Trip to Moscow: June 22 - July 1

This was my fourth trip to Russia. The trip to Moscow was successful and we were able to accomplish our work in one week. The trip's goal was to update documentation describing the performance of our experiments on-orbit. We met with our Russian counterparts and people from Johnson Space Center.

On the personal side, I was able to interact with the Russians and do some sightseeing. I walked through different neighborhoods and went to Red Square, which looked beautiful because the Moon was almost full. It was amazing that the sun would just be setting at 11:00 at night.

Our Russian counterpart, Vladimir Sytchev showed us churches with onion-shaped domes. Some of them were 500 years old. I also tried some Russian food. I had a Russian dish called shasleek, which is like shishkabob. The Russians are very proud of this dish.

I went to a flea market and purchased Matrushka dolls, which are several dolls nested inside of each other. The largest doll contains a smaller doll the smaller doll contains an even smaller doll, and so on. I also bought painted lacquer boxes with scenes from Russian fairy tales painted on them. They are very beautiful and I plan to give them to my family as Christmas presents.

On the plane to Russia, I met a man named Boris who was returning from Atlanta, Georgia. He was in Atlanta for the Russian Handball Association meeting. I also met a man from Moldavia, which was previously part of the Soviet Union. He was a gold medalist in weight lifting from the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

On the way back from Moscow, I tried using Melatonin to help me with jet lag. It helped me sleep better. I'm looking forward to my next trip in September.