When in doubt, smell it first ...

Ben Franklin had some good and timeless sayings in his 'Poor Richard's Almanack'. Just a few of them are:

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Fish and visitors stink after three days.

I think that a new one should be added: When in doubt, smell it first. I've had a tough time trying to find milk, at least something that resembles what we are used to. First we could only find higher percentages of milk fat, but we then found one that was 'only' 1.5% (we normally drink 1%). This didn't end up tasting too good. I was the guinea pig and poured a little into a cup, it smelled a little different, then I tried some. It wasn't so awful, but it had an odd taste and a little bit of an aftertaste. More than just it being 1.5%. Yesterday we got what I thought was 1% milk at the larger market. It would be nice to have some milk with cereal. I asked Heather to try it, she wasn't too sure about it, but she poured some into a glass and smelled it first. I guess I missed part of the label on the milk, because it smelled like spoiled milk. The carton had the word for milk, but also a word for yogurt that makes me think it is some sort of spoiled milk like yogurt kind of liquid.

This is part of the culture shock of being here, things seem like they are going to be 'normal' other than the language, but the customs and things that are normal here are not the same. It is an old country and an old city, a far cry from the modern, rich life we take for granted. They don't have the same government assistance for everything that we have. The market has odd things for sale in it, not the same types of things that we are used to. 

We felt more like ourselves today, though we still didn't get much sleep last night. The mattress is terrible. You can feel each coil while laying there. We are going to try sleeping on top of the covers to give us more padding and see if that helps. It rained in the morning but cleared up around noon. We spent time trying to find out where a KFC was and also a 'California Pizza' (knock-off of California Pizza Kitchen). We had no luck, so headed out into the city. There is a plaza outside of the hotel where many people were for the Victory Day celebrations. Souvenir stands set up, food and drink tents (shish-kabobs are big here). We walked to one of the main streets and just went down to see what we could find. We found the Baskin Robbins and the Kodak 1 hour photo and stumbled across a Subway. We walked a little further then headed back to the Subway. My minimal Russian allowed us to get a few sandwiches and drinks which were good (and cheap). We then walked around some more and headed back the plaza in front of the hotel.

Here is a photo of a statue in the plaza. Behind it is an opera and ballet theater.

Heather ad the Russian flag Heather wanted to buy for Baby Boy in front of one of the lions guarding the entrance form the street.

Here is the clock tower that tolls every hour, along with a short song every half hour.

The weather seems to be clearing up (it started raining again) so we will try and walk around some more. We want to try and find someplace different for dinner, but I don't know if that will happen. Maybe we can get some more pictures since these aren't that exciting. It was just nice to feel somewhat normal today and to get out and walk some in the city.