Roseville Area Schools Community Education

Twenty years ago, my husband and I celebrated the most wonderous Christmas of our lives in Krakow, Poland as we joined our son and his family for the holiday. We visited the medieval Market Square, alive with Christmas, Santa Claus, and Ronald McDonald; rode in a carriage to Wawal castle and met its fire-breathing dragon, Smok, and took a one-horse open sleigh ride over the river and thru the forested hills of the Carpathian Mountains. Let me share this storybook memory with you.

Travel along the Silk Road as we visit the ancient cities of Uzbekistan. We’ll begin and end in Tashkent, the capital city, that has reinvented itself after a century of Soviet occupation. Next stop will be Samarkand, a city of mosques and madrassa, built in the 15th century by Temur Amir, 14th Century conqueror and modern-day hero of the Uzbeks. Then, we’ll join the throngs of holiday-goers for the Goldbroidery Festival in the timeless city of Bukhara to enjoy song, dance, and shopping for treasures.

After first viewing the Biblical Mt. Ararat from its capital city, Yerevan, we’ll explore Areni Cave where archeologists have unearthed a 6000 year old wine press and an array of fermenting vats and storage pots. We’ll follow the trail of prehistoric standing stones, Armenia’s Stonehenge, marching across the mountaintop, visit a pagan temple complex, and a monastery carved into a mountain And we will learn the truth about the holocaust perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 in which 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives.