Our first outing ...

We braved the streets to exchange some money and find some food. The hardest thing about being here is not having a clue what anything says and not being able to communicate with the people. Luckily, we have a translator who is with us during the day, but I think the evenings we will spend alone for the most part. It continues to crack me up that people just walk around with beers in their hands ... young people, at that! Oh, and there are tons of signs out on the sidewalks advertising "dancers", if you know what I mean. Wink wink.

Here is an example of what we see everywhere ... can anyone tell me what that says? LOL.

First we went to the money exchange and the lady did not speak English. That was an interesting conversation! LOL. She gave us all 5000 bills and I was trying to ask her to break them down a little bit ... she broke one down, but that was it. Maybe we'll try again tomorrow.

So then we walked down Nevsky, which is right where our apartment is ... such a great location, but noisy. Again, trying to find a place to eat when we can't read anything is a little hard. We then saw the very familiar star with a smiley face logo {Hardees ... ish}, so we went for it. Except it wasn't called Hardees, it was Carl Jr.'s or something like that. We both got a burger and fries ... I know, we are real rebellious when it comes to trying the cuisine!

Our apartment building ... isn't it beautiful?

Random Russian architecture ...

More Russian architecture ... I love this!A canal that runs down near our apartment ...