell as if that will make you understand.

* Getting on the Metro at rush hour requires you to give up all personal space. You will have strangers pressing in on you from all sides and if you don’t push your way in (or out), you won’t get in (or out).

* Russians love to give flowers. No matter when it is, or where you are, you will inevitably see several people carrying large bouquets of flowers.

*If you are white, 95% of all people on the street and Metro will ignore you and act as if they don’t see you. If you are with someone who is black, 95% of all the people will stare at you.

* Sushi is easy to find. Mexican food is not.

* Count yourself lucky if you see the sun once per week for a few seconds.

* There is a coffeehouse on every block, and in most cases, more than one.

* At 9:00am it is DARK. And it about to get darker…(we turn the clocks back next week!)

* Plastic bags from the grocery stores are not free, so take you own bags to pack your groceries in.

* It's amazing how much you can understand by intuition and context.

Conquered

This week I used the metro by myself for the first time…
Success!
Believe me, it’s not quite so easy a task. People rushing past, crowding into already over-crowded metro cars, a labyrinth of tunnels deep, deep under ground (the deepest in the world, actually…many actually run UNDERNEATH the rivers), and of course, everything is in Russian…

On the way DOWN....



Two of the stations:

Plosched Vostania



Mayakovskya




Some more pics from around "my island" - Petrogradskya...







The path to the Hostel



The Hostel



our balcony is in the second row from the bottom, the 4th from the left.