Three years!

Three years have passed since I started this blog and so much has happened since then! Here's a brief overview to bring everyone up to date:
 2008: Juanita Helms, Don Lowell, Anastasia Bozhedonova, Bruce Shelt and I worked to set up the Alaskan Russian Center, a new non-profit organization to support exchanges.  I started work on my book about exchanges by conducting a series of interviews. 
2009: Summer: A trip planned to Yakutsk with Mayor Helms had to be postponed for issues of health and family.
October: I presented a paper about early exchanges, "Encounters across a Melting Ice Curtain" at the Alaska Historical Society in Dutch Harbor.
November: Juanita Helms, the Mayor of Fairbanks who started the Sister Cities project, passed away. Her celebration of life brought Anastasia Bozhedonova to Fairbanks with letters from Pavel Borodin an the Mayor of Yakutsk, Yuri Zabolev.  This coincided with the election of a new Fairbanks mayor, Luke Hopkins, who promised to continue to support the concept of sister cities.
2010. May The celebration of the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII was marked by honoring the Lend-Lease Project that joined Fairbanks and Yakutsk in common war efforts.  
June. Ed Clark visited Yakutsk and attended the first videoconference between Mayor Luke Hopkins and Yakutsk Mayor Yuri Zabolev.   
October. Historian and writer Ivan Negenblya visited Fairbanks with photos taken during the time of the Lend-Lease Program, attending the 2010 Aviation Experts' Conference.  He was accompanied by his wife Olga Siderova, interpreter Sergei Khatylykov, and Anastasia Bozhedonova of the Northern Forum.   The Fairbanks-Yakutsk Sister Cities Committee hosted visits and meetings, including a mayor's videoconference and a potluck dinner.   
November and December. Video conferences took place between university and elementary school students.
2011 October 22 The Alaskan Russian Center holds an event "Fairbanks-Yakutsk: Rekindling the Friendship" to educate about the Sister City Relationship and raise funds to support the concert presented by Bruce and Lena Shelt, Fairbanks' "Sister City couple" in Yakutsk in December.  An excellent article appears in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
November  Yakutsk begins preparations for the visit of Bruce and Lena Shelt and Terry and Mimi Chapin to Yakutsk in December. An article appears in the paper, Echo of Yakutia with an extensive interview with Claudia Fedorova, head of the North East Federal University's (formerly "YaGU") Office of International Relations, and one of our beloved interpreters and exchange coordinators.


So, this brings us up to this month, December 2011, when all sorts of things are happening!


Look for more posts soon!
Mimi