Put Today in Perspective

Every so often, a story comes along which should be shared, spread, and celebrated.
Zach is living one of those stories.

Listen, and let his attitude re-frame your perspective on the day.

Snow Legs

It started snowing Wednesday night and hasn't stopped since. And just like that, winter was upon us.

On Thursday morning at 7am I slipped and slid my way down the street in the dark to my work just three blocks away.  In just 2-4 inches of snow I was hesitant and nervous about falling and the walk which normally takes 10 minutes took double the time.

But this morning I stepped out my front door into two feet of snow, and realized that I had found my snow legs! Now I'm trekking through 2-4 FEET of snow like a pro again. I've collected some of the photos floating around my Facebook feed so you can see what's it like here on the ground!  I hear they're calling this blizzard 'Antti'.

Birthday Pulahdus

I just celebrated my first birthday.

In Finland, that is.

The 23-year milestone called for something radical, so I took to the beach in southern Helsinki and - having successfully convinced only one other person (my cousin & roommate, Maya) to join me - splashed around in the waves for a quick dip. Or, as we say in Finnish: pulahdus!

It was a high of 5 degrees Celsius today (41 F) and something like 7 degrees in the water.  We took beach towels, sunglasses and tanning lotion to accessorize our bikini ensembles, but ended up getting too cold to care about those.  It was windy and the weather channel's "Feel's Like" estimate was 3 degrees.  So it was a quick in and quick out birthday swim, but the kite surfers in full neoprene bodysuits wanted photos with us and kept telling us "what brave girls" we are.

Overall a chilly experience but definitely worth the memories!

Shirah Learns Finnish - Episode 2

Shirah Learns Finnish - Episode 2 from shirah-eden on Vimeo.
See what I learned on my first day of class & hear about my first-day-of-snow catastrophe.

Lexington & the UK PhD in Management

This weekend I enjoyed a trip to Lexington, Kentucky, where I had the chance to learn more about a PhD program at the University of Kentucky's Gatton School of Management. My specific area of interest is in social network analysis, and Gatton has some of the world's leading researchers in this field; it was such a treat to spend the day getting to know them, hearing about their current projects, and sitting in on an afternoon seminar with other students currently in the program.

In my continuing survey of PhD programs I found this website on online PhD programs being offered by several US colleges. Even though it doesn't seem like something for me, I found it interesting to learn that there are opportunities to complete a doctorate without having to regularly attend campus. While online education is emerging as a viable and cost-beneficial way to complete a degree, most colleges are still focusing on traditional campus based education and the benefits that arise from in-person interaction between students and professors.

The drive to Lexington was beautiful, especially on Friday morning as I drove east toward the sunrise. Lexington itself is a quaint little town compared to Nashville, and it's set in rolling green hills neatly partitioned by the white picket fences of the horse farms for which the city has earned itself global renown. Navigating the campus of a huge state school was much different from Belmont; luckily the folk were friendly and, apparently not trusting my internal positioning system, always insisted on walking me to my destination instead of leaving me with even detailed directions.

UK's Patterson Tower - view from the walking bridge

Privoz Market

Privoz is Odessa's biggest and oldest open air market. It occupies three huge warehouses, an awning the size of a football field, and tons of semi-permanent and completely temporary stalls.  People sell their goods off of anything.  Some just squat around the perimeter of the market and display their garden herbs on a piece of cardboard. You can buy anything at Privoz - from homegrown veggies to knock-off coach bags, plucked chickens that are so fresh they're practically still moving, to freshly-squeezed juice, q-tips, and screwdrivers. And it's open 24 hours. At about 6.30 pm the consumer-oriented day-sellers go home and the bulk goods vendors quickly file in.

For the mixer we hosted at our flat last night, my house-mate Adrien and I went on a wild shopping adventure at Privoz. We quickly learned some survival methods...

Return to St. Petersburg

I feel like I could burst into tears at any moment. Arriving in St. Petersburg for the second time has been one of the worst experiences of my life.  

The three-hour train ride from Helsinki to St. Pete was okay, but it was all downhill from there. A driver from the university was supposed to pick me up at a friends house where I was keeping my luggage. He finally arrived, but said not a word during the entire 30-minute drive across town.  My efforts to make conversation were met with silence.  

We parked in front of a few high rises and dragged my suitcases over a mud path covered with wooden planks. Walking up to the kiosk adjacent to a ten-foot high barred fence with giant turnstile gate, my driver, who apparently works for the university, silently left me and approached the counter.  He presented some papers and eventually I was let in.  Inside the fenced area are a number of buildings surrounding a grassy quad. I was led into one of them and right inside the door the driver put down my suitcase, handed some papers to the lady at the desk, and shoved a xeroxed copy of a map in my direction as he turned and headed for the door.  I started after him and began to say, "Wait, I don't know where I'm going or even where I am. You have to show me where I live."  He kept walking away from me but flung his left arm out, pointing to the desk -- obviously suggesting that I should direct my inquiries to the women there.  And without a word he was gone.  

A Story from Central Asia

I met Artyom in the metro last Friday night. I was on my way back from the State Electrotechnological University, where I had been speaking all day to students about Linguistics and Intercultural Communications, and I was plain exhausted. I'd given six different speeches in the past five days and was really feeling the duress of public speaking. For the first time ever, I sank onto a bench on the metro platform.
“Spasibo,” I half-whispered as an attractive young blond man scooted over to make sure I had more than enough room to relax.
“Excuse me,” the young man leaned over 30 seconds later and started to talk to me in rapid Russian, “What do you think: are people more friendly and cultured in St. Petersburg than in Moscow?”

The Overnight Train: A Necessary Experience

The best way to describe my over-night train ride from St. Petersburg to Moscow would be to say, as Joe -- one of the other interns -- always says, “a necessary experience.” It was a truly Russian experience, to say the least. I ended up in a купе (coupé) with three Ukrainian sailors – soon to become three drunk Ukrainian sailors. Two of them were middle-aged, 50 and 55. And one – Sasha – was younger, thirty-five at the very most. Andrei and Aleksandr, the older men, didn't speak any English but were happy to converse in Russian. Sasha kept wanting to exercise his small English lexicon.

It was fun for the first few hours; I talked as much as my limited vocabulary would allow, while the sailors drank. And drank. And drank. Until all the vodka was gone. Then things took a turn for the worst. I knew it was going downhill when Sasha took a deep breath and said, “So, I have a proposition for you,” in his thick, almost-unintelligible Ukrainian accent. He then proceeded to try to convince me to marry him. Of course I played dumb and hoped that my “lack of understanding” would make him lose interest. Bad call on my part. Instead, Sasha seemed determined to not only make me understand his wishes, but to convince me that marriage would be a fantastic idea. The two older guys must have taken this as their cue to leave, and went out for a smoke – closing the compartment door behind them with a bang.

Week 2 in St. Petersburg

How could temperatures drop again? Where do you go from -16 degrees?

A portrait of two frozen people, defrosting

The radio stations have been saying this is the coldest week of the year, and there's only more cold in the forecast. Hence my blogging silence.  There's not much you can do (besides just try to survive) in this climate.  My days go something like: Wake up, go to work, run home.  With a stop at the grocery store every so now and then. And I have practically no photos for you, because I'm not crazy enough to stand still and take off my gloves outside - for fear that I will become a permanent fixture wherever I happen to be standing; a new statue for the park, maybe.

I do have a few pictures from last weekend's excursions, when Alex came to visit, and his childhood friend came up from Moscow to spend the weekend with us in St. Pete.  We spent most of the weekend hopping between bars and cafés, just trying to stay warm. Nevertheless, this is what we looked like most of the time -- either freezing or defrosting.

China: First Impressions of Beijing -- 8 July 2008

**This is a never-before-published journal entry from July 2008.


I've just updated my email list, so for those of you who are getting
an email from me for the first time:  I've returned from China last
week and have sorted through some of my pictures.  Now I can share
them!

I decided I better just start at the beginning.  This may take several
weeks to tell the stories and share the pictures, but I want to do it
for myself as much as for you- even though I tried to keep a daily
journal, sometimes sleep was more important than journaling.  This way
I'll have all the stories and pictures together in one spot.

So....

I arrived in Beijing at 6:30am on June 7th, after 2 long flights and a
layover in Kuala Lumpur (that's in Malaysia).  There were supposed to
be some affiliates of the Global Youth Leadership Summit (GYLS) there
to meet incoming students, but after strolling the length of the
suspiciously small terminal it was clear that I had no welcome party.
In fact, there wasn't an English speaking person to be found anywhere.
 Even worse, I didn't know the code to dial out of the country, so my
trendy (aka expensive) BlackBerry Global Phone was technically
useless.  I turned my luggage cart around and headed back towards a
bench, not knowing what I was going to do.  Within a few steps, a
familiar voice caught my ear.  Well, I thought it was familiar-- it
turns out ANYTHING I could understand sounded familiar.  There was a
western couple standing in front of the arrival board, arguing in
French.  It turns out she's from France but is working for a Chinese
company and speaks Mandarin.  Her boyfriend is from Seattle but lived
in France and now teaches English in a Chinese High School.  I was
saved!!!
Aimee showed me how to dial out of the country (all the GYLS people
had US cell numbers)- but unfortunately, upon dialing the Emergency
Travel Number, I got a answering machine.  To this day, no one has
returned my call.
Anyways, I left a message and since I didn't know what else to do,
hung around and talked with my new friends while they waited for a
friend's flight.
When we started talking about Australia, and how I had gotten to
China, Aimee said, "Oh that's funny.  Your flight landed at the
Domestic Terminal."  Now that I thought of it, I didn't go through
customs.  I decided the group must be waiting at the International
Terminal so after saying goodbye to Aimee and her boyfriend I caught a
trolley to the other terminal.  Thanks to them I found my group.

I never did figure out why my international flight disembarked at the
wrong terminal, or why I never went through customs-- which makes me
wonder how I got out.  Besides the boarding attendant in Kuala Lumpur,
no one even had any record of me entering China!  Oh well.

 A strange Chinese ice cream ad in the domestic airport in Beijing

Aimee and her boyfriend, to whom I am eternally grateful

The following photo was taken in our hotel complex in Beijing.  It was
called the Beijing Friendship Hotel and has quite the history.  The
complex boasts a huge campus of around 20 buildings and back before
the 70's and 80's it was the only place foreigners could lodge while
they were in Beijing.  China wasn't very open then, and most
foreigners only entered for business.  The Chinese govt. required all
foreigners to be registered with the city and were only allowed to
stay in the special hotels for foreigners.

This picture was taken the same day I arrived, and you can see a bit
of haze everywhere.  As my plane landed that morning, the pilot came
on and gave us the weather update.  He said, "33 degrees (105 F) and
clear skies."  After landing I thought, hmm...those skies don't look
very clear to me, but I assumed it was just morning fog that would
burn off.  It didn't hit me until around 4pm that the morning fog
never burned off.  Oh the horror when I realized it was SMOG--
pollution that I was seeing.  I remember thinking that night, 'this
must be what it feels like to smoke a pack of cigarettes.'  Ick.


The next photos are from my first excursion out of the safety of the
hotel and into the city -- and I went completely alone :)

My only goal was to visit the large mall across the street.  As I left
the hotel, a Faculty Advisor told me just to watch out while crossing
the street in front of the hotel, "You kind of have to play frogger."
KIND OF was an understatement.   The "street" turned out to be an 8
lane highway with frontage roads on both sides.  I gave up looking for
a crosswalk after watching all the locals jaywalking.  Even in rush
hour traffic they made it look safe and easy.  A little bit timid, I
sidled up to a group and prepared to step out--just as a city bus
changed lanes and almost creamed me.  I was scared now, to say the
least, but wasn't going to return to the hotel defeated.  The only
person now on my side of the road was an elderly Chinese gentleman,
looking to be around 85.  "Surely everybody would stop for this guy,"
I thought, and linked arms with him, begging him to help me get
across.  I don't think he understood, but regardless, we ventured out.
 I was mistaken.  The cars didn't stop.  I could have sworn they
actually sped up, recklessly changing lanes in an attempt to avoid
pedestrians.

I lived to see another day, and even explored the mall across the
street.  After a month I actually got used to the traffic customs in
China-- only to be chided by my aunt during my stopover in San
Francisco on the way home.  Every time we got out of the car I'd kind
of glance both ways while stepping out, prepared to dodge one or more
vehicles.  She'd always have to pull me back, "Shirah, there's a
light."  haha

The next pictures are from one of our many group meals at restaurants
around the cities.  You can see Coca Cola, which we called "OJO OJA"
as is so clearly written on the bottle in Chinese.

The last bunch of pictures is from our first outing-- the 800 yr old
Summer Palace in Beijing, just across the lake from The Forbidden City
(the Emperor's home and head offices of the ancient govt.)

I know this is long, but, if nothing else, enjoy the photos!

A very, very, very old rock....over 4,000 yrs old if I remember correctly

Summary of First Week in Beijing - 11 June 2008

**This is a never-before-published journal entry from June 2008.

Ni Hao!

Wow, five days in Beijing.  It's a totally different world.  I've found that I'm not able to send group emails from my Blackberry, but I hope you've been receiving the quick updates I've sent to my mom, which she so kindly agreed to pass on. 

This city of 17 million has much to offer.  I was a bit put off by all the pollution at first; coming from the clear blue skies of Australia this was a huge adjustment.  I'm slowing beginning to tolerate it a bit better. 

Our trip to the Great Wall the other day was very memorable.  Visiting this World Wonder has been one of my traveling dreams for a very long time.  I can remember the exact moment I was introduced to the Wall and its history in depth in 6th grade.  It was such a dream come true to walk it and climb it and look out from the top (of the segment we were on).  I called my parents while I was up there.  It was one of those moments that I wanted to share with my family.

 

We visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday morning.  The head of the North American Relations Department addressed us, and then we had time for questions and answers.   The CYLC's (Congressional Youth Leadership Council) policy on question and answer time is usually that students write down their questions ahead of time to have them okayed by an Advisor.  This is to avoid any inappropriate or offensive questions.  This being the only program they offer for university students, and with the knowledge that every student here is an alumni of a previous program, the faculty gave us the benefit of the doubt in this situation and did not request that questions be submitted beforehand.  I was disappointed to see this priveledge abused, especially by a young man in my Leadership Group.  Towards the end of the Q&A time he stood up and asked, "Is it true that your country has been selling automated weapons to Sudan?"  The minister was stunned and answered, "what?"  And the kid had the gall to repeat the question.  I was sitting directly behind him; my jaw was almost on the floor.  We had been specifically briefed on topics that were seen as confrontational-- this question didn't even pertain to the topic that was being discussed.  For the event we were seated in the Foreign Affairs building.  On the right hand side of the room there were windows near the ceiling.  Most students didn't notice, but hiding in the shadows behind the glass were Chinese military men closely watching our every move.  We were not allowed to, at any time, leave our seats or advance towards the front of the room.  As soon as that question was asked I was just waiting for the sniper to peek out and bring him down. 

The Minister was very diplomatic about it though and handled the situation as best as one could expect. 

The top-right corner of this photo shows the tinted windows behind which were stationed several fully-armed Chinese soldiers.

 

Later in the day we had Scholar-Led Debates.  My topic was the U.N.-- we debated the effectiveness of the structure of the institution and what role we believed it should play in the future.  The veto power of the 5 P's (USA, China, Britain, France, and Russia) was a hot topic.  We ended up running over time and about 12 of us who were really interested in the subject stayed after the audience had left and discussed it for a further half hour at least.  I was really impressed with the innovative ideas brought to the table and the diverse opinions and well-supported arguements. 

 

We're about to leave the hotel and head to the airport for our flight to Xi'an.

More about the Conference later!

Beijing - 7 June 2008

**This is a never-before-published journal entry from June 2008.




Well, 24 hrs in Beijing and I've already managed to have more than a
few near-death experience. For some reason they don't have crosswalks
(at least in this part of the city) and the Chinese nonchalantly
saunter across the 6 lane highway in front of our hotel. The
vehicules roll at about 60-65 mph and do not slow down for
pedestrians, bikes, rickshaws, or anything else that might be in the
way. It is therefore "every man for himself."

Having come from Australia, the time difference is only 1 hr and I
managed to escape jetlag.  So upon our arrival at the hotel yesterday
afternoon, while everyone else was feeling groggy and exhausted in
their rooms, I set out on a little adventure (which turned out to be a
HUGE adventure) to the shopping mall across the street/ 6 lane hwy w/
no crsswalk.  I found myself on the median clinging to a little older
Chinese man, begging him to help me get across, as a city bus came by,
running over the tips of my sandals.
Once I got over I walked around the plaza and was taking pictures,
when this little tan car pulls up.  All together the windows roll down
to reveal a family.  The guy leans out yelling, " Helloo, Helloo" as
they all wave eagerly.  I returned their greetings, only to find him
saying, "OK, goodbye." And they drove off.

As my flight was landing at the Beijing Capital Airport, the captain
announced 19 degrees C, clear skies.  I didn't understand at first,
because there was a most prominent fog lurking about.  I decided it
must just be the morning fog and they're expecting it to burn off,
leaving us with clear skies.  At about four pm, when the fog still
hadn't gone- I realized it's'
SMOG, not fog.  They don't know what clear skies are here.  And
further more, I feel like I've been stuck in a smoky room all day. The
humidity only makes it worse.