Leaving Novgorod

Well, I had really good entries written up about all of this, but I cannot plug in a jump drive, so I'm going to do a brief update and post the detailed one later.
Day 29:
So, today was my last full day in Novgorod. I wandered around the Kremlin in the morning and spent the afternoon shopping. I wanted to find gifts for my host family. I bought my host mom a little dove and tried to explain to here that in the States i stood for peace and happiness. I bought my host sister a kitty puzzle because she is obsessed with her cat and likes puzzles. I couldn't decide what to buy my host brother, so I got him some candy. I got some beautiful amber earings and a cute box from my host family. I also finished the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, which I had just bought.
Day 30
We took the overnight train to Moscow. Everyone else arrived in one piece as well. We took the others to visit Red Square and had some dinner.

Day 31: First Day, Trip Two
So today we visited with a guy from the international department of United Russia, who said ocratic tradition. Who said that Russia had no democratic tradition. We got a lot of other interesting quotes out of him as well. In the evening we met with an author, her speech was fairly boring and Beth fell asleep. It was kind of funny, but Dr. Sutcliff was very excited because he had written an article about the author. THis was followed by dinner and bed.

Day 32: Gaidar and Students
We met with Gaidar this morning, which was kind of exciting because he was so well known. At the same time there was a lot that he said he could not answer and he was very reluctant to criticize the regime. This tendency was even more pronounced when we met with Moscow State University Students in the afternoon. They said that they were okay with only having one candidate and were shocked that I was able to criticize the war in Iraq as well as being very surprised that we were all willing to publically state who we had or would vote for in teh Presidential elections. But they were a nice lot and some of them made arrangements to hang out with some of our students later.

Day 33:
W toured the Kremlin again today which was still interesting. At least this time no one got left behind at teh bell. But it started raining by the end, so we ran to the mall for lunch. Then we went to the gulag muesem. It lacked any personal stories and really had very few artifacts. Most of the exhibits were art or hokey re-creations that did nothing to give you the feel for the tragedy of the camps. After that we went to the Carnigie foundation and learned that they are under a lot of pressure from the Russian government, but by and large that meeting bored me too.

Day 34:
We visited the House on the Embankment today, which was cool because of its significance in both political and literary history. The museum there was much better done than the State Gulag Museum. Then we went to a writer's colony and visited Pasternack's house. The woman who worked there was absolutely obsessed with him and it was funny in a pathetic way.

Well I'm out of time so I'll catch you up on testerday adn today later.