A Wedding

We did a couple of unusual things this week. We felt somewhat privilged to be invited to Maxim and Luana's wedding. It was fun to be a part of a Russian wedding. These kids are both on our Institute Council and he is an institute teacher, plus they are in our branch. They both speak very good English which, of course, has helped us get to know them. They are a perfect example to the other youth here. He just returned from his mission about 5 months ago and they are being married in the temple. They have to have their marriage registered civily here before going to the temple. We went to the actual marriage in a beautiful wedding 'chapel' (we would call it). That is where this picture is taken. The ceremony was performed by a woman in civilian clothes. Unfortunately, no one translated for us so we don't know what was said in the ceremony. I wondered if it spoke of God. I must find that out.They had very nice printed invitations with several nice pictures of them, much like our invitations. It said the marriage would be at 4:30. Well (shades of Nigeria) it didn't happen until nearly 6:00 because we had to wait for several other weddings to clear out. Then there was a reception (they don't call it that) at the church which was very much like at home. It was decorated with balloons and chair covers, etc., as you can see here. But, unlike ours, it was a buffet dinner for about 70 people followed by a rather long but fun program. Maxim has graduated from music school and is quite talented. I accompanied him on the clarinet and for a funny, very fast, traditional song about riding on a moose with his girl into the northern tundra. It had several verses and everyone joined in on the chorus. The reception was slated to begin at 6:30 but didn't get underway until 8:00. But no one seemed bothered by that (except for Lou who was getting pretty antsy about 10 o'clock when we still had a long trip home). Anyway, it was fun to be a part of it.

The other out-of-the-ordinary thing I did was to sew small USA flags (the stiff kind like go on scout shirts) on seven black t-shirts for some elders who were playing a soccer game in some sort of competition with other countries. I was impressed that they found iron on transfer paper and put on their names and numbers themselves. So not all the days are the same here, even though sometimes it seems like it.

Fall has definitely arrived but when it isn't raining it is still warm and lovely. Has that 'potato harvest' feeling. We still compare the weather here and at home on our computer desktop and we are often just the same. However, I see it getting into the 80's mid day at home once in a while. Here the highs are in the low 60's, usually 50's now, but surprisingly that's not too cool when you are walking. We keep trying to work in some sight seeing while the weather is nice. There are lots of museums we can visit in the winter.