FOURTH OF JULY

We decided to do a 4th of July celebration for YW this week, since the 4th fell on the same night as YW. We also invited the missionaries since we thought they would appreciate a little taste of home.

The evening got off to an exciting start. We had an unexpected thunderstorm sweep through about an hour before we started. It blew in and really dumped hard in a way we've never seen outside of Siberia. The thunder kept setting off car alarms. One of the missionaries said all the lightening was the equivalent of fireworks.

We did our best to fix what we considered typical 4th of July foods with what is available here. Dave fried up burgers (we miss our BBQ grill) and we put out toppings--tomatoes, (mustard from Helsinki), cheese, a type of pickle (not dill), ketchup, mayo, and fry sauce.

We also served up fries, baked beans (Dave really had to scour stores to find bacon), Kool-aid (thanks for sending it Mom!) with ice, deviled eggs, chips, and watermelon. For dessert we had cookie dough brownies and ice cream.

They all seemed to enjoy it. One of the biggest surprises was that the Russians liked our ice! We found some little pouched bags for making ice, so we made some the night before. At one point in the meal our Russian missionary even asked if we had any more ice. Typically Russians don't like ice, although they sure enjoy ice cream. We were surprised at how much they all ate.

The Americans talked about what their families did to celebrate the 4th of July. Then everyone just sat around and talked and laughed and relaxed and enjoyed the holiday.

Mary, one of the YW, had offered to get fireworks. It's legal here for people to set them off themselves. We decided not to do fireworks this time since it doesn't get dark until so late. However, Mary took a video of the fireworks from the city's birthday celebration last week (done at midnight) and we watched that on her phone.

Fun evening. Different celebration that what we would have had in the US. Everyone had a great time and left absolutely stuffed.


This week's Russianism:
Yesterday was "water day" when people (mostly kids) get others wet--water balloons, dumping water out of a window on people below, whatever. We saw more of it last year in Barnaul, but maybe that's because it's been so rainy here that everyone who was outside was already wet. And with all the rain, temperatures have now dropped into a much more comfortable range. YAY!