Russia Journal

Our final destination is Russia. We arrived at Russia the next day we left Cyprus. We went to the Orthodox Church, the main stone building of ancient Russia. It is brightly painted. The Orthodox Church is the second largest Christian church, and the oldest religious institution in the world. The church teaches that it is the one holy Catholic and Apostolic church made by Jesus. We learned from the church manager that Aristotle and other Italian architects brought the Renaissance trends into Russia. The next architecture we visited is Russia ST. Petersburg. Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia, and the country’s culture heart. It has the Mariinsky Theatre that hosts opera and ballet shows, and the State Russian Museum with Russian art. Both of the buildings reminds us of onions.

We visited a Russian traditional clothing shop. All the clothing are handmade. Russian people painted the fabric themselves and sewed it with the embroidery. Traditional clothing are mostly designed for holidays or carnivals. The clothes could also be worn casually. Some Russian traditional clothing are made for theaters, dance studios, and churches. A lot of the clothing are used as costumes. We tried some Sarafan dresses, Kokoshnik tiaras, and Russian blouses. The following pictures are the clothes we bought.

After buying some traditional clothing, we went to the Lotte Hotel. There is a book in our room that introduces everything about Russia. The book is about 300 pages thick. We read through the section about Russia’s education. The book says, “Russia has the most college-level or higher graduates in terms of percentage of population in the world, at 54%. As a result of great emphasis on science and technology in education, Russian medical, mathematical, scientific, and aerospace research is generally of a high order. Since 1990, the 11-year school education has been introduced. Education in state-owned secondary schools is free. University level education is free, with exceptions. The oldest and largest Russian universities are Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University.” We also read the section about Russian traditional clothing. One of the pictures in the book is the same as the red sarafan dress we bought. We would be leaving Russia in five more days. We really don’t want our adventure to end, but we need to go back to Taiwan. Our next trip would be a few months later. We would be going to other countries in Europe. The trips would be longer next time. Even though we would be going to new countries, we would never forget our adventure to Luxembourg, Finland, Cyprus, and Russia.