Folks.  I’m in the Moscow Airport just about to board a plane back to the US. I found some free woreless so I wanted to get a quick post in.  For now, I’ll just post the pictures and add the text when I land.. sort of the reverse of what I’ve been fdoing all week.
  It’ll be really nice to be home ! Can’t wait to see my family.

-jc

I’m now on the flight from JFK back to Burlington . I’ve got a few minutes to add the text to the pictures I posted… Let me see if I can remember what I was going to write about….

     Oh yeah… Yesterday our Academy TC  meeting ended at 1 PM. It was a the end of a great three day session. We got lots done and got to interact with some very cool people from the IBM STG Russia Lab. The rest of the afternoon was free for us to do some email catch up then do a little exploring around town. We grabbed the buss back to the hotel then headed out on foot to explore. Our first goal was check out the Kremlin museums. One of the guidebooks had said that it was open everyday.. but it turned out to be closed on Thursday.. bummer.  Undeterred Lori and Charlie and  headed off to check out Arbat Street.. The “Haight-Ashbury” of Moscow. In the 60’s and 70’s Arbat was a big counter culture hang out… Musicians like Balat Okudcheva  (I’m sure I’m butchering his name) hung out here writing cool folk songs and playing guitar. Today Arbat is full of tacky tschotsky shops, bars, street artists ,toy vendors musicians and tattoo shops. I loved it ! the thing I loved most was the huge number of high school age kids hanging out and singing on the street. Their energy was really pretty amazing.  Two  things I noticed about Arbat.. and about Moscow in general.   First,  few people over 20 are smiling…   I counted 1 smiling person out of 30 that passed my in one minute… It’s not that they’re mad or sad.. it’s just that the general affect is pretty flat… Once you start talking to them they brighten up. The second thing that’s hard not to notice is that Moscow women really love to dress up.. Everywhere we went the women were dressed like they were headed to a fancy party. For example, of the same 30 people I counted for my smile experiment, 5 of the women had on spike heels even on the rough cobblestones.   The funny thing is that the guys don’t seem to care what they wear.. I fit right in.  Around 5, we stopped for a quick beer then headed back to meet the others at the hotel for dinner.

This add is all over the city.. not sure what it is

Notice the time and the color of the sky

By the time we finished dinner it was close to 11PM and the sky was still twilight.. That was so cool It was the longest day of the year after all. We made it back to the hotel around 11:30 after finding all the bars either full or closed.. We had one  more shot of Vodka to close out the trip.. Russians seem to drink a shot with every meal ! 

At about 10 of 12 I went out by myself to red square to finish off my solstice with sam. I was surprised to find the square full of people.. Nothing special was going on.. just folks walking around. I talked with Sam for a while,  took a few pictures and headed back home.   

Again.. notice the color of the sky.. thsi is just before midnight.

Sam and I in Red Square

Sam – courtesy of a Samsung sign and a building to block some of it for my camera

I woke this morning, packed  and checked out of the hotel . My friend Steve and I shared a cab to the airport since we were on the same flight back to the US. We passed this church on the way there.

It was good catching up with Steve. His wife Helen died last October. Every time we talk, we compare notes on our path towards healing. This trip we did a bunch of talking about how foggy our brains have become. As always, it’s good to talk to  someone who has some idea of what I’m going through. .. even if our situations are very, very different.

     The flight back was really a breeze. After the Asia and Australia trips I’ve   made over the last year or so, the 9.5 hour trip over the Atlantic seemed like a piece of cake. I was sitting next to the coolest guy, Mohamed.

He is an aerospace engineer working with companies like Boeing to help them meet international safety guidelines. Mohamed is a Palestinian who went to grad school in Germany and now lives in Seattle. We talked for a good part of the trip about the middle east, religions, politicians, kids, families, Sam, travel. By the time we landed, we had worked out most of the world’s problems. He is a really good thinker. I hope we find a way to stay in touch.  Another cool thing on the flight was tta there was a group of about 15 young kids from an orphanage in Moscow. They were going to NYC to do a band contest. The kids were wicked bored and the  flight attendants were trying to find things to do with them.. I went back and taught them my favorite paper airplane design: the flying ring.We were tossing them all over the plane. It was good fun..

Self-portrait in plane bathroom

Here we are passing near vilnus, the place where almost all of my great granpartents came from

    We got to JFK exactly on time, then I had a 4 hour layover waiting for the trip to Burlington. That too was a snap.. It was so beitiful flying in here

I was finally standing on terra firma in beautiful Vermont . Tim came and picked me up and took me up to his house where Diane and company were just finishing up a huge batch of SamStones.  It was sooooooooo nice to see my family again.. I had missed them so much..

   Right now, I’m missing the sandman… I can hardly keep my eyes open. I need to get some sleep.  There’s no place like home , There’s no place like home,
There’s no place like home

 -jc