Okay, so it starts even before we get to Russia. Less than a month to go before we need to be in St. Petersburg and the owner of the apartment we were supposed to rent has informed Mr. Soukharev, our contact at the University, that she will not be leasing the place to us. Soukharev thinks she's decided to take a better offer, but Tony thinks she somehow discovered we're bringing two kids with us and she decided not to rent the place for fear we'd turn into a drunk rock group and smash up the place. Well, Soukharev says there's only one other good option (I'm not sure what that means), but it'll cost us an extra $400. On the bright side, we all got our invitations faxed today so we should be able to start the next hurdle: the Visa application! Hurray.

I filmed several student interviews today--they were all very patient and eager to help out with this pre-trip interview. There were some minor glitches, including no audio on Shelly's first interview (we reshot the whole thing), batteries failing and lots of background noises during Micha's interview, and the damn lawnmowers everywhere. But we did manage, and so far I finished 7 interviews today alone. Everyone is excited and eager, but I'm really interested to talk to the parents at some point before the trip to find out what they think.

Here's my first posting to the St. Petersburg Blog. We just had our first meeting with the students who will be on the program this year. It seems like a great group, and I hope everyone is starting to feel a little bit more comfortable about the trip after our meeting.