Questions and Answers//Coffee and Carnations

Welcome to day three! Things are going well, albeit slowly. I was able to meet with my host organization last night and brainstorm some ideas for working on our project. I will tell you about the project soon, but since we haven't really started anything, I will leave you with the bare bones: I am here on a fellowship from the US-Russia Social Expertise Exchange, working with the Youth and Education group (one of twelve groups dedicated to different areas of social interest), with two other fellows who were delayed because of visa issues, on an 8-week journey working with youth educational institutions in four different cities across western Russia. So, we have two weeks with each host organization, and I am the only one here for the time being, so things are a bit overwhelming (especially because the program does not have a strict work itinerary, there is a lot of freedom to work on projects that we find most productive for our working group goals). Anyway, so far we have been discussing the best plan-of-action for my work here, and I have had a lot of ideas from a lot of different directions, so tomorrow I will have a skype meeting with one of my group co-chairs to narrow things down and decide on some concrete, manageable goals.

In other news, I got to visit a good friend today, and he lived in a beautiful neighborhood:

Also, today was the 70th anniversary of the end of the Nazi blockade! Here in St. Petersburg people place red carnations on memorials around the city in comemoration. It was snowing all day long, atop piles of red flowers. A beautiful sight, which I did not take any pictures of, but I'm sure you understand. Instead, I drank coffee, bought groceries, and rode the metro (it's no Moscow metro, but I must admit it is growing on me).

Tomorrow I will visit my host organization, a sort of alternative school for k-12 students whose personalities or learning styles just didn't jive with public school. My kind of place :) Very excited to meet everyone there, especially the students. More news coming soon!

Goodnight from St. Petersburg,

Sarah