First of all, thank you for your interest in following my year in Moscow as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. I’ve truly enjoyed your support and getting your feedback throughout the year. I’m writing from San Antonio, where I have spent the past week recovering from jetlag and re-acclimating to life in Texas. I hope that some of you were also able to follow me on Facebook, which I kept updated with photos and comments more regularly. The lack of recent blog posts correlates only to the level of my activity over the spring. Here is one last post, which I’ll follow up with a slideshow of photos.

I want to extend a sincere thank you to The Rotary Foundation, Rotary International District 5840 and the Sunset Rotary Club of San Antonio for sponsoring my year overseas. Also, I want to thank RI District 2220 and the Rotary Club of Moscow East for their generous hospitality and friendship.

Now that I’m back in Texas and transitioning between two phases, I have had some time to reflect on my experience. However, a conclusion would be premature, as I’m convinced that the time I spent in Russia will continue to shape my perspective and my life’s path for many years to come. In Moscow, I got to experience the culture and everyday life of a foreign country, improve my Russian language skills, and test myself by living in the grind of big city. I’ll admit, there were some stressful times, but I’m glad to say I came out on top. I also got to study the Russian and Eurasian political landscape with professors deeply immersed in Russian political life and a great group of student colleagues. Finally, I made some wonderful friends, both locals and foreigners, who welcomed me into their lives with open arms.

My final impression of Moscow is that it’s an exciting, dynamic city constantly changing and at the same time, a place steeped with rich culture and history. I couldn’t have imagined picking a more rewarding place to spend a year. I hope I have conveyed at least some of the reasons for this in my blog posts.

I will spend the next chunk of time visiting Rotary Clubs in the area to present on my year abroad while I begin the search for a new position that allows me to build on my time working with government affairs and my international experiences.

Again, thanks for reading my blog, and I look forward to staying in touch.

During the week of Maslenitsa, aka Cheesefare Week, different events take place each day. In every major park in every town and city, you will see people taking part in traditional folk games and competitions – often ones involving men, prizes tree logs, and impressive displays of strength – folk songs and dances. The other ubiquitous feature of Maslenitsa is the bliny, the crepe-like Russian pancake. Maslenitsa is an old pagan sun festival, marking the end of the winter solstice and the most evident remnant of this origin is the burning of the scarecrow-resembling “Lady Maslenitsa”that takes place on the final Sunday of Maslenitsa, and whose ashes are used to “fertilize the crops”. On the other hand, Maslenitsa also celebrates the last week before Orthodox Great Lent begins, when Orthodox Christians are to refrain from the eating of meat and dairy. The Orthodox have already given up meat for the fast the previous week, but Maslenitsa is the last week in which fasting Orthodox are allowed to eat dairy and eggs. Bliny, a rich, buttery, eggy pancake, often rolled and stuffed with tvorog, something in between cottage and ricotta cheese, embodies the sort of richness the Orthodox Christians remove from their diet for the 40 days leading up to Easter Sunday. So, Maslenitsa is another one of those interesting overlapping areas of pre-Christian and Christian practices.

I had a fantastic time celebrating Maslenitsa with friends and Rotarians. On Saturday, I headed to Tolstoy’s winter home and the site of a museum in his name (on the way, I passed by Troubetzkoy Street, named after my ancestors!), where I met with Rotarians for a Maslenitsa celebration on the museum grounds. We danced, we sang, we ate bliny. What more could you ask for?! The organizer of the event was a German expat-Rotarian and member of the German-speaking club Moscow Humboldt, who is a professional event-planner here in Moscow. For the day, however, he was just a happy guy in a wolf-bear costume.

The following day, I went to church in the morning for the last non-Lenten Sunday service, called Forgiveness Sunday. Afterwards, I headed over to Kolomensky Park, where I met up with Russian friends Yulya from the Tambov in the south of Russia, Renat, a Russian Tatar from Uzbekistan, and Marina and Alyosha, both from the Russian Far East. Practically no one in Moscow is a local! I was warned this in the beginning, and it has proven to be true among the people I’ve gotten to know. We had a wonderful picnic of homemade bliny of various sorts, meat sandwiches, a jumbo thermos of hot, lemon-y, sweet tea, and a communal bottle of the fermented honey drink, mead. I couldn’t ask for a better introduction to the spring, shared with Russian friends and Rotarians. Pictures to come!

For those of you who may not have heard about it, on January 24^th a suicide bomber entered the baggage claim area of one of Moscow’s three international airports, setting off a bomb that killed 36 people and injured over 100. Investigators determined that the suicide bomber was a 20-year old man from Ingushetia, a republic in Russia’s North Caucasus. The attack was one in a string of violent terrorist events over the past couple years attributed to groups from the troubled North Caucuses region taking place in Russia’s western centers of population. The violence we saw recently in the 2009 Nevsky Express train bombing on route from Moscow to St. Petersburg, the 2010 terrorist attack on the Moscow Metro, and the recent attack at the Domodedovo airport is a new trend, a leaking out of violence, stemming from political and social unrest and Islamic extremism in Russia’s North Caucasus, that has, until recently, been kept relatively contained within the region.

Although I came to Russia aware of the recent Metro and Nevsky Express attacks, being in Moscow at the time of such an occurrence gave me a new, more personal context in which to react to such events. Fortunately, when the attack occurred I was stuck inside of a train headed 14 hours outside of Moscow, and just to prove we’re indeed living in the communication era, I had phone calls, texts, and Facebook messages from friends in Europe and the USA expressing concern before I had a clear picture myself of what had happened. At first, I wasn’t strongly affected by the news on a real or emotional level, but as I began to think more about the attack, I began to put together in my head a clear and snowballing pattern of terror acts occurring in western Russia. What this tells me is that what happened at Domodedovo likely won’t be the last event of its kind. It’s a frightening reality for Russians and it stems from deep-rooted political problems between Russia and the North Caucasus that are unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

As I started to think about this, I began questioning how safe I am living in Moscow. I decided the best thing to do would be to consult my local friends and Rotarian hosts and get their take. To preface their responses, I would first like to say that outside of my university, many people I’ve met aren’t interested in discussing politics and engaging people in political discussions can be difficult. Nonetheless, the responses I received from friends and acquaintances have varied from 1) We mustn’t dwell on such events; just continue living your life and be happy; 2) The terror attacks stem from serious political issues, but since there is little hope for a resolution, refer back to #1; or the most serious of the answers I received when surveying opinions 3) Fear and firm disapproval of local political conditions and the resulting instability it creates in the lives of average people. The people in camp number three tend to be the people who want to leave Russia. I’ve included here a link to an editorial by a Russian scholar at the Carnegie Endowment who writes about the political issues surrounding Russia, North Caucasus, and terrorist attacks.

My opinion and approach to dealing with the Domodedovo attack is a mixture of points 1, 2, and 3. I try to be cautious but not anxious or fearful, while at the same time I recognize that real issues must be addressed before the problem ever comes to an end. Furthermore, as an Ambassadorial Scholar, with a responsibility to build friendship and understanding between my home and host countries, I’ve wondered, how can I best respond and share such events? My intention is not to focus on the negative, but rather share my impressions, experiences, what I’m hearing from others, and what conclusions I’ve drawn. Any questions, comments, or feedback you have are welcome!

The trip marked my first experience taking a night train in Russia, a common means of inter-city transportation here. The trip from Moscow to Kazan lasts about 12 hours and is the perfect length for a night trip. I lucked out with my travel companions and shared my four-person cabin with women on both ways. If you are lucky with who share your cabin with, traveling by night train can be a great way to travel in Russia: you arrive on the train, visit with and get to know your neighbors for an hour or so before hitting the sack, and then chat again and drink tea in the morning before arriving at the destination. On the way there, I met two older women who were summer cabin-neighbors and religious pilgrims traveling to a monastery, and on the way back I met a Russian who had studied in the US on a Fulbright Grant and woman with a slightly sad but mostly angry demeanor who had immigrated to New York years ago but was visiting her home to care for her ailing mother.

Tatarstan, home to the ethnic Tatars who are traditionally Islam and have Turkic roots, holds the status of “ethnic republic” within the Russian Federation. Russia’s administrative divisions can be a bit confusing, but essentially the 21 divisions with the status of ethnic republic in Russia have the right to determine their own official language, have their own constitutions, and elect their own chief executives, many of which hold the title President. There are about 1.5 million Russians and 2 million ethnic Tatars in Tatarstan, and the religious demographics in Kazan indicate that the population is nearly 50/50 split between Christianity and Islam.

The Republic of Tatarstan is particularly interesting because it provides a great example of inter-ethnic, inter-faith cooperation and integration. Tatarstan is a peaceful region and ethnic Tatars (a minority group in the Russian Federation) are viewed as productive contributors to society. The Tatars practice a peaceful, “moderate” form of Islam, which holds little resemblance to the form Islamic extremism that the Western world has become better acquainted with. My Texan friend even told me that at least a few Tatars offered their apologies to him, as an American, for Islamic extremists, most likely feeling some sense of duty to represent the Islamic community responsibly.

Despite the weather (the forecast showed that it was -13 F but felt like -35), Ross and I managed to do much in a few days and we braved the cold weather like warriors. At one point we tried to stop in a teashop to warm up, but when it was booked with a private party, we found a bizarre “art gallery” on the upper level of the building where we promptly found a couch and warmed ourselves up before heading back into the cold. According to Ross, tooth enamel can shatter when temperatures are below something like -30 C / -22 F and after I heard this, I decided to play it safe and speak and smile sparingly when we were outdoors. I’ve also discovered that in these temperatures one should always blow their nose before going outdoors, and Ross claims that he can always tell when the temperature is below -15 C / 5 F because it’s at this point that his nose hairs freeze. Ouch!

Another of my favorite things about Kazan and Russia in general is the music that blares outdoors alongside stores, markets and metro stops. It’s mostly techno, but sometimes you get some funky 80s-90s pop songs and in Kazan, Tatar pop music. Unlike when I walk home from the metro, usually on my own, here in Moscow, since I had company with me in Kazan I could finally fist-pump and do silly dances to the beat of our background music!