Welp. It's a new week and a new transfer, and I'm still here on Sakhalin for another 6 weeks. Hooray! Khabarovsk is a fun place to visit (for about 30 seconds), but it's a little too cold for me. Lovely ice sculptures though. Incidentally, Sister Ivanova informed me that when she called home, the temperature in her home city on Saturday was a balmy -40 C. I dunno what that translates into in normal-people measurements, but it certainly sounds ridiculously cold. Good thing I'm not in the Novosibirsk mission. I hear it gets all the way down to -70 C in some places. Ick.

So just in case you're wondering, children here are pretty much the same as children at home. We have a fairly big branch here on Sakhalin (usually about 45-60 people at Sacrament Meeting on Sundays), and there are two families with little girls under the age of 2. One of them, Varia, is the daughter of the Branch President. Her favorite thing to do is to run at high speed around the meeting hall while cackling madly. Then when her mother starts looking like she's going to get up and chase after Varia, Varia runs up on to the stand and throws herself into her daddy's lap, because she knows that mom won't follow her there. Then when she gets bored (22.7 seconds later), she runs back down into the congregation and demands (in her loudest not-quite-two-years-old voice) that the other little girl, Lana, hand over whatever toy she happens to be playing with at the moment. Of course Lana has no intention of doing any such thing, so what usually happens is that they both try to take it from one another by force. It's really quite amusing. Well, I think so at any rate. I dunno that her mom agrees.

Also for the record, Christmas day in Korea is about as exciting as Christmas day in Russia. See also, from what I could tell, they aren't even aware that it exists. Well no, okay, they're definitely more aware of it than the Russians (who partially don't recognize it because people who celebrate on the 25th of December are obviously dirty Catholics/Americans/Mormons/

FOREIGNERS/fill-in-your-own-derogatory-term-heres, and everybody knows that Christmas should properly come AFTER New Year, not before), but still. We spent the day wandering around the city-sized flea market (and I'm not even kidding about that one. This place was HUGE) and eating at On the Border. I'm sure there probably were people at home celebrating properly, but obviously we didn't see them, and therefore I'm going to go ahead and stereotype the entire nation based on my 2-and-a-half-days' experience there.

I'm pretty sure there was more I wanted to say here, but for the life of me I can't figure out what it was. Did you get my pictures? (That wasn't it, but what the heck. I've got five minutes).

Anyway, I can't think of it at the moment, so I guess you get to wait until next week. I love you, thank you thank you thank you for the Christmas presents (and thank you Grandma and Grandpa for the mission donations (thank you Sister Little as well), thank you Grandma Read for the box I haven't actually received yet, and thank you to anybody and everybody I missed), be safe, and have a good week. I mean it. Oh, and enjoy the new year.

-Sister Read.