Your professional translator

I almost missed an important holiday last week - the Day of Russian State Flag. The day was established in 1994 and is celebrated on 22 August, but it is a normal working day. Would you like to know more about our flag and its history? I'd love to share some facts with you.

As I promised in my previous post , here are some pictures of our New Year . First, on December 28th there was a New Year party in my daughter's kindergarten. They staged "The Snow Queen" by Andersen. In the beginning kids had fun dancing rock-n-roll. They loved it. Their parents did, too :)

 Last year I wrote a post about Santa Claus and Ded Moroz . There, I mentioned a character called Snegurochka, or Snow Maiden in English. I recently came across a wonderful article in Russian on one of my favourite websites, so I thought that I definitely need to share at least some of its most interesting parts so you can know more about this beautiful legend.

Today is a very special day in our city - 900th anniversary of Prince Andrey I of Vladimir, or Andrey Bogolyubsky . Andrey Bogolyubsky played an important part in the development of Russia as a state and of Vladimir as its capital (at that time Vladimir was the Russian capital). You can read more about him in this article . We went to the center to take part in the celebrations. First of all, there was a fair where you could see all the crafts that Russians are so good at. Here are a few pics for you to see. I love that box. It's so pretty :) Icons and pictures made of birch bark Master class in painting your own clay toys My daughter loved that horse! Porcelain dolls in traditional costumes All these wonderful things are made of straw Crystal from Gus-Khrustalny After the fair there was a concert. We didn't stay through all of it because we decided to visit a museum called "Old Vladimir" which shows what Vladimir used to...

Hi everybody! Today is a very special day here because it's International Children's Day. Wikipedia says that June 1st is mainly celebrated as Chidren's Day in the former communist countries, whereas other countries prefer other days. What do we do on this day? The answer is simple - we honor children. There are all kinds of open-air celebrations everywhere with concerts, competitions and fairs with children's art for sale. So I'm going to give you a glimpse into one of them. We went to a city park today and saw a concert with children's songs and dances.   Oftentimes, children in the audience were invited to sing or dance, too. My daughter didn't need the invitation. She danced for 1.5 hours nonstop ;-) After my daughter got tired of jumping and dancing around, we bought some ice-cream and took a walk in the park along the tables with the children's art. Here's the picture that she liked best. Of course, she talked her mom into buying it...

Dear ladies all over the world, please receive my best wishes for International Women's Day! Hope you have a fabulous day today! This is one of my favourite March 8th old post cards. I remember we had several of them, and lots of post cards of other kinds, but I loved this one. I was inspired to share it by this post of another friend of mine. Zhenya is a very special person, a wonderful ESL instructor, and a good friend. Speaking about March 8th, this holiday didn't originally start as one. It was just a demonstration for the rights of working women. It was suggested by Clara Zetkin, a famous socialist. The first demonstrations marking this day in Russia turned into the first stage of revolution of 1917. Up until 1965 March 8th was a holiday, but it wasn't a day off (just like February 23rd ). Now it's not just a holiday, but an official day off, and it's a great chance for families to get together and have a great time! Women of all ages, from young girls to...