HALF-WAY THROUGH THE HUMPHREY YEAR - Maia Rusakova (Russia)

Business first!

We are lucky to report that our group is very talented, smart and successful. Everybody who had exams had the best marks – A's. Congratulations folks!

Rogério took an AMA (American Medical Association) seminar “7 habits of Highly Effective People” in New York – now he knows how to manage himself J

Christmas time in Richmond was very interesting. First of all, most of our Fellows never had this experience before. It looks that only Rogério, Mario and Moses celebrate it in there countries. So, all of us were exited to find how it looks in the US. Some findings:

Grand Illumination

There was a very beautiful illumination of the city's skyline in Richmond. Some houses were decorated very elegantly, others were really crazy. We still wonder – "what was the price in the electricity bill?"

Corporative parties

We participated in many corporative holiday parties. Some of them started in the beginning of December. The most interesting took place in the Henrico County Drug Court. Cool experience, but unfortunately we were not aloud to make a photo insideL.

Christmas Carols
I don’t know how about other Fellows, but I couldn’t listen to Christmas carols any more! It was very interesting cultural experience; for 1 whole month they are everywhere and after that you have 1 year of rehabilitation.

Snow panic in Richmond

Winter means…. that sometimes you have snow. If anybody told me that people would react in such a way to snow … I would never believe them. O.K. what is so special? SNOW!!! Wow!!! You think these 3 inches is snow? Yes, because everything closed – schools, courts, DMV. One of my colleagues even canceled a Skype conference call because of snow! 

Christmas tree in our office

Mario brought wonderful Christmas tree to our office. We all decorated it together and this wonderful magic Christmas atmosphere came to our working place. I brought cup cakes. Actually it was our first cup-cake cooking experience with Dora. I hope they were edible.    

 

International Christmas party

Mario and Suely invited everybody to there place for a Christmas party. It was great!!! We had a very international dinner because everybody cooked something. We had Brazilian music and now we know how to dance salsa. Everybody got a present.  We also entertained friends: Humphrey Fellows from other Universities including Olga Buchko (Ukraine) from Penn State University, Arumugham Raju (India) from Michigan State University,  Koku Kokoroko (Togo) from Washington College of Law.  It was fantastic night. Thank you Mario for your hospitality!

Winter break

Rogério and his wife Andrea traveled home to Brazil. Now we are big Brazilian fans. Look to the photo everybody is in the team. Thank you dear for wonderful presents. We were happy like children when you bring big bag full of t-shirts to the office. 

Omar and his girlfriend Freia were in India. Thank you for nice presents which you bring for all of us. It was so kind of you.

Dafina was in Florida and in New York. Here are her comments – “New York, New York spending a week in New York City was awesome. Impressed by everything, Brooklyn Bridge was amazing. Happy that I got to see my friend after many years and meet her wonderful family, whom they host me, a custom of Albanian family is a great hospitality… I felt like at home! Thank you to the Asana family!

I’m so happy I got to know many people and have very good American friends. My friend’s family invites me to spend a Christmas holidays with them in Jacksonville, Florida. I had a great time, a warm weather and warmth atmosphere. Thank you!”

Nut and her husband Mu are very brave people they were in Minnesota. The only comment which we had was – cold…VERY COLD

Mario and his family Suely, Amanda, Bruno and Bianca were in Florida. They really loved it. “Fantastic beaches in Miami, wonderful Universal Studios Park in Orlando impressed the whole family.”

I (Maia) and my family Sergey, Taisiia and Diana were in Washington DC where we had traditional Russian New Year. It was my first experience in celebrating New Year in another country. Probably I first time in my life realized how important are traditions and all this small details – food, movies, music, jokes and talking in your own language.

Dora and Moses stay in Richmond. They took care of our American hometown and enjoyed local events and parties.

Special thank you to Diane Wresinski – our special VCU Humphrey Fellows Angel. She takes care of us all this time with a long list of problems, questions and needs. Many of us also spent some time with our host families and it was great experience. For example I was attended very good Christmas concert at church. Dafina and Dora went to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens and enjoyed an incredible illumination.    

Back to study

It was so great to see everybody after winter break. A lot of events, experience, ideas!

We have a wonderful group and we enjoyed our winter experience. Looking forward to new adventures.