Oh, the sportivnii zal (for those not in the know, that's the gym). There is a decent little gym right next to my apartment building, and I've been going there now for the last two weeks. Let's be clear--it's nothing fancy. The main area is a room maybe 50 by 50 feet, and there are small locker rooms, a sauna, and a smaller room for aerobics classes. After the world-class RPAC, my little Akademia Tela (the name means body academy) is decidedly modest. There are, however, all the necessary machines, if only one of each. Also, there is always a trainer around, and they freely give advice and tips on form and exercise selection. One of the trainers is a girl about my age who was powerlifter, and she has given me a lot of good tips

There are two negative points: The gym is like a steamy oven--there is absolutely no ventilation other than three windows, and when there are 12 or 15 people working out in a small room, it gets really hot and muggy. Also, the showers are unlike anything I have ever seen outside of Russia. Imagine a two basins on a small platform in a room maybe 10 feet by 6 feet. There are two spigots that connect to handheld shower nozzles. Draw curtain across the back of the platform and you have a decidedly non-private and very inconvenient showering set up. About a third of the tiles that cover the walls are missing, and there is enough mildew in the corners to make the people who stage the before-and-after bathroom cleaner commercials cringe. Good thing I'm not a clean freak....

The cool thing about Russian gyms is that they really foster community. In America, we occasionally talk to the people we work out in the same room with, but usually we keep to ourselves, shooting sideways glances at the other people and thinking that someone should really tell that one kid that he is going to throw out his back if he keeps deadlifting like that. In Russia, however, people talk to each other, give advice, and help each other in the gym. My gym is small, so I pretty much recognize all the regulars now, and they all know each other. In true Russian fashion, everyone shakes each other's hands when they enter the gym. I'd gotten to know a few of the guys (being the token foreigner is a good way to get to know people), and on Tuesday, the gym hierarchy apparently decided that I was serious enough to deserve acknowledgement, and they all introduced themselves to me, which led to a long discussion of cultural differences and American politics in the locker room. We're now on handshake terms.

Another difference is that no one listens to headphones while working out. Instead, the radio or someone's ipod is always playing. The music of choice is American pop, electro, and techno remixes of any pop song. This song plays several times an hour on the radio (sadly, the girl in the clip has not yet come to the gym):

I've gone from one extreme to another. This summer, Cleveland, like most of the country, suffered (and very well may still be suffering) from a nasty drought. When I left, everything was brown and parched. We mowed the lawn twice all summer.

But it's a totally different story here. It has rained at least a little almost every day, and today has been especially bad. As the Russians would say, rain has poured as if from buckets (как из ведра), and it has turned the whole city into a big mess of puddles, rivers, and mud mires. Clearly, stormwater management was not a big priority during the construction of my neighborhood; most streets just turn into big streams, and  heaven help the poor pedestrian who happens to be walking along the sidewalk when a bus roars by. Also, frequently there simply aren't sidewalks, and people have made their own dirt paths. These makeshift paths are something I rarely see in America; we expect that the government would pave a path that is so heavily used, and, actually, I doubt Americans would make such paths--we tend to follow rules and stick to the dedicated sidewalks. Not so in Russia.

Anyway, my advice for anyone going to Russia is to get a good umbrella and a pair of solid, waterproof boots. You'll thank me for it when it's 50F and pouring rain and it's only August.....

This is a $1,181 bottle of vodka that I saw in the huge GUM department store in Moscow. I can think of a lot of other things I would buy first, but, for the person who has everything, a Faberge egg bottle of vodka is certainly unique.

So I mentioned in my last post that we had some misadventures and run ins with members of the Russian service industry during our trip to Moscow. Let me elaborate. When we arrived, the whole group went to see Red Square and GUM, and then we split into two smaller groups and went off into the city. The groups were supposed to meet up at the train station at 5:30pm to catch the 6:06 train back to Vladimir (I stayed the night, but I had to go to the station to change the time of my return ticket, so I went back with the other teachers).

We arrived at Kurskii train station at about 5:30, but the other members of the group were nowhere to be found. Their train wasn't yet listed on the departures board (that's how you find out what track your train is on), so I went to try to exchange my ticket while we waited. I went to ask first at the Russian Railways service center, and I got a curt--but efficient--answer that I was in the wrong place and needed to go to the ticket office. So I went to one of the ticket windows and waited while people in front of me bought tickets to Sevestopol (a city the Crimea).  When it was finally my turn, I gave the woman the ticket I wanted to exchange, and she explained to me that she could only exchange it for cash and not just change the time because the ticket was for an express train, which is operated by a different division of Russian Railways than the one that operates the local train I wanted to get a ticket for. Oh bureaucracy. So I took my money and checked the departures board again.

Their train was listed as departing from platform 4 at 18:06. So, after following signs for platforms 1-11 that led us to a barricaded door, we asked a policeman how to get to platform 4, and he explained exactly what to do. When we emerged onto the platform, there stood a train to Sochi (a city in the far south of Russia) and a train to Sevestopol--no train to Vladimir and very few people in sight. As the panic started to mount--at this point, about 10 minutes remained until departure--I asked an employee on the Sochi-bound train where the train to Vladimir was. He shrugged his shoulders. We got a similar response from a lady on the platform. One girl from the group asked, in bad Russian, "Where is Vladimir?," to which an employee simply pointed and said, "About 200 kilometers that way."

After sprinting up and down stairs and asking anyone we could find, we finally realized that we wanted not platform 4 but tupik 4 (a tupik is a dead end, as in, where the train tracks stop). We looked in the direction, and, across the train tracks, we watched the correct train depart.

So we headed back into the station to try to buy tickets for the next train. First, we thought it was worth a try to exchange the tickets, and here is where I met the most unfriendly servicewoman I have ever encountered in Russia. She was sitting at her ticket window tabulating something on the calculator, completing avoiding our glances and not acknowledging that we were there. After at least two minutes passed, she spoke: "And what are you gonna say?" (А что скажете вы?), which is really rude in Russian. She looked at our tickets, rolled her eyes, and said that she absolutely would not exchange them because we had missed our train (I expected that response).

So, the other teachers were out 383 rubles (about $10) and had to buy new return tickets. The woman who sold them, in stark contrast to the other people we had encountered, was really nice and patient. She explained exactly what to do, put up with our questions and worries about how the new tickets looked (they were just receipts, which is normal, but the other teachers were perturbed by their unofficial look). After I went back to ask her a few more questions and buy my return ticket, I thanked her, and she said that she sees it as her job to help people get to their destinations. At least someone has the right philosophy!

After getting tickets for the next train at 9pm, we decided that it was time for a beer and headed to a nearby cafe. It was a great choice. If you're ever in Moscow, I highly recommend Cafe Chaplin (Кафе "Чаплин") right off the Garden Ring south of Kurskii station. The staff was super friendly and spoke decent English, the beer was good and cold, and they gave us a cocktail they call the Drunk Alexei as a treat of the house. What's a Drunk Alexei? Take a martini glass and a hollowed-out grapefruit half. Fill the bottom of the glass with tomato juice, and fill the grapefruit with vodka. Put the grapefruit in the top of the glass. To drink, use the grapefruit like a shot glass, and then chase with the tomato juice.

It was just what we needed after a day like that.

Privet! (That's Russian for hi). I'm completely burned out from my weekend of travel in Moscow, so I'll keep  this short. It was cool to go back to the big city, and it certainly felt familiar. The second I stepped into the metro station after getting off the train from Vladimir, I knew I was back: The hustle of people, the rumble of trains, the particular oily smell of the metro--they are all firmly imprinted in my memory. We saw Red Square, GUM (the huge, historic, and insanely expensive department store just off Red Square), Moscow State University, Tverskaya Ulitsa, and the Patriarch's Ponds. I met up with quite a few of my friends in Moscow, too. It was great to see those places again, and I had a great time with my Russian friends.

But I have no idea how I lived in that city. The noise, the smells, the people, the prices--they were all too much. I'm actually surprised by my reaction: I love cities, and I've always considered myself a lover of the hustle and bustle of urban life. But I was so happy to leave that crazy megapolis and get off the train this morning in quiet, old, provincial Vladimir. Of course, our trip to Moscow was hectic: We had just 7 hours to see a city of 15 million people (the rest of the group didn't spend the night). I was on my feet for that whole time, walking, riding the metro, navigating filthy train stations (We had some train-station misadventures and run ins with very unhelpful members of the Russian "service" industry--more about that later). That sort of travel--coupled with a big sleep deficit--wore me out.

Here are a few pictures. The first is our train and the train station in Moscow when we arrived. Next is me in front of St. Basil's Cathedral. Next is a selection of wine that costs--no joke--more than $1,000 per bottle. Next is Patriarch's Pond. And finally, the last picture I took from the train window on my back to Vladimir--it's a good shot of how the countryside looks around here.

So I'm off to Moscow early tomorrow morning. The whole group of teachers is going on the 7:30 express train, and we will have a day to explore the big city. About half of the group has never been to Moscow, so another teacher who studied in Moscow and I will be the Muscovites of the group and show people around. We'll hit all the high points--Red Square, the Kremlin, the Arbat, the overlook from the hills near Moscow State University, Tverskaya Street, the monumental Moscow Metro. In the process, we'll wander through some of the beautiful old neighborhoods in the city center, which is one of my favorite things to do in Moscow. We might even stop by Patriarch's Ponds, which is a familiar place to anyone who has read Master and Margarita. I'm excited to return to one of my favorite cities and see my friends there!

That said, I'm definitely getting used to the slower and friendlier pace of life here in Vladimir. It's nice that it doesn't take an hour and half each way to get to work every day, and the prices here are noticeably lower. In Moscow, money seemed to just disappear, and I had to stop by the ATM and get money several times a week. Here, I can easily make 1000 rubles (about $30) last a week or more, which was impossible in Moscow. Before I left, one of my Russian professors at OSU told me that after a little while in a small city, I wouldn't be able to understand how I was able to live in Moscow. I've reached that point already. Old Vlady might not have all the clubs or the metro system, but that's fine with me. It feels like people actually live here, whereas in Moscow, it seems like people just try to survive.

This song, which I first heard at a Russian festival this summer, has been stuck in my head now for a few days after I heard again it on TV. So I'll share it. It's by the band B-2 and is called The Eternal Shadowy Counter (counter as in someone who counts down to, in this case, death). It's a very dark, very Russian song, and it sounds really cool. Here is an approximate (and very unpoetic) translation of the lyrics: 

I am not myself, my trace is lost

I fell headfirst into the sands of time

Fell to the bottom, and the metronome counts in silence.

While everyone is waiting for the arrival of the truth

A white lie sounds more sincere

It doesn't hide, and temptation and poison torture my soul.

I did everything and abandoned everything

In my game there are almost no rules

And my hero doesn't hold the line and asks for trouble.

I got rid of dreams and revelations

In the hands of fate lies my salvation

My patience has been threaded completely naked through the needle.

Chorus:

Eternal shadowy counter

Will save me everyday story of all religions

Devoted to me and for me devoted

And fully experienced with birth and death in every moment.

This has been an exhausting day. Great, but exhausting. It was, as the Russians would say, насыщенный, which means something along the lines of satiated or saturated. Today, three teachers presented their lessons; fortunately, I was third. The extra few hours of time to think about my lesson and the experience of watching the first two presentations definitely helped.
That said, my first "class" did not go very smoothly. It started well enough, and we played some icebreaker games (draw cards and answer questions based on the suit of the card, toss a koosh ball around the room and introduce yourself), but I wasn't quite as prepared for the grammar presentation as I should have been. I reviewed how to form and use possessive adjectives (I goes with me; you goes with your) and talked about contractions (including the infamous its versus it's). It was tricky to "teach" this material to a bunch of native English speakers, and that had me a bit off balance, but at one point I wrote "her's" on the board where I should I written "she's." We all had a good laugh about that one. I also jumped ahead in my syllabus and assigned the wrong in-class activity, so had it been a class of real students, I would have completely confused everybody. But, I more or less recovered and finished the lesson with my pride only mildly dented. The other teachers and staff were very supportive and complimentary, and I definitely learned that it is critical to really know your syllabus and all the ins and outs of the grammar you are teaching each day. But, damn, that was hard!
Of course, listening to and teaching mock lessons was not the only thing I did today. When I arrived at the AH at 9:30 this morning, there was a group of American and Russian businessmen in the kitchen (the main meeting space) giving a presentation about a plan to build a gas-pump manufacturing facility somewhere in the Moscow-Vladimir-Nizhni Novgorod-Ryazan area. We met with the businessmen and learned a bit about their company, which was something I definitely didn't expect to do this morning.
Then, this evening, we did placement testing again. Best English mistake of the day? It's the totally grammatically correct sentence "I go to the toilet on Mondays;" I think she meant that on Mondays she goes to the banya, which is the Russian equivalent of a sauna, but it took all my strength not to laugh. By the time we interviewed everyone and graded all the tests, it was past 9:00pm. The bus ride back home was completely packed, but, strangely enough, there was a very clueless and very obviously American guy who spoke almost no Russian on the bus. I have no idea how he ended up in beautiful Dobroe, but he certainly was confusing all the Russians.

This will be a short post because all my mental capacity for the past few hours has gone into preparing a lesson for tomorrow. Each student will lead two full-length practice classes, and my first one is tomorrow. I'm running through the first day of ZII, which is the main class I'll be teaching. This involves plenty of getting-to-know-each-other activities, but I'll also be reviewing some very simple grammar concepts that were covered in the last level. Tomorrow, my audience will be the other teachers and my supervisors, but this is a dry run for the day (which isn't so far off) when my audience will be a group of 12 to 14 Russian teenagers and young adults who speak very rudimentary English.

Rain. Today it poured all day, and the temperature hovered around a chilly 15C. My host mom said this was a good preview of a typical autumn. The streets turned into rivers, and the sidewalks were covered in gigantic puddles. There are a few stretches of unpaved path on my way to the bus stop, and they turned into mud mires. Now I know why it is so important to have good boots here; my feet were soaking all day because I wore my normal shoes.

On a brighter note, I found out that I will be teaching primarily ZII, which is the second level and lowest level that we Americans teach (the Russian staff teaches the very first level, which is mainly an introduction to the alphabet and the most simple elements of English). I'll be covering some basic English verb tenses, such as the simple present ("I go to the store on Wednesdays"), simple past ("I went to Moscow last year"), future with going to ("I am going to call him tomorrow") and the present perfect ("I have been to Kazan"). I'm sure it will also involve a lot of vocabulary and a lot a practice with using articles. Russians often have a terrible time learning how to use articles because Russian doesn't have them. I'm looking forward to a lot of explaining why "Tomorrow I will go to the Moscow" is incorrect while "Tomorrow I will go to the American Home" is right.

Speaking of funny errors, we have been administering and grading placement tests, which involved the prospective students taking a written test and the sitting down for an interview with one of the teachers. Some of them really speak great English, and others have serious trouble with the most basic phrases. One girl told me, in Russian, that the knew no English, and another girl cried during her interview with another teacher. Of course, these tests are just so we know where to place new students, and there is no minimum requirement for English knowledge, but it's obvious that some of the students are very nervous.

After the they finish taking the written tests, we grade them, and here is where the really funny mistakes come out. I admire anyone who puts in the effort to learn another language, and I'm sure they could get a good laugh out of my mistakes in Russian, but some of their errors are just hilarious. My favorite so far? One kid wrote, "The more I eat, the more I fat."

One of the great pleasures--or pitfalls--of travel is the opportunity to try another culture's food. Russian food is often disparaged, but I love it when it's done well. Fortunately, my host family is great at cooking and has the right philosophy about food. Local foods and natural foods are a big trend right now in the US, but local food is and has long been a way of life in Russia. A lot of the food my host family prepares comes from their garden in my host dad's village where his parents still live. There they grow potatoes and other fruits and vegetables and raise chickens. The milk we drink comes straight and unpasteurized from this village. I helped them make pelmeni--a meat-filled dumpling that is a staple of Russian cuisine--from scratch, whereas even most Russians just buy them frozen from the store.

All these fresh ingredients and effort make a huge difference. Food just tastes better when it hasn't been doused with chemicals and trucked halfway across the world, and those were the best pelmeni I've ever had. Russians love to point out that their food is natural and without chemicals, and it shows: We get a new loaf of bread every day because the bread here grows mold almost overnight. That makes me nervous about what was in the loaves of bread that I've kept in my pantry in the US for two weeks without them growing anything.

So what do I typically eat in a day? For breakfast, I usually eat a bowl of some kind of oatmeal (kasha is the name for it here, and Russians are serious about it). Lately, my host mom has been making a basic, pretty American-style oatmeal, but tomorrow she said she'll make sago, which is a very starchy oatmeal that comes from potatoes and corn and is rarely eaten outside villages. With my oatmeal, I usually have a few buterbroads, which are one-bread sandwiches with sausage and cheese. We occasionally have eggs as well. After knocking back a cup of coffee, I'm out the door.

Lunch lately has consisted of going to the supermarket near the American Home and buying some sausage, cheese, milk, and a half loaf of black bread (the bread costs 12 rubles--37 cents) to make some more buterbroads, but once I get settled, I'm planning on going to the main market in town and getting ingredients to make more substantial lunches, which I will keep as leftovers in the fridge at the American Home. That's what the Russian staff does.

Dinner always starts with soup. My host mom makes a big pot of soup each week. So far I've had borshch (which is actually not a Russian soup--it's Ukrainian) and a good chicken and potato soup. Then we have some meat-and-potatoes dish and a salad. In Russia, salads aren't at all like what we have in America. They almost never have any lettuce in them and generally consist of tomatoes, cucumbers, or beets. After dinner, we have tea and some sort of cookies or other sweets.

One last note about food. My host family makes their own salo, which is something that I had only ever heard stories about. And let me tell you, the stories were not good. You see, salo is some kind of solidified, seasoned pure animal fat (I think it might be pork fat, but I'm not sure). Other Americans on past trips have had horror stories of slimy lard. I, however, have a strange fondness for the stuff. Maybe it's just the way my host dad makes it, but it is fatty deliciousness. How to eat it? Cut a piece off the block and pair it with a piece of black bread. You'll feel you inner peasant in no time. Here is a picture of the wonderful stuff:

It's laundry day for me, but here in Russia, things are a bit more complicated than in the US of A. You see, dryers are non-existent here, so doing laundry takes some advance planning. Fortunately, my host family has a very nice, modern washer. But I've asked my host family, and they and their friends have never even heard of dryer (they all agreed that it would make life quite a bit easier). Everything has to dry on a drying rack, so it can take a day or two for a pair of jeans to be wearable. A word for the wise: Don't wash all your underwear on Sunday night and expect to be comfortable on Monday morning.  I've heard that the lack of dryers is common in Europe in general, and it certainly is the more environmentally friendly option. Moreover, even if a Russian family wanted to buy one, apartment buildings aren't set up with vent piping anyway. The American Home has probably the only residential dryer in Vladimir, but, in order to use it, I would have to drag all my laundry half way across the city on the bus, which is even less convenient. So consider the how good we have it in the USA the next time you gripe about doing laundry.

A view of my neighborhood from my apartment balcony. I live in Dobroe, which is one of the main residential areas of Vladimir. It's not the prettiest area, but it's home to thousands and thousands of people. 

Past perfect continuous? Participles? Modal verbs? Oh the joys of English grammar. On Monday, we began preparing to teach our crazy language. We normally meet at the American Home in the morning, have a 90-minute Russian lesson, and then get instruction on how to teach. Of course, it is one thing to speak English, but it is quite another to explain to a foreigner why a sentence like "Putin does have as more hair than Medvedev" makes no sense. 

Fortunately, our instructors are excellent. I now feel like I can at least understand when to use all the 12-16 (or maybe more--English is insanely confusing in the regard) verb tenses and know how they are formed. English usually verbs give Russian students the most trouble because Russian is quite simple: It has only three basic tenses. Russian verbs--as the locals say--are strong, so helper verbs aren't needed, and Russians often have trouble choosing between several verb tenses in English when one single Russian verb tense carries all the same meanings. Even very advanced learners of English often have trouble choosing between "I saw the movie" and "I have seen the movie" (the difference in meaning is slight, but a native speaker always knows which one sounds right). 

We also met a select group of the Russian students this evening. These were some of the most involved and advanced students, and it was great to talk with some of the people we'll be teaching!

Today was the first "real" day of the program at the American Home. We stated off with some icebreaker activities (no program would be complete without them), had a 90-minute survival Russian lesson that covered useful phrases for, say, telling someone to get out of your way so you can get onto a packed bus, ate lunch, and then had a good introduction to the structure of classes at the AH. After tossing a football around in the very American backyard and having yet another cup of tea (I think I've had at least eight today), I went back to my apartment. When I arrived, two of my host mom's friends were there, and so I sat down for a good dinner and few glasses of wine. The questions started flowing, ranging for the standard (how much is a normal salary in America), to some unanticipated ones, such as how Americans feel about minority groups. It was a great evening!

I capped off the day with a run, which gave me a chance to start to explore my neighborhood and think about sport in Russia. Running on the street is definitely not normal in Russia, and when I went running over the weekend, I went with my host brother and sister to a weedy, 200-meter asphalt track at one of the nearby schools. While it was fun to race with my host brother, going around and around in circles and dodging potholes doesn't make for a good run. This time, I ran a big circle around my mikroraion (a Soviet planning term for a group of large apartment blocks). There were tons of people out: families pushing strollers, kids playing, teenagers doing whatever they do, lovers strolling, drunks staggering (it's Russia). I got quite a few weird looks, but it was great to get out and do something. Later this week I'll start going to the local sportzal--all this Olympic enthusiasm makes me want to hit the gym more than ever. Sport and sport culture in Russia is one of my favorite topics, so expect more posts about it. I'll just say for now that, as one of the other teachers noticed, Russians don't dabble; as far as sports and working out go, they're either insanely dedicated, or they're chain smoking alcoholics --there isn't much middle ground.

Here is a picture taken looking out my window. I live at the end of the city, and, thanks to Soviet urban planning, that actually means that the city abruptly ends. Across the street (which is actually the very busy Moscow-Nizhni Novgorod highway) is a big forest.

Lunch in Vladimir. This cafe serves blini, which are basically crepes. I'm told that it was the first "modern" cafe to open in Vladimir, and today it is a bit of a Soviet throwback, complete with gruff service and an unintelligible menu. The food, however, is excellent. 

I'm surprisingly unaffected by jet lag at the moment--it's 11:30pm, and I'm still awake, which is good news. I forced myself to stay awake last night, which is the only way to get used to the time change. Still, I'm taking it a little more conservative than at the start of last summer's trip, when I went out with my host sister and some of her friends until the wee hours of the night on my very first day in Russia. But this way might be a better idea.

Today, we met at the American Home at noon, toured around the home, got acquainted with the Russian staff, and had a small excursion around the center of Vladimir. We saw the historic churches and 12th-century Golden Gates, which once defended the entrance of the city from invading Mongols. I had actually seen these places when I was here two years ago. They are still impressive the second time around. After that, I went home and had a great dinner and got schooled in the Russian card game durak by my eight-year-old host brother. I did finally beat him once though! Here is a shot of Big Moscow Street, which is the main street here in Vladimir. I took this picture from an upstairs window of the Golden Gates. I caught the street at a quiet moment; it was jammed with cars and buses all day, and the street is quite busy with foot traffic from all the shops that line it.

Arrived! I'm completely exhausted from 36 hours of travelling and almost no sleep, so this will be short. I'm here; my host family is great; and I'm excited to get down to business!

It's hard to believe how fast this summer flew by. I know this is supposed to be a blog about Russia, but, because I'm not there yet, I'll reflect a little on how the summer went. For anyone who doesn't know, I was part of the Cleveland Foundation summer internship program, which is was a truly awesome experience. The program consisted of 17 interns this year, and we were placed at non-profits and government agencies throughout Greater Cleveland.

Keeping with my urban planning passion, I interned with the planning department of Shaker Heights, Cleveland's most historic and well-known suburb. Shaker (as the locals call it) was one of the country's first planned cities and has amazing architecture. My job there was to implement a on-street bike routes plan that was developed a few years ago, but the city didn't have the staff to make the plan a reality. Bike routes seem really simple--just put up some signs, maybe paint some sharrows--but there really are a lot of aspects and details involved. So over this summer, I made myself a bike-routes expert, learned that traffic signs cost way more than you would think, and conducted and attended focus groups for bike infrastructure. The routes plan proved to be a bigger undertaking than even my colleagues in the planning office figured, so unfortunately I didn't get to see it become a reality; we are applying for grant money, and that can take quite a while. It looks like Shaker will get its bike routes before I come back, though.

The internship program itself was amazing. First, you have to understand the kind of weight the Cleveland Foundation carries in this city. As the nation's oldest and second-largest community foundation, the Cleveland Foundation has its hands in pretty much anything innovative or community-focused in the region. So, as our coordinator told us a few times, just identifying ourselves as part of the Cleveland Foundation can open some pretty lofty doors. We had a 2-hour candid meeting Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, an off-the-cuff discussion with Foundation president Ronn Richard, and met many other highly placed individuals. Each week, we had a professional development seminar at one of the intern sites--an experience that further introduced us to the people who are working to better Cleveland.  

So, although I'm getting very excited for my next big adventure, my enthusiasm is tempered by the experience I had this summer. Part of me is sad to leave; I got to meet people who are working--with passion--to build a stronger, smarter, and healthier Cleveland, and their enthusiasm is contagious. In many ways, Cleveland is the underdog, battered by the economy, laughed at by the world, but that makes it all the more exciting to see a great movement for good happening right on the potholed streets of my hometown. This summer, I found countless reasons for optimism about Cleveland's future, and I know I'll find a better version of the city when I return.