Siberia

Guest

Hi Amy,
It's been great to see the pictures of Siberia and to learn more about your research. When you return to the United States will you continue working on this project? Do any of the Siberian scientist have the opportunity to come to the United States on similar exchange programs?

I know that you participated in Project Harmony in high school...have you had a chance to practice any of your Russian?

Have you seen any wildlife?

Stay warm!
Samantha Candon

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 84

Dear Samantha,
I'm glad that you are having fun with our website. It is fun keeping it up too. To answer your question, Yes, I will continue to work on this project in several different capacities once I return. I will go to Woods Hole this summer to analyze some of the samples that we are taking here. Secondly, Max and I are working on ways to link more schools into this project, so I will continue to work with him to come up with ideas to get some of this great research and information out to the greater community and specifically to the communities where the PARTNERS project does its work.

Thirdly, Max is already working with my classes at Salisbury on another Arctic project. He is in the process of writing a proposal to the National Science Foundation to begin a study of some tundra lakes in Russia. My students have already been involved in analyzing some of the initial data and while I am here, they are working with the substitute teacher to use the data to write a persuasive piece about why the NSF should fund this project. This is great because it shows my students the "other side" of science research, and that is getting the money to fund the projects.

Finally, I hope to continue to work with polar regions people to get more information about the poles out to students of all ages. I will be attending a conference in the end of June to meet with polar region scientists, other teachers, and media specialists to come up with ideas to kick off the International Polar Year which will be 2007-2009. Should be interesting. At any rate, I am very excited to keep this partnership up--it is giving me some great teaching ideas and has allowed me to be a part of science that I had never been a part of before!

I don't know if there are any programs like this teacher exchange program for Siberia teachers, but I haven't heard of any. The teachers here, if I understand correctly, do get a 80 day sabbatical every two years with a ticket to Moscow or St. Petersburg, to keep their studies up. It is good to see that the "higher-ups" in both these places appreciate teachers continuing to learn and explore to better develop their teaching practices and keep them motivated!!

I have been practicing my Russian, but not very successfully. I do know a few of the basic words--hello, good-bye, thanks, etc., but I tend to get them confused, so for example, today at lunch when I went to return my dishes, I meant to say "Thank You" and said "Good Morning" instead. So, I get a lot of strange looks! More often than not these days, I just smile a lot!

I haven't seen much wildlife, and there really isn't much wildlife here in Zhigansk. This isn't a very productive part of the Arctic, so there is not a lot of "stuff" for wildlife to eat. We did see some neat camouflaged birds yesterday (look under the experiments and activities section called Adaptations). In the winter, the reindeer come to the outskirts of the village, but they have migrated further north by now. The polar bears are also further north too. So, sorry to disappoint you, but there really isn't a lot of wildlife to report on!

Thanks for the great questions!

Amy