первые записки

Hi,
In a couple days I head out to Crimea in Ukraine, where I'll be for at least ten months on a Fulbright grant. I'm going in order to do research on issues surrounding Crimea's autonomous status within Ukraine, which should get pretty interesting in the coming year following the Georgia conflict this summer. I'll write a lot more about the specifics of my research at a later date, but right now I just wanted to make a brief introductory post to get this blog started. For those of you who may have read my blogs from Russia and Kyrgyzstan (see links to the bottom right), you know I have a tendency to write really long-winded and detailed posts that I'm sure most people don't even make it all the way through. I'm hoping to make this blog a lot more accessible by keeping posts to a minimum, and by sprucing them up with more photos, links, etc. Since I have a laptop with one of those fancy built-in cameras now, I'm planning on making video posts from time to time as well. See, in Russia and Kyrgyzstan I didn't have regular internet access with my own laptop, so I would spend a lot of time writing big long posts in word at home and then uploading them with a thumb drive to the blog whenever I could get online at an internet club or wherever. I plan on getting internet set up in my apartment in Simferopol (that's the town I'll be in, by the way), so I'll be able to pop online and make quicker and more digestible posts that way. However, it may be a number of weeks before I'm finally set up with an apartment and an internet connection, so whatever posts I might make until then may resemble the old style. I'll eventually settle into a good system once I get connected. Anyways, I've just been running a few last minute errands around Corvallis this week, and getting everything together. I'm pretty excited by my flight itinerary: Portland - Frankfurt - Simferopol. Can you believe I can get all the way to my final destination in a fairly obscure city with just one connection? I was pretty blown away. I leave Friday afternoon and arrive around 24 hours later (including the time difference), and I'm still not entirely positive what exactly will happen when I get there, but it should be pretty exciting. So, the next time you hear from me here It'll be from Simferopol. Take good care of the country while I'm away (i.e., get Obama elected), and keep in touch!


-Austin