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Welcome to our website about our 2001 Great Adventure to Pskov, Russia! Our group went to Pskov in late February, 2001 and returned in early March, 2001. In Russia that’s the coldest part of winter. Imagine being used to the North Carolina winters and then going to where it’s 20 degrees below zero Celsius and snowing every day. We loved it! We packed our long underwear, boots, scarves, gloves, wool hats and heavy coats so we were able to get out and about in the frigid temperatures.
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Our traveling party included the authors of this site, four North Carolina State University students who are going to be middle school teachers, their professor and a former teacher. Others who came along included a nurse, a school principal, a high school teacher and a staff person from Project Harmony. Project Harmony is an organization in Vermont which helps people make educational trips to other countries. They believe that it’s important for people all over the world to get to know one another and face to face.
The Internet allows you to travel virtually anywhere in the world, but it doesn’t allow you the personal connection that helps you really understand what someone in another culture believes. There’s a danger in thinking your country is always right and always knows best. We need to know how others do things and find out what they are thinking. We believe that we can all learn from one another.
This site reflects our impressions of Pskov, Russia. It’s how we saw the country and people, filtered through our American eyes. We tried very hard to be objective so that we could grow and learn from our experience. We all wanted to broaden our global perspective. In other words, we wanted to get new ideas about how other people lived and worked so we could appreciate the differences that made another culture unique.
What follows is what we brought back from Pskov, Russia. We lived with Russian families, visited and taught in Russian schools, attended arts presentations, saw dachas, shopped in market places and flea markets, and rode on Russian buses and trains. Because we went to Russia to learn about another culture, we were open to all of the new things we saw and experienced. We had a wonderful time. Were we homesick? Yes. Did we want to pack up and move to Russia? Probably not, but then that’s what changing your global perspective is all about. You can visit, appreciate, and better understand another if you travel and are open to new ideas. It doesn’t mean that you judge one place to be better than the other. Instead, you learn to appreciate how friends in Russia feel and think. They love their country and wouldn’t want to live here any more than we would want to move to Russia. That’s what makes the experience a good one for everyone.
We hope you enjoy sharing our trip with us. For all of us it was a Great Adventure.
- Dr. Candy Beal, North Carolina State University
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