MCOM #12: history.

Here's fun fact number two {ok, probably not two, but lets go with that} about me. I love history. Like I said earlier, I'm currently going through a quarter-life crisis right now and for a brief second I seriously considered dropping everything and double majoring in history and Russian. If it weren't for the advice that my mission president gave us the night we left Russia, I might have done it. But he told us "what the shortest book ever written? Jobs available for history majors." So maybe not. But still.

Anyways. I like history. And I think that the traveling I've been able to do in the last couple of years has really helped along that love. I got to live in London and travel throughout the United Kingdom. In this blog post, I mentioned that the buildings are older than America. Seriously. Have you ever thought about how young American is?!

But that was nothing. I got to Russia and my first area was a "little" town {only half a million people} called Yaroslavl. Oh how I love Yaroslavl. I spent a preparation day walking through the sights of Yaroslavl as a girl told us all about its history. Yaroslavl is one of the eight cities considered to make up the "golden ring." These ancient cities were vital to the formation of the Russian Orthodox church. And let me tell you... there are churches EVERYWHERE. Like think of how many Mormon church you see in Utah County, then image walking the streets of a city well over a thousand year old and seeing that many churchs, except they all have the beautiful onion domes. History EVERYWHERE. I love it. I'm so excited to go back!

I love learning about history because everything else just makes sense. Last semester I took a Russian history class. We went from the baptism of Rus in 988 to 2017. Learning about the history of Russia brought clarity to the culture I experienced there.

History is cool.

And now let's appreciate my wonderful Yaroslavl:

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My 20th birthday! It was our preparation day {meaning we had a couple hours of free time} and we spent it touring Yaroslavl and buying matching Provoslavni pinky rings!