22 May 2004

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 84

22 May 2004
Temperature= 12 degrees Celsius
Weather=Mostly Sunny

Well we have arrived in Moscow—not without complications though. We got to Paris with 20 minutes to make our connecting flight to Moscow—which proved to be impossible once we got on the bus that went to every other terminal first. By the time we got to our terminal, our plane had already left. So…we got transferred to other planes, but I was by myself and Oliver and Max were together. All’s well that ends well, and that is the case for us except for the fact that Oliver’s luggage didn’t arrive. I was actually surprised to see mine, as the last time I saw it was when I checked in at little Burlington International Airport.

When we arrived in Moscow, we were met by Lena (a Russian Environmental Management student) and her mother. We negotiated a taxi cab ride in which we packed all of our stuff (and we have a lot of it) and the 6 of us into a car a little smaller than a Subaru Outback. We drove by Gorky Park and got to our hotel pretty easily. Supposedly it is good to arrive in Moscow on a weekend because the traffic can be really bad on the weekdays. I will tell you this though; there are some pretty crazy drivers here. As Max told me “You’ll get used to feeling like you’re in a near death experience every time you are in a vehicle.” We checked into our hotel room and this is what it looks like:

We even have hot water, which was surprising for us since there was a sign at the front desk saying that they wouldn’t have hot water until May 31. There are more photos in the photo album at http://archive.arcus.org/TREC/phpbb/album_cat.php?cat_id=3

Today when I was flying from Paris to Moscow (it took about 3 hours) I noticed some cool looking clouds.

And I got thinking about how clouds form. So that is my question for you today. How do clouds form? Clouds also have an interesting effect on global warming which we will explore once you fill me in on how clouds form, because you have to know about that in order to know how clouds might effect global warming. However, for those of you that are anxious to find out there is an article in this week’s Time magazine that talks about clouds’ role in global warming.

After we settled into our hotel room, We met with Sasha Zoladov who is the Russian scientist that is going to be working with us on the Lena River.

Sasha, Lesha, Amy, and Oliver in Moscow airport

Tomorrow, we will all head to Yakutsk which is another 6 hour plane ride. For someone who is a little nervous about flying, I’m getting some good practice in.

I noticed a crescent moon tonight—what did you see in Vermont???