Some pictures from the trip...

...that I took can be viewed here:

http://dbashmak.com/russiatrip06/

Well, we made it from Dallas to Moscow to St. Petersburg and back intact!
It was a GREAT trip!!

E.B.

Coffee

It's noontime here in St. Petersburg. Alex, Katie, Justin, Stephanie, and I
made the trek to Nevskiy Prospekt (the main drag that runs through the city)
via mini-van (about 15 people crammed inside-- definitely another cultural
lesson) and two Metro trains to get to a Kofe Khaus (Coffee House) to get a
fix before hitting this Cafe Max (Internet cafe) and a few sights in the
city. Abigail went with the others on a side excursion to the tsars'
residence about an hour away. This was a pre-paid thing that I didn't sign
us up for to keep the costs as minimal as possible. Tomorrow night, Alex,
Katie, and Abigail are going to see the ballet Swan Lake (they'll be tired,
as we have to be up at 3 am Tuesday!).

We're still having a great time! There's one minor problem here with our
phone cards, however-- the local number is always busy, so I am going to let
thie students make a short call home on my cellphone this evening, around 9
am Texas time. After that, we'll have to tough it out until we get home. I
will plan to call Carole from the Frankfurt airport just before we board the
plane to Dallas that everything is okay.

When we get home we'll recap Katie's experience with a Russian maintenance
guy who was dispatched to look at her phone (when she couldn't get through
with the phone card) and Stephanie's experience with a voltage converter and
Justin's indoctrination to Russian hot chocolate... (Nothing bad happened,
so don't worry!)

That's it for now.

Poka!

E.B.