Traveling & More Traveling

Feb 5--

 We are off again tomorrow...2500 kilometers in six days!  Probably thirty hours in the car with our long-suffering coordinator.  It ought to be fun...dinner tomorrow night with the mission president and wife.  Bought 10 kilos of cookies today for 2000 rubles...we will be meeting with students and teachers along the way. Cookies and tea and juice.

This will probably be our last trip for a while.

Feb 9--

Made it to Kazan!  Beautiful city...snowy, too.  Having another CES Devotional...the talk by Elder Callister is assume.  

Zhenya, our boss, took us to a wholesale renok before we left and we bought cookies - like 15 kilos of cookies - for our trip and to use at home.  That's a lot of cookies and they are really good.  However, we are getting a LITTLE tired of cookies.  I mean, if they are in the car and you're driving down the road you sorta have to eat a few, right?

Last night we stayed in a circus.  Really.  The circus rents rooms.  Tonight we are staying in a five room hotel called KOMFORT. Our boss is being frugal since we are spending the Lord's money.

Feb 10--

We're in Ulyanovsk today.  One active YSA - she is a returned missionary and the relief society president...and she works doing sound and lights in a couple of dance places here.  Fun.

We had lunch in an Irish Pub...you know how Mom gets when she see a leprechaun.  Noisy places but we ate our fill of chicken wings and fries and delicious authentic Irish food like that.  Fries are made from potatoes and potatoes are Irish, right?

We should get home tonight about 23:00.  My job is to get Zhenya to keep drinking his Coke and listening to MY playlist on the iPod instead of mom's so he can stay awake.  He did buy his first Mountain Dew today...we are making progress with his training...;-)!  He even said we would eat in the car while driving tonight - which is a first.  He always wants to stop and eat and then keep driving.  

Like that's a good idea.

He has much to learn.  It would be so cool to drive across America with him...hot chocolate at Starbucks every morning, cup holders (our car has no cup holders), 44 ouncers with shaved ice (our drinks never have ice) and other All-American delights. 

We made it home to Saratov at 23:00.  Nine hours in the car plus a few hours with the two students in Ulyanovsk.  Cold snowy drive home.  Really glad to sleep in our own bed tonight.