I would like to congratulate you with spring!

Well, it is March 2nd and here in the Urals, Russians claim that spring has started. I have spent the last three days trying to argue that spring does not start on March 1, but on March 20 (and, for the love of god, it certainly doesn't start on March 1 in Russia), but my cries have mostly fallen on deaf ears. Incidentally, Russians like to congratulate each other with spring, as though we as a people have somehow willed the season upon ourselves. Thus, I would like to wish all of you a happy spring :) (I must admit that despite my protests, we have indeed reached a monumental high of -2 C today).

I am at long last back in Ekaterinburg and settling into a good working and studying routine. The most exciting news is that at long last my work with Ekaterina [the women's crisis center] has taken off. The key ingredient turned out to be my secret nerdiness [or not so secret, as I'm sure some of you are thinking], in this case, my past experience with building computer databases. After one afternoon of observing Anya and Nadezhda's very elaborate system of post-it notes that they use to track clients who call the crisis line, I offered to help them set up a basic computer database. Well, to make a long story short, they jumped and after many months of twiddling my thumbs with regards to the crisis center work, I am finally sitting with more work than I could have asked for. It is an exciting development, especially because nearly none of the NGOs that I know of in provincial Russia use databases. In other words, if I am able to pull this off, it could make an actual improvement in the work that Ekaterina does. In the meantime, I have fallen in love with the women who work at the center and have been having lots of fun getting to better know them and their histories with this type of activism.

I have also found a local family center that I started volunteering with. I am going to help out Larisa Leonova [the director] with some grant-writing/basic fundraising. She is also looking to get more involved in training sessions/consultations for women who have experienced domestic violence. From a couple tea and cookies sessions with her, I have learned that right now Ekaterina is the ONLY organization within a city of 2 million that works at all on the problem of domestic violence. With that in mind, I am excited about the opportunity to hopefully help her find funding to get some similar programs up and running in a different area of town. We'll see...

That's the biggest news from here. Other short updates:

• On February 9th, we celebrated Midori's 21st birthday with a skiing extravaganza! Josefina, Jen, Midori, Misha, and I all trekked out to the outskirts of town, strapped on some skis, and hit the "slopes." It was Midori's first time on skis and despite some fights with the Russian ski lift [which ultimately resulted in some serious frostbite], she had a blast. She also got to make her first snow angel and participate in some serious snow fights. Pictures from the crazy day are up on the facebook.
  
• I made the Russian news again :) It was at the American Center again, this time Danai and I were making lots of valentines with members of the community [ie little kids and grandmothers who braved the cold for the promise of American crafts]. We are becoming quite the celebrities in town, which basically means that the mean salespeople are either much nicer to me now [because Americans, let's be real, are so cool] or even meaner to me [because clearly I'm a spy]. At any rate, I think this is my 15 minutes of fame and I'm not quite sure how I feel about the fact that it's being used up in the Urals of Russia.
• After six months of living only within the borders of Russia, I took a short vacation to England last week! Although it feels great to be back in Ekat now, it felt amazing to spend a week relaxing in all sorts of Western comforts, from lattes to clean streets/trains/stores to smiling waitresses to food with spices [beyond salt, pepper, and sour cream, that is].
  In contrast to Russia, it actually is spring there and I spent a good portion of the week blinking and not believing my eyes when I saw all the green. In short, I fell in love with the city and it was a great trip.
  

Next week, I have plans to visit a teacher's house for the first time (Midori, Jen, Josefina, and I have all been invited over for tea and pancakes!), celebrate my first International Women's Day with the lovely women of Ekaterina, and take a day trip to visit an orphanage. Hopefully I'll get around to putting up the results of all those adventures shortly after they occur. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying whatever version of spring you find yourself in!