After living in Russia for one year and visiting again prior to my trip this summer, I thought that I would be very prepared for my experiences in St. Petersburg and Sochi. To my surprise, neither city was anything like Moscow or the lovely village of Beloomut, on the outskirts of Moscow.

After two six-hour layovers in Los Angeles and Istanbul, two trips through American security, three in-flight films, and four terrible hours of sleep, I was about to fulfill my life-long goal of traveling to Russia.

This article is part of the Ellison Center blog Series on Sochi. Click here to read more as we cover the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Russia!    By Sarah McPhee For weeks we have seen the viral image of the tandem toilets, incomplete construction and shoddy workmanship in Sochi. “There is no point hosting

This article is part of the Ellison Center blog Series on Sochi. Click here to read more as we cover the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Russia!    By Sarah McPhee “It’s like holding the Olympic Games in Kabul!” This description of Sochi by Russian policy analyst Arkady Ostrovsky only seems like irresponsible hyperbole. According

This article is part of the Ellison Center blog Series on Sochi. Click here to read more as we cover the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Russia!    By Sarah McPhee Russia has a historic preoccupation with national identity, and Sochi is a part of the plan to shape the modern global perception of the

This article is part of the Ellison Center blog Series on Sochi. Click here to read more as we cover the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Russia!    By William D. Frank Thirty-three medals awarded across 11 biathlon events are up for grabs in Sochi — Norway, Austria and the Czech Republic snagged the first

This article is part of the Ellison Center blog Series on Sochi. Click here to read more as we cover the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Russia!    By Andrew Yarbrough For several months, countries and groups across the world have condemned the Russian anti-gay “propaganda” laws, a set of ill-defined legal jargon with the ignoble goal

This article is part of the Ellison Center blog Series on Sochi. Click here to read more as we cover the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Russia!    By Sarah McPhee The shores of the Black Sea rise to meet the picturesque mountains of the Caucasus in Sochi, and it is universally agreed that this is a

The Ellison Center Blog will be following the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. Click on the Series on Sochi logo for special coverage of REECA Olympic history, analysis of the Games and medal updates!