Belarus

I checked our blog's stats again today and found that we've had a visitor from Belarus. At first, I didn't think much of it. I just figured that Belarus is pretty much the same as Russia. But, apparently, it is not. Thanks to wikipedia and youtube I've officially been schooled. I like that we've had a rather diverse population visiting our blog lately. I've always been interested in other cultures but I have a hard time knowing where to start when it comes to learning about them. But, when people visit our blog I find it's easy to use that as a starting place. I promise that this phase will probably pass shortly. But, really we don't have kids (yet) and the only other thing of note lately is our cleaning and organizing progress (Angela, I did take pictures, but I had to take them with my phone and it's taking forever for me to figure out how to send them to my email and then download them - apparently they're bigger in size than I would have thought - but... I took a TON yesterday, JUST for you!).

So, without further rambling here is what I've learned about Belarus. The following information is courtesy of wikipedia:

Belarus (ⁱ /bɛləˈruːs/ bel-ə-ROOS; Belarusian: Беларусь, Russian: Беларусь, Белоруссия, see Etymology), officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe,^[7] bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno (Hrodna), Gomel (Homiel), Mogilev (Mahilyow) and Vitebsk (Viciebsk). Forty percent of its 207,600 square kilometres (80,200 sq mi) is forested,^[8] and its strongest economic sectors are agriculture and manufacturing.

Until the 20th century, the lands of modern day Belarus belonged to several countries, including the Principality of Polotsk, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Russian Empire, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. As a result of the Russian Revolution, Belarus became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union and was renamed as the Byelorussian SSR. The final unification of the modern day Belarusian lands took place in 1939 when lands that were part of the Second Polish Republic were united with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic as a result of the Soviet invasion of Poland.^{[9][10][11][12][13][14]} The territory and its nation were devastated in World War II, during which Belarus lost about a third of its population and more than half of its economic resources.^[15] The republic was redeveloped in the post-war years. In 1945 the Belorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian SSR.

The parliament of the republic declared the sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990, and during the collapse of the Soviet Union, Belarus declared independence on 25 August 1991. Alexander Lukashenko has been the country's president since 1994. Under his lead and despite objections from Western governments, Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of the economy have been continued. According to some organizations and countries, elections have been unfair, and political opponents have been violently suppressed.^[16][17][18] Since 2000, Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, with some hints of forming a Union State. Belarus also has the highest Human Development Index among members of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Most of Belarus's population of 9.49 million reside in the urban areas surrounding Minsk and other oblast (regional) capitals.^[19] More than 80% of the population are native Belarusians, with sizable minorities of Russians, Poles and Ukrainians. Since a referendum in 1995, the country has had two official languages: Belarusian and Russian.

Also, I watched a really interesting, informative, and emotionally compelling video on youtube about Belarus. I watched it thinking it was going to teach me how to speak some basic phrases in Belarussian. But, instead it was more of a documentary. Like I said, I really didn't know anything about Belarus before today, so this video really opened my eyes.
It's not super long...only about 10 minutes and it's really worth watching.