We have four more months to go in Russia. Spring “started” March first according to the people in town, but it’s snowing more nowadays than it was in the last 6 months. I still feel like I speak English too often, and should speak more in Russian. Recently, my friend Pasha and I advanced to the regional level of this academic conference contest. We placed first on the school level, then first on the city level.

The first time my partner really surprised me, because our project was done wonderfully in English. The second time, we had less than a week to translate everything into Russian. I feared that my Russian would really ruin the presentation, but in fact, we had done well. Our judges smiled often. During our question and answer portion, I was surprised that the audience was actually paying attention. Most of the time, it’s really difficult to capture the interest of these young teenagers. So, what’s next? I’m not really sure, but anyhow, the weather’s lovely.

I went ice skating with my host sister and friends not too long ago, and I hope to go again soon.

And March 4th is election day in Russia, but everyone says it’s simply a formality. We all believe Putin will return to his presidency without contest. On the interesting note, Russia has an interesting way to combat polling irregularities. The country has 600k volunteers to watch over the polling stations via Internet and cameras. And I’m watching the elections online too…