Riots and the Bronze Soldier

Tallinn, Estonia. Less than two weeks ago, riots stormed the city in response to political tensions revolving around Estonia’s decision to relocate a controversial Soviet WWII memorial: the Bronze soldier. The relocation was to make way for a parking lot. 12 Soviet soldiers would be exumed and their graves moved to a cemetary along with [...]

Don’t Sit On Beds For Luck

(from train to Tallinn, Estonia)
After nearly four months, I’m leaving Moscow in my dust. It looks like I managed to survive a winter that defeated the likes of Napoleon and Hitler, I didn’t commit feline-homicide (which could be punishable by death in rogue states like Russia, who knows), and my lungs have taken in just [...]

Instability

Three months in… and I’m still alive!
Our group is taking a trip to Sochi for about 10 days and we’re leaving on Wednesday. Sochi is a city on the Black Sea (in the Russian Caucasus) with a population of about 300,000 people. The city and the area is supposed to be gorgeous, surrounded by mountains [...]

Football Coach

“FITZPATRICK!!! What’da you think you’re doin!?! You’re running around like a blind dog in a meat house, son!!!
That’s what my sophomore football coach used to say to me back in the heat of triple sessions, usually in the middle of some defensive back drill when he caught me out of position as free safety.
For [...]

On Corruption

The apartment isn’t all that bad. My family works really late and so I don’t see them very often. I get the sense that scientists and engineers don’t make nearly as much money here as they do in America, relatively speaking. A friend of mine told her host mother that her family in America has [...]

The Briefest of Moments

Is it possible to REgress as a person through traveling?
This whole experience is an exercise in finding things about myself I didn’t know where there. Last week, I was on my way to school in the morning and I walked across the street to catch the trolleybus that takes me to the metro. Good [...]