It's finally time to sit down and start catching up on the 'ol blog, I had the last five weeks off and have been too busy relaxing and travelling around to be bothered with keeping this up to date.  I'll start at the beginning of my break and work my way to the present.  Hopefully I'll be able to get four or so blogs out in the next week.


Crazy looking little snowmobile in Keperveyem, Russia

When I left camp it was the 15th of May and after ten weeks in Russia I was more than ready to get home.  We ended up leaving one day later than we were supposed to but no big deal.  First we flew to Keperveyem where I took that picture of the crazy looking little snowmobile.

Then we flew in to Magadan where we stayed for three nights.  We were only supposed to stay for two but there was some bad weather so it got extended a little.  Once again no big deal.  One of the days we were there we got together with one of the Security Guards who works in our camp and he drove us around the city and showed us some of the sights.  The most impressive part of the tour was going up to see the big stone monument up on the hill overlooking the city.  It is called "The Mask of Sorrow" and was built as a memorial for all the millions of people that died in the Gulags, the Russian labour camps in this region of the country.  It is a mean looking mask that is shedding some tears, the tears all have faces on them that represent the people who died, and there is a staircase that goes up one side of the face and a door that goes into a prison cell inside the face, then one eye is a barred window from the cell.
Then on the backside of the mask there is a woman on her knees crying or praying or something and above her is a headless man on a cross.  Below the mask on the hill are the names of many of the labour camps.

It was quite an intimidating looking monument, but also a very interesting experience standing on the hill looking at it. 
So anyways that was the highlight of the stay in Magadan.  Then we drank lots of vodka and then went back to Canada.  Tomorrow I'll try to post the next part of my vacation.