Adventures

Last night the kids decided they wanted to go ice skating, so we put the little ones to bed early and headed out to the mall. We arrived at the skating arena at 7:30 and were told we had to wait 30 minutes. Of course. The skating times in the evening are 6:30-7:30 and 8:00-9:00. Our bus stops picking people up at 8:30... We talked it over and decided to go ahead and skate as long as we wanted and take another bus home halfway, then walk. 

Me and Bethay

Blake, Dima and Seth

Hannah and Jordan

The skating was a lot of fun-- I only fell once! I have to admit though that I didn't stray too far from the wall, but I was doing pretty good after a half an hour. 

The real adventure didn't begin until we were waiting at the bus stop. We saw our regular bus come and go but knew the driver wouldn't let us on that late. Being Americans (and mostly teenagers) we generally stand out and are pretty loud. A man standing nearby noticed us right away and starting talking to us. He thought we were lost tourists and wanted to help. Using Russian, sign language and the three words of English he knew, he asked us where we were staying. We tried to tell him that we live here and knew where we were going. After more waiting for the bus, he insisted several times on getting us a taxi. Some of the kids were not comfortable with this idea and didn't think their father would approve, so we told him 'no, thank you'.

By this time two buses had already gone by. Bus #3 came and the man got on to talk to the driver, telling him we were tourists and needed to get where we were staying. After several minutes of persuasion the driver let us on. Hannah and I stood (yep, you can stand on the bus) up front with the man who told me to watch the road so I could tell the driver where to stop. We made it safely to our destination and left with much thanks to the driver and the man who helped us, our persistent guardian angel.