Joseph’s mom, Irina Parsley, joined us this morning to give a short talk about her native country, Russia. She showed us on a map where she grew up. She described how different the climate there is from Alabama and talked about the long winters and what people do to entertain themselves. Irina brought several examples of those handicrafts. She also brought Russian currency and coins, a recording of Russian children’s songs and books for us to look at. One book is an alphabet book. We learned that the Russian alphabet has 33 letters, She taught us how to say hello, goodbye, yes, and no in Russian. We all enjoyed learning new things about Russia.