dessert we had ice cream garnished with a preserved

dessert we had ice cream garnished with a preserved fruit. Since we spent so much time to be served and to eat this meal, I didn’t think T needed anything more today.

You may have' noticed that Russian women are figured on the large size. Here I don’t stand out. Having experienced a week of eating, I know why.

One has the feeling that a large part of the USSR, especially the Russian part, is like the U.S. between the Appalachians and the Rockies. The people suffer from the fact that their country is in one part of the world with a latitude similar to Canada rather than the “lower 48.” It may be much drier here than we regularly experience, as well as subject to a short growing season. From what we can see, the agriculture doesn’t look particularly productive, although this is not true of Suzcal.

We have seen only a few herds of cattle, probably mostly dairy, but we have been served quite a lot of beef and veal. Our trip isn’t planned to help us understand agriculture and we can’t see. as much as we would like from the bus window. Around Leningrad there were many greenhouses. We didn’t see that outside Moscow, although there may be greenhouses in directions other than the one we drove. The fact that our diet has been limited to chicken, beef, pork, fish - lots of that and good - potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes and squash (once) - together with onions in things, leads me to think there is some kind of agricultural problem in the Northern part we have visited in this, our first week in the USSR.

The people - about 20 - traveling with us are nice, nearly all older than we are, from Fla., Pa., D.C area, etc., all very widely and much traveled. We are with a Smithsonian Associates tour called “Golden Russia.” We arrived in Leningrad on the August 20th. Our leader speaks Russian and is a teacher of Russian language and culture at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.