FINAL-ly Done!

Not that very many people check our blog, but I (Shelley) am officially done with Spring Sememster 2008! It is a great day. Brian will finish tomorrow, and we will be home free...at least for the next week and a half. I am taking classes this summer, and my first class starts May 12. At least get a break though, and at the end of all of this i will have my degree. Woo hoo! Well, we have a lot of fun things coming up this summer, so I'll have to keep stuff updated:-)

Ben Folds

We went to Ben Folds last night at Saltair. It was pretty rockin'. We missed him by a day in Nashville last summer and have been waiting to see him since then. This was our first chance, and Mother Teresa was kind enough to gift tickets to Shelley for her birthday. Ben is simply a great performer. I've seen clips of his shows online and had somewhat of an idea of how his shows go. He met and exceeded both of our expectations, we were really impressed and had a smashing time. Ben Lee was also really good. He only played for 25-30 minutes, but was entertaining. He talked a lot about Tiffany Amber-Thiessen, which hit the spot for me personally.

I stole this picture off a blog of someone else that was there.

Beautiful Bergamo

Leave all your preconceived notions about Italy at the door, because it's actually ten times more beautiful and romantic. Todd ended his mission with 7 months in Bergamo, and we spent all day today walking around it. It's incredible!

With Todd by the entrance to the city

They love the small cars here. Shelley loves them and yells "Baby!" everytime she sees one. This one has a two-stroke engine and sounds like a little motorcycle.

Shell in one of the squares

Next to the gate to the high city

Brian on the edge of the high city with some rich villas in the background

Looking over the back part of the low city

Three Italian men enjoying the sunset together

A panorama of the low city from up top

Toddo Milano

We got the Todd! We got to Milan on Thursday night and caught a train to our hotel. We picked Todd up in the morning and then cruised around Milan for a few hours. It was pretty, but not near as pretty as Bergamo.

Russ, Todd and Brian in front of a statue of Da Vinci on the Duomo Square.

Shelley in front of a Prada studio

The Duomo itself. The shadows under the umbrella are Brian and Shelley.

The entrance to a really classy mall on the Duomo square.

Hatyn'

Sergei from Sofia took us out to Hatyn', a Holocaust/WWII memorial about 50 km outside of Minsk. It was a pretty incredible and somber place. In the 1940's there were about 8.5 million people in Belarus. During the war 2.23 million were killed, one fourth of the population.

The main sign where you turn off of the highway

In front of a memorial naming all of the villages that were destroyed.

In front of a memorial with the sunset in the background

A memorial to one of the only citizens of Hatyn' that lived. He came to the city and found everyone burned to death in a barn. This is a depection of him carrying his dead grandson.

Minsk

In front of the Palace of the Republic in the center of Minsk

Eugene Falcon in Sofia. He's lost some weight, but not very much.

In front of the Catholic cathedral on Liberty Square

Shelley on Liberty Square

Island of Tears and our hotel (Hotel Belarus) by the Scisloch river

By the Svisloch again with downtown Minsk in the background

Moscow

All of us at Victory Square

Shelley and Brian in front of Moscow State University

Shelley and Brian in front of the shopping center on Red Square at night.

In front of St. Basil's Cathedral at night.

In front of the KGB headquarters on Lubyanka square

In front of one of the churches inside the Kremlin

The Moscow Historical Musem at the entrance of Red Square at night.

On the train to Minsk. It was really hot on the train and we didn't sleep very well. It wasn't as much because of the heat as it was from the body odor of a guy two cabins down.

Brian and Russ in front of the Bentley dealership on Lubyanka square.