Korolev Exchange

Traditional Dress at Welcome Party

Our club, the Southwest Florida Friendship Force, hosted 24 members of the Korolev, Russia Friendship Force for a week's visit from November 1 - 8th.  Pictured here are 2 of the visitors in their native costumes as they demonstrated their dancing and singing at the Welcome Party that we held for them at one of our member's home in Fort Myers.

Korolev is located close to Moscow and is known as their "space city" since they colaborate with NASA.  Different members of our club welcome the guests into their homes - and we welcomed Milhail and Tatiyana Blinov into ours.  Milhail is a builder in Moscow and his wife, Tatiyana, is the architect.  They have a beautiful daughter and son-in-law and have 2 grandchildren.  They spoke very little English; however, we used the Google Translate Application on our Droid (similar to an I-Phone).  Most of the time, this worked pretty well, but we did have some laughs when obviously some things were "lost in translation."

Some of the group club activities were trips to the Edison House, Babcock Ranch and Ding Darling Nature Preserve.  We also took them swimming at Ft Myers, Sanibel and Venice beaches as well as trips to the Venice Art Festival and the Dali Museum in St. Pete.  Last night we had a rousing "Farewell" BBQ complete with Russian entertainment (lots of songs) and American entertainment (games and of course, lots of our songs such as America the Beautiful, This Land is Your Land, etc.). 





Today they left for touring of Miami's South Beach and then they are off to NYC before they fly back to Russia.  What a wonderful experience this was for all of us.  We really enjoyed this cultural exchange!

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