Island Post # 1

I haven't been out here for years. Finally, this year, my mother and I semi-spontaneously left for Massachusetts to visit this very wonderful retreat in the Atlantic Ocean. And Ben and Darien (my good friends from West Virginia) These photos were all taken by my mother. I have pretty much stopped using my digital camera, so you will have to wait until I painstakingly scan my photos into the computer at school.



This is the flagpole outside the cottage. My extended American family has owned this cottage since 1912, when everyone's great grandfather built it by hand. I havn't been back because it was being remodeled. So now it is open again for use.

These photos are just from the house. The view is amazing, and the stove is actually almost 100 years old... And works.







I don't know if you can read this. Its the general store.

There are more rocks there than anything else. Around the perimeter. So a lot of time is spent out on the rocks. Darien climbed a lot.







Darien coming down off an old tree fort that had a spiral staircase!

Then these guys took us lobstering, and we got to pull up traps and check to see if the lobsters were big enough to catch. There are pretty strict laws with the lobster fishing, so they threw a lot back. Only 3 keepers, but we didn't get to take them. We were just watching.



The rest of the photos will be up this weekend. I might make a big post of all the photos I took for the rest of the summer. Lots of pictures with Nora and hopefully lots from this place. In 2 days I will be back in Ann Arbor for school.

I hope I get to see you guys who read this sometime soon.



Love, kostya.

America I Am Now Here With You

This post is sort of allows the two sides of my history to dance together. A few weeks ago, the "relatives" came to cincinnati. My parents and I just kept refering to them as "the relatives" so that way I didn't really understand who exactly was coming to stay with us. All I knew was that half of them live in America and the other 2 are from Moscow. So it turns out, that they are really awesome. Yes. The young guy with the beard is Kiril, a physics assistant professor at Cleveland State University and when he was a student at the Russian equivalent of MIT, he got a scholarship to study here in the US, and now he works here in the same field. HIs girlfriend, Natasha, also lives in Cleveland and is Russian as well. His father Andrei is also a physics professor at said Russian equivalent of MIT and he with his wife Galia came to visit his son. So since they were in Cleveland, they decided to come down here to Cincinnati. And they enjoyed it very much. I think it was eventually worked out that Andrei is my father's 2nd Cousin or Uncle or something. So Kiril is a 3rd cousin to me. Well, meeting them and meeting such educated and respectful and interesting Russians really encouraged me in my science studies. It also makes me very proud of my ancestry and heritage. My mom and I realized that almost all of our family is educated past High School and over half of them became either doctors or scientists. Very nice.











AlsomymotherandIgotourAmericancitizenshipyesterday.