Meeting Eber

Today I have finally met Eber, or Eber Raul as everyone refers to him here. It was so touching to meet him. He ran at me and hugged me even though he has never seen me before in his life. He was so thrilled to have some photos and postcards I brought him, that he carried the envelope around for the rest of the day and kept showing it to other boys and teachers. We watched some cartoons together and played with tiny toy cars. He would not stop giggling as I chased him endlessly around the yard.

Boys consider their sponsors their god parents. I would have never thought that little kids would care about someone they have never met, but yesterday Claudia told me that boys ask her all the time when their god parents would come and visit them. While all boys seek individual attention, Eber’s sheer delight in meeting me and spending some time with me touched me and at the same time made me feel very sad.

Doctor Barbara

This afternoon Dr. Barbara McCune came to El Hogar to talk to my team about healthcare in Honduras. Dr. Barbara runs a clinic for the poor just outside of Tegucigalpa. She talked to us about the lack of affordable health care, the lack of treatment drugs, the terrible state of the only hospital in the country that will accept patients who cannot pay, and the minimal services this hospital provides to those patients. I cannot retell her stories, but I was greatly touched by the strength of her spirit, her determination and perseverance.

Dr. Barbara has been running her clinic here for over 4 years, and is not planning to leave just yet. She talked about what keeps her motivated, what keeps her working here while many have given up in frustration, what keeps her from falling into despair.

She summarized it simply as “picking her battles.” Dr. Barbara sees many people at her clinic. She cannot help them all, nor can she fix the system. Her motivation comes from the details. Small successes of her patients inspire her to continue her work. A woman working to overcome and severe depression violence at home… A woman scared but willing herself to ride a bus for 3 hours after walking for 2.5 hours to come to the city she has never been to so that her little boy receives proper treatment… One by one, her patients keep Dr. Barbara here in Honduras despite the odds.

Back to Honduras

I have safely landed in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and now am back at El Hogar. It feels as if I was away for no longer then a week. I love being able to recognize a lot of the boys, and even being able to remember some of their names. Caesar greeted us as we drove in; he was working the gates. Later I played a little soccer with Oslin and Marlon. Brian, Tara and I also played a game involving a ball with Mario and Minor. Sadly I still have not met Eber, but Cladia promised to point him out to me. It also seems like my ability to understand Spanish has dramatically decreased since last year. I speculate that it might have something to do with me avoiding the Rosetta Stone lessons I so studiously went through prior to last years trip.

"Golden Autumn"

It is the time of golden autumn in Boston. Who in the world says “golden autumn”, or “golden fall” for that matter. Certainly no native English speaker does. Yet this wonderful metaphor is widely used in the Russian language to describe that magical time of the year when the sun still warms your face, but the early morning air chills. The trees shimmer in the breeze, their yellow and orange leaves sparkling in the last rays of the sun.

Fall is here. Bostonians are back from the Cape, and you no longer have to wonder where everyone went while driving down Mass Pike. Kids grew taller in the summer sun, and Susie Baby is back behind the wheel of her yellow school bus scooping them up from the Natick front yards. Walnut Hill School teens too have returned, tan and bright eyed, and their gossip and giggles fill up the quiet morning commuter trains.

Apples are crisp, and pumpkins are out. The Russians head out to Cape Cod to pick wild mushrooms, and I dream of Christmas and apple pie. Soon the chill in the air will turn to frost, and the trees will shed their colorful dresses. Winter will be here in no time, and I will be a little older still.

Jomar in Boston

Fueled by some excellent sushi, Jomar, Nick and I spent Friday night researching the one and only perfect activity for Saturday that would make Jomar's visit here truly worthy. As a result, Jomar and I headed to Charles River Canoe & Kayak place in Boston (between the Elliot and Arsenal Bridges) and rented a double kayak.

Perhaps for some kayaking means racing, exercise, or hard work. Not for us. Jomar and I leisurely paddled up the river past the Arsenal Bridge. After awhile, we deemed ourselves tired, and spent even less effort drifting down the river to Elliot Bridge. After about 2 hours of baking in the sun, drifting, and avoiding embankments and geese, we returned the kayak and headed to Harvard Square for a hearty lunch.

Lunch was followed by a walk down the Esplanade, and the day was topped off by a nice dinner at Stella in the South End.

Two Years Passed

Grandpa loved tea, and he liked it strong and hot. So hot, that if the water stopped boiling a few minutes ago, the tea was already too cold. He always attributed his love for all things hot to his last name, Goriatchy, which literally means “hot” in Russian. He also insisted on drinking his tea from very thin cups or a thin glass.

More on the Marathon Sunday

The Adirondack Marathon takes place in a small town of Schroon Lake, New York. The course leads runners in a loop around the beautiful Schroon Lake. Vistas of the lake were constantly opening up through the trees on my right, but just as often I was running through the woods. The leaves have just started turning, so the hills were still quite green.



Nick saw me off at the starting line, and then met me at the finish. Of course only he can tell us what he did for over 4 hours, but judging by his happy sun burnt face he spent a good chunk of the time lounging in one of these Adirondack chairs and read papers.







Here are the 3 photos Nick took of me:

1) Madly tieing and retieing my shoes about a thousand times before the gun goes off

2) Waving bye to Nick after the start gun went off

3) Laughing at my name being butchered as I run towards the finish line only 30 or so feet away

(No, the lady in the last photo next to me did not run the marathon. However, she probably did walk it. The walkers started two hours before the runners did).

If you are sick of the marathon details, there is just one more thing I intend to share with the world--my split times incorporated into the course elevation map:









After the marathon, Nick and I headed to Fort Ticonderoga, which looks over Lake Champlain. Unfortunately, not very much of the original fort remained, so most of it has been reconstructed. Regardless, for me it was especially neat to visit this fort because it was from here that Colonel Henry Knox dragged heavy cannons over snow all the way to Boston in 1775.


After visiting the fort we have decided to take a different route home. So instead of heading West back to Schroon Lake, we took the Ticonderoga Ferry across Lake Champlain from New York state to Vermont. The ferry quietly gliding across the lake was supposedly established in 1759.

We headed East through Vermont driving along local roads before getting on the highway. We passed green hills, and farms, and fields of corn. The drive reminded us of riding through Iowa.

Mission "Marathon" Accomplished

Race: Adirondack Marathon
Location: Schroon Lake, NY
Gun Time: 4:18:21
Nettime: 4:18:11
Average Pace: 9:51
Place: 113 out of 192

PS: Elevation Map of the Race Course

At Fort Warren, Georges Island

Today I took a trip out to Georges Island, one of the Boston Harbor Islands, together with my coworkers--this was our team outing. The ferry ride from Boston was most pleasant. The weather was perfect, sunny and cool. As I stood at the head of the boat with the salty ocean breeze in my face, I felt utter joy.

Strawberry Jam

You might think that those are some sad looking strawberries, but in fact they are very happy strawberries that have been cooked into a jam. You might say that it does not look very much like jam. True. It was my second attempt at making strawberry jam according to my grandmother's recipe. Since the first attempt a month or two ago was mostly a failure, I only made a small batch of the above substance on my second attempt. The results are not yet perfect but very promising this time around.

The real jam making efforts went into making a more traditional strawberry jam for my bake sale. I followed the recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens book, and it turned out quite well. Having acquired 3 boxes of strawberries at Haymarket at a bargain price, I made 3 batches of jam. Jam was so plentiful that weekend (this was a couple weeks ago) that it filled all 24 8-oz jars I had bought for the occasion, and overflowed into some of my tupperware.

The Privilege of Citizenship

Recently while talking to a friend a subject of emigration from Russia came up. My friend knew some people who moved to US in their late teens with their parents, but who returned to Russia once they became adults. I have previously known of a few cases where people were extremely unhappy in this country and have returned to their native land, but I have never heard of a group of virtually unrelated people going back to Russia permanently. I was shocked.

I questioned the possibility of moving back to one’s mother country without proper working documents. I had forgotten that people emigrating from Russia in the mid 1990’s and later did not have to give up their renounce their citizenship like I did. Today former Russian citizens are able to get their citizenship reinstated. In fact, Russian immigrants, now American citizens, who travel back to Russia a lot, find it convenient to get their Russian citizenship reinstated so that they do not have to get a visa to enter Russia every time.

The US government highly discourages dual citizenship due to the problems that may arise when the laws of the two countries conflict. A US citizen who automatically qualifies and is granted another country’s citizenship stands no risk of losing the US citizenship. However, a US citizen who deliberately applies for the citizenship of another country may lose his or her US citizenship.

When I moved to the United States, I could not wait to receive my US passport. Coming to America has given me a lot of freedom and choice-- freedom to choose what to study and what educational institution to enter, freedom to follow the traditions of my ancestors, freedoms I did not have in Russia. Receiving the US citizenship also provided me with the freedom to travel as well as the safety of being under the protection of the US government.

The US government does not guarantee protection to its citizen in the country of their birth, which is logical given that a person can have legitimate claims to that country’s citizenship. This policy is unfortunate for the US citizen who explicitly renounced the citizenship of their mother countries. Thus when traveling to Russia, I cannot rely on the help of US government in case Russian authorities decide to detain me regardless of which passport or passports I held.

If I wanted to move back to Russia, or if I wanted to make my travel to Moscow only a matter of purchasing a ticket, I could pay some money, fill out a few forms, and get my Russian passport. Obtaining the Russian citizenship would also give me the opportunity to move back to Russia.

Would I like to spend some time in Russia? Yes. Would I like to move to Moscow for a year or two and live alongside my friends like an ordinary Russian? Yes, there is no doubt about it. I have never lived in Russia as an adult, and I would very much like to experience it. If today someone offered me a Russian work visa and a job, I might very well accept. The time I have lived in Russia now represents less then half of my life. Yet the effects of growing up in the Soviet Union are not wearing off. I miss my friends, and I long to know better the city I grew up in. I have always felt at home when I went back.

If I had a Russian passport, all I would have to do is find a job, and I would be ready to move. Yet I am not rushing off to get my Russian citizenship reinstated. In fact I would never accept the Russian citizenship, even if paid to do so. It might mean that I would never live in Moscow again, but I already had to face that reality when we were leaving the Soviet Union. In accepting the Russian citizenship I would be acting against my principles.

When moving to the United States my parents left their well established lives, their friends and elderly parents behind so that I would never know the discrimination with which the Soviet Union treated its Jewish population. My parents made the sacrifice of their own comfort so that I would feel safe to live my life however I chose to.

Moving back to Russia would erase everything they have done and struggled for. By accepting the Russian citizenship I would accept all the injustice inflicted upon my parents and my grandparents as due course. I could never do so. Moreover, it would break the trust that the United States has extended to me when allowing me to become the US citizen. I spent six years being a citizen of no country at all. I was born in Russia, but I am proud to be a citizen of the United States of America.