I met an Olympic kayaker at the airport
Just like I had hoped, I’ve come back from spring training and it seems like all systems are go on both fronts for going to Russia! I have email from the Far East which says, and I quote, “Our TTT fund welcomes any person interested in our nature conservation and environment education activities.” She just needs the dates I could/would come. And I have to clear up the misconception that my study abroad program is during the summer and would precede my going to Terney. But I don’t think that will be problematic. So now I will be applying to the Russian Department here at Wesleyan to get some money to pay for a plane ticket to Vladivostok…

As for the study abroad program in St. Petersburg and Irkutsk, I have been conditionally accepted and now they await my medical and passport information. And I think it will behoove me to get that in as quickly as possible, because I think they will be my sponsoring institution as far as visas go, and I need to have the month going through Vladivostok and Ternei on the visa.

So this is all good news and makes up for the fact that during spring break, when I went down to Georgia with my crew team for training it was cloudy or rainy on every day except the day we got their, the afternoon we took off, and the day we left. So the day we left, it started clearing up during our last practice in the morning and was perfectly clear by the afternoon when we were derigging and waiting for the men’s coach to come with the trailer. It didn’t seem that long of a time, and I had packed my sunscreen and didn’t feel like trying to find it, so I was out in the afternoon sun for about three hours, which I am now regretting at leisure.
I mean, my arms and back and bright red, because I was of course wearing a top with a wide open back… When we went through security at the airport, the guy at the x-ray-your-carry-on machine said “You’re supposed to roll over sometimes, you know.” The stewardess stationed in my section of the plane called another to see my astounding sunburn. And I will just be spending the next couple days wearing long sleeve shirts, applying aloe, and hopefully not getting tired of baked Alaska jokes.

Also there is not much in the way of food in my house… Meh.

But, re the top url for this entry, I did meet an Olympic kayaker at the airport. She apparently recognized our team members as having been around the boathouse at Lake Lanier (where we train just happens to have been the 1996 Olympic venue for rowing and paddling.) and came up to us and started talking. She was pretty interesting and had biceps as big around as my nalgene. She told us that if we ever had a chance, we should definitely go to one of the Olympic training centers (she may have had an inflated idea of our actual athletic skills) because they are a lot of fun. She said one time the kayakers made a bet with the cyclists that they could not keep a racing kayak upright for 3 seconds. Not a single one of the cyclists could, so they had to take the kayakers out to dinner.