Monday: A Nice Lunch, Novodevichy Cemetery, School, Boatride and Packing

We started packing in the morning, wrapping the dishes and getting everything organized. Then we left around noon to have lunch at an art gallery.

The main room in the middle had paintings all around the wall.

The room where we ate was off to the side, one of two small vaulted rooms decorated with frescoes telling a story. We think our room was of the Aeneid: The Trojan horse was a giveaway. It could also have been of the Iliad or Odyssey, but the Iliad didn't actually include the Trojan horse story, and the rest of the scenes didn't fit with the Odyssey and they did fit with the Aeneid.

The next room had a castle scene.

After we left the restaurant we drove past Novodevichy Cemetery and decided to stop in. We didn't realize that this is probably the most famous cemetery if you exclude the mausoleum in Red Square. Many famous people are buried here including Chekhov, Eisenstein, Gogol, Khrushchev, Kropotkin, Mayakovsky, Prokofiev, Stanislavsky and Shostakovich.It was not at all what we

expected, much more like a park than a cemetery. The
tombstones were carved to represent who the person was. Musicians had notes floating across their stones; a sculptor's tomb might have some
of his work included on his grave. Apparently Khrushchev's tomb was made by a sculptor he had denounced.

We didn't find the tomb of Stalin's wife, but we did find Gorbachev's wife's grave.

The memorial for Boris Yeltsin was hard to miss because it blocked part of the sidewalk.

The University of Moscow is the only one of Seven Sisters that is visible from the apartment we were staying at. This is the ski lift that runs by the university.

Next we stopped by the girls' school to look at the Bible projects for the 9th grade class. While Murray and Monica met with some teachers, the girls and I went back to get jackets.

Then we took a boat ride from just past the University around the center of Moscow to close to the old apartment.

Gorky Park extended for about a mile along the edge of the river.

I

t was nice to have one last view of Christ the Savior Cathedral

and the Kremlin.

Walking back to the metro, we stopped at the playgrounds for Jessi and Chrissie to renew old memories. Once back at the apartment, Monica worked on getting my stuff packed while I helped Jessi with homework, and Kristen helped Chrissie. I wasn't sure that it would be so easy to organize, but Monica is very gifted at packing. Not only did she have it organized properly, but she gave me very detailed instructions about how to handle the various obstacles I was likely to meet along the way such as what to do when the baggage inspectors opened everything and left it strewn all over the place and what to do when the people in New York tried to take away by fragile items because we were moving to a very small plane. I had much more fun helping Jessi with math and designing an exercise program.