The photo on the left shows a house, an attached building, and a huge pile of firewood.  The is part of the rural landscape of the village of Morozoviy Borki.  On the right is a woman who demonstrates traditional Russian dress and makes embroidered art work and table clothes.  This was her back yard.  We went into her house and she showed me many things that she had made.  I purchased two tables runners that she had embroidered.

The two photos above show the rural farm landscape just outside of the village of Sapozhok and in the region of Sapozhkovskii.  The Ryazan Oblast is divided into regions, each with an administrative village.  The village of Sapozhok is the administrative center of the Sapozhkovskii Region.  Farm products here are hay, potatoes, cabbage, sugar beats, and dairy cows.  Note the "jeep."  It was definitely needed on the "streets" of Morozoviy Borki.

After the Morozoviy Borki experience, I was taken to a small village by the name of Bolshoi Mezhariy.  The purpose of the trip was to visit the residence of an elderly gentleman who made pottery.  The photo on the left shows the well for the house.  If you look closely, you can see the stone well and just to the left, the log pole with narrow bucket and sand bag to provide balance.  No domestic water supply for this village.  It did have electricity.  The photo on the right is part of the back yard of the residence.

The photo above left is the neigborhood of the pottery guy from his back yard.  On the right is the 87-year old pottery guy.  He was great.  He took time to show how he made his pottery.  Just to his right are finished products.  Note the small, traditional clay toys.  They were also his specialty.  I bought six of them for Barbara Johnson, one of the Ryazan Seminar participants.

Toward the end of my excursion into the Sapozhkovskii Region, Liferov, Lena, and I, were taken to a birch forest north of the village of Sapozhok for a wonderful, two-hour long "picnic."  You have to experience one of these to really appreciate the amount of food and drink involved.  The people on the left were regional officials or friends of the officials.  Liferov and Lena are on the right.  A lot of vodka was consumed during the every ten-minute or so toasts that occurred.  Because I don't drink alcohol, my plastic cup was continuously filled with kefir, a runny sour cream, buttermilk, kind of drink.  These types of experiences are wonderfully Russian.

The picture of me at left was taken at the above picnic.  During our travels, I saw a hat that I liked and while we were eating, the driver of the jeep came and gave me this hat as a gift. I have since dyed it a navy blue.

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