24 May 2004

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 84

May 24

Temperature 5 Degrees Celsius

Weather: Mostly Cloudy

We are in Siberia. We arrived in Yakutsk this morning, but when we arrived I honestly had no idea if it was morning or night since the sun didn’t set at all last night while we were in the plane and we were in the plane for about 6 hours. We left Moscow at 7:50 p.m. I thought that the sun would go down and it would be dusk for a few hours but I was wrong. In addition to not seeing the sun set last night, we also moved five time zones ahead too, so you need to help me figure out the math and tell me what time it was when we landed—if we left Moscow at 7:50 p.m. and the flight was 6 hours and we moved 5 time zones ahead, what time was it when we landed?

Yesterday, we spent the day in Moscow getting preparations for the trip, since we pretty much need to make sure that we have everything we need before we leave Moscow as there will not be any major place to pick up equipment once we leave. We went to purchase a satellite phone which took some time since no one in our group is especially familiar with Moscow. We did get to take the Metro which was cool. There are these big long escalators to get to the subway (see photo in photo album).

We did get the phone though and it works well, better than expected, even though one of us has to hold the phone out the window (see photo in photo album).

The good think is that it will be easy to send journal entries and respond to questions so keep them coming. We are still not sure how easy it will be to send pictures through the satellite phone because they take so long to submit. So my question today for all of you out there is how do satellite phones work? The first thing to do is to figure out what a satellite is and for that I will give you this clue: the moon is a satellite. Once you figure out what a satellite is, maybe you can explain to me why, about every 15 minutes, the satellite phone loses connection?

Moscow is a very international city in the sense that it has many of the same signs and buildings that one would expect to find in any large city (New York, London, and Paris). The difference is that all the signs are in Russian, which I have to say is a pretty cool looking language. Luckily, familiar labeling is able to help me figure out what some things are. There are coffee shops and restaurants and clothes stores just like any other city too.