Happy Easter!

It's been kind of fun realizing that we're celebrating Easter many hours before it comes to Utah. I guess eventually we'll get used to the time difference.

Yesterday and today people here are turning out to clean up the city. If we understood correctly (and since our Russian isn't the greatest, it's always possible something got lost in the translation), April 24 is Russia's birthday, so people do what they can to make the cities beautiful. Yesterday we met at the church, where we were thoroughly scolded for not wearing jackets and then, armed with rakes and shovels, went to a park a few blocks away to um, rake and shovel. Almost the first thing people did was take off their jackets because they got too warm! We worked for about 1 1/2 hours. It was very rewarding to rake away layers of dirty leaves and trash to find new green growth underneath. We also picked up a lot of trash. There were about 25 people in our little group and we filled lots of bags, piled up lots of broken branches, and moved the dirt that collected in the gutters back to where it had been washed away from. Surprisingly we didn't wake up too stiff to move this morning!

You can see us at work:


Here's the group photo after we were done. Dave's the one at the back in the cool hat. Some people really hammed it up, especially the Elders.


In the stores they have what looks like overgrown cupcakes, but are more like a round loaf of something similar to raisin bread topped with a thin layer of icing and sprinkles. They started appearing in the stores last week and we were told they're only available at Easter. We didn't see any Easter baskets or Easter candy in the stores. No Peeps.

It was nice to celebrate Easter Sunday without all the hoopla of the Easter bunny and trappings we saw at home. We enjoyed singing familiar Easter hymns, although we sang them with different words. Rather, we tried to sing them and ended up humming along. One of these days we hope to be able sing all of the words in Russian. Unlike at home, here they sing ALL the verses (including the extra verses at the bottom of the page) of all the songs at the beginning and ending of each meeting, including Sunday School.

This week's something new in Russia: Occasionally outside of stores they sell small bunches of flowers. We thought it was interesting that we saw some people selling small bunches of pussy willows the same way. At English Club last week someone told us that they represent the palm fronds for the Savior's entry into Jerusalem and were just for Palm Sunday. I think it's cute. I always loved pussy willows when I was a little girl.