Summer Turns to Autumn

Yesterday, we went to the Summer Garden and walked around (we had planned on sitting in the park and reading, but it was in the 40s and just too cold). For those of you that are liking our videos, you can see our newest one by clicking here. The weather is turning cold quickly, so time is running out for taking long walks around St. Petersburg! We're also losing about 30 minutes of sunlight each week; it won't be long before we get just 5 hours of sunlight each day. It's kinda scary...

Then we walked over to Marsovo Pole. As with most things in SPB, you end up at a really pretty place and have no idea what the significance is because it's all in Russian. There was an eternal flame of some sort, pretty flowers, and tons of soon-to-be-married couples taking pictures. So we look in the tour book to see what this place is and find out: it's a mass grave. That's the strange contrast of life here in SPB--there's so much history around every corner, and some of it isn't very pretty.

We've gone from boredom to extremely busy: we're now working Sundays on a regular basis, giving tours and getting oriented to more of SPB's Jewish organizations. In addition, we're taking 8 hours of Russian each week. More on that in future posts!