One of the things I never missed about America is the super-saturation of Christmas spirit in the month and a half leading up to Christmas. And I know, I know, everybody complains about how Christmas carols start way too early in the stores, but look, I have to be a Typical American in some way, […]
I keep telling people that the darkness in Arkhangelsk isn’t nearly as difficult as I had feared, and that is true. But when I got to Moscow on Monday and took the train from the airport to the city, I realized it was the first time I had seen blue sky in a month, and […]
Let me tell you a story about the marvelous serendipity and strange Russian magic of the world I’m living in. When I bought my plane ticket to come to Russia, it was far far cheaper to buy a round-trip flight than one-way, so I chose a return date at random (December 20), and bought the […]
The last week, things have been very different, in a different way. Of course, I’ve continued working with my classes, slowly weaseling my way into how they do things, while at the same time getting more and more excited for going home and Christmas. But my frantic desperation for home has been diverted by the […]
The light situation has gotten to the point that it’s started to really affect me. When my first class ended at 10 am on Monday, I went outside to walk to the cafeteria for a mid-morning snack, and this is what it looked like: I’ve started to develop some strategies for coping with the darkness, […]