Picture me, sitting on a schoolbus with the class I'm teaching. There's probably about 40 of us on the bus, all fourth-graders except for me, one other teacher, and the bus driver. On the way to the zoo, I sit next to a girl named Phoebe, who asks me who God is. I tell her "Nobody really knows, maybe you should ask your parents what they think..." She tells me "Bo knows God." (If you don't catch that reference, you're WAY too young.) On the way back from the zoo, I sit next to a boy named Peter. He's an amazing artist (I'm teaching art to these kids,) and a recent immigrant from Russia. He tells me that when he was growing up there, he would take art lessons at the Hermitage museum. I tell him that it's always been a dream of mine to see the Hermitage, and that one day I will go there and see it for myself. Peter trembles, and looks into my eyes with a seriousness that a child should not have, and says to me (I remember this as if it were happening now) "Oh no! You must not go to Russia, for if you do, you will surely die." (After a bit of questioning he tells me "There is no food", and I begin to understand that his parents explained this all to him when they moved the family to the US... Still, if my life were a play, Peter would have been my Tiresius, and so I remembered.) Flash forward to 1997, and my sister has moved to Russia after graduating from college. (Why? Couldn't tell you, hell, I'm not sure she could tell you, but there she was, and far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to visit someplace I've never been before. It didn't hurt that my friend Ed (whom I've known since first grade) was living in Stockholm at the time, which happened to be on the way (well, more or less.) Plus, I was overdue for a vacation anyway. So off I went. And what a treat I was in for, let me tell you. The moment I got onto the train in Helsinki, Peter's warning echoed through my head. I had this feeling of dread climbing aboard the train, but I knew that my life was not a movie, and that I would never forgive myself if I let supersition and fear get the best of me. So I persevered. The friendly Finnish crew of the train helped put me at ease, also, that is until we neared the Russian border late late that night, when the nice Finnish people got off the train, and were replaced by scary Rissian shock troops in commando gear. The soldiers searched my cabin for stowaways (who in their right mind would sneak into Russia?) and then took my passport away from me, for what seemed like hours. Of course, I get my passport back, the train gets in safe and sound. I am in Russia, I have not surely died. This is a good first step. (Yeah, yeah, Strunk and White are SCREAMING at me in my head for mixing up my tenses, but you know what? I don't care. Something tells me you can deal with this.) When I get out of the train, my sister is there waiting for me, it's a grey, cold day in Moscow, and I leave the station to the rather impressive view at the right. More to come...