Midnight boarding and the Boeing 777 takes us for a four hours flight through three-hour time zones east of Moscow. Landing November 6 at 7:00 am to the relaxed reception at the airport by the Chair of Hydrogeology and his assistant. Customs luggage control virtually non-existent. Short drive takes me temporarily to the university guest-hotel ($56/night) until I’ll find an apartment. It is dark outside. Sun rises here around 9:00am and sets 5:00pm. Yet, Siberia welcomes me with crisp, gorgeously sunny one full week with temperatures in mid-20’s Fahrenheit, followed so far by a light snow with temperatures in 30’s… a typical …Ohio winter. After barely unpacking my toiletries I crashed for a continuous 24-hours sleep. I woke hungry and totally confused. Tomsk is 12-hour time zones away from the US EST… I was almost 15-hours in flight plus almost 16-hours in layovers and on top of this I lost 12-hours flying east. The weekend 11/9-10 helped to regain my composure and… on Monday 11/11 I gave my first class (first, apologizing for my somewhat rusty Russia) to a crowd of about 30 fifth-year students… but, about that – next time…