Dear Readers,

Forgive me... [for tagging your wall
with the cutest graffito of all time]

Last we spoke, I was back stateside eating bahn mi, putting up a show, and being grateful for everyone's generosity with their cars, coffee-makers, and soft horizontally-oriented furniture. Well, I came back to the Moskva, got back into the swing of things, then a long-lost pal some of you may know as the rocking-est Canadian grad student at the U of C came to Moscow, we went to St. Petersburg and Novgorod with a couple of fellow displaced dissertators, and I'm finally back and freaking out a little bit that it's December already. Where do these short short days go every day? They must be sneaking their friends in through the turnstiles without paying, cause I can't figure out how it can be December already! I'm not going to indulge in a numerical tally of trivialities I farted out this month, but I will just say that, standing on the bridge between Novgorod's Kremlin side and the Old Market District side (connected by the Volkhov River, geography buffs) and feeling the cold wind blow that cold river spittle in my face and nearly blow the camera out of my cold, nearly dead hand and resulting in this pseudo-pin-hole gem:

Volkhov River, Veliky Novgorod

yea, I did go swimming in December, hallelujah! Not in the Volkhov, back at my usual yellow dot in Filyovsky Park. But it was a nice way to end my month of travel and touch back down on familiar ground. I'll post some more photographic evidence soon, but in the meanwhile, here's the crazy view out my window in the Novgorod hostel. This picture of a sunrise was taken at 9 o'clock in the morning.

Also, there was a guy frying sausages on a hotplate in the common room, so don't let's get too excited now.