(Suzanne)All the women here have beautiful coats and fur hats. The Wal Mart coat wasnt exactly made for sub zero weather, and I didnt have a hat, so I decided I would like to go shopping. After spending 30 minutes layering up , we set out on the town. We had a wonderful walk. When we got cold, we went into cafe's and had hot tea. People were very friendly. A lot of them would say "USA?", we would say "Da" and converse somehow in our broken Russian and their broken English.
When we walk around , there is a lot of ice. Since we are not used to it. we walk like little old ladies while the women fly around us in beautiful 6 inch heeled boots. The steps up to the stores and shopping malls are MARBLE! Can you imagine trying to walk on marble steps that are covered with ice?
We made it to a shopping mall where I bought a pretty green coat with fur. Then I went to another store for a fur hat. There must have been 200 different hats to chose from. Nikolai, Dave, and I had fun trying them on. We had about 3 people helping us who were patient with us and we were all laughing . Let me say thiss...a traditional Russian hat is not at all flattering on a round faced person! I finally settled on a beret style fur hat. It was a fun adventure!
By the time we got back to our hotel, it was snowing hard. We noticed we could see individual snowflakes. They looked just like the ones we cut out of paper when we were kids. They were so pretty!
