I didn’t get the white Christmas I had hoped for. But it was still fun and seeing the green countryside during our drive to Christmas dinner more than made up for it. I woke early in the morning to call my parents during their Christmas Eve. As I was sitting on the stairs getting the computer ready...

Customs was short. I walked up to the guy behind the window, gave him my passport, and nodded when he said, “Holidays?” Then I walked out to the exit and looked for Desiree, Jamie, and Marcel. I saw Jamie and Desiree first through the window and when I walked through the doorway saw Marcel....

My last day in Mother Russia. The last Russian morning I would see; the last egg sandwich I would eat fried on a Russian stove; the last time I would wake up with a small back ache from my Russian bed. Today was Kremlin time. I hoped it wasn’t randomly closed, a common occurrence with things in...

Finally, the Russian winter I had been waiting for all semester. Thank you Russia for at least letting me preview your winter my last week in your hospitality. And it came with blue skies all week; how nice. It was almost as if Russia was saying, “stay through January. It won’t be that bad....

The morning John and I arrived back in Moscow it snowed. And it snowed. This time it didn’t go away; it stuck, finally. It was getting colder. I kept looking at the next week’s forecast as the weather was supposed to drop even more. This is good as I was thinking about asking for a refund...

Helsinki marks the farthest north we have been all semester. It was a big shock for us when it started getting dark around 2pm after not really getting light all day. But anyway, we stepped off the ferry to a brisk evening in Helsinki and attempted to reach the central train station where we were meeting...

So right after my algebra class ended on Wednesday December 2nd, actually 30 minutes before, John and I left for the train station for our trip to Tallinn, Estonia, and eventually Helsinki. We made it to the station early enough to get a pizza and learned about our English speaking waiter who had worked...

Back in Moscow, for the weekend at least. We kept this weekend pretty low-key as we attempted to get caught up in our school work. But I still managed to get out a bit during the weekend to see and do a few things. On Saturday, Jordan, John, and I went to try and see Lenin’s body in his tomb at...

First off, the promised night shots of Kyiv following our adventure in Chernobyl earlier in the day: Independence Square The Music Hall and Bridge Arch at night Looking northward out over the Dnieper Southward, looking over the riverwatchmen's back. I felt safe walking alone in the dark all night....

Yes, that says Chernobyl. The Chernobyl where the nuclear disaster of April 26th 1986 occurred. Actually, the power plant is located closer to the, then larger, town of Prypiat, now abandoned. At almost an hour and a half after midnight on the 26th, reactor #4 exploded. More explosions and fires sent...