"Sleeping is for when you're dead!"

Awkward title for the first post on my blog while being back in Russia, I know.  But for multiple reasons, it's appropriate.  If you've ever traveled abroad or across several time zones, you have probably experienced an awkward sleep schedule.  I remember last year it took at least 4 days for me to get a good night's sleep.  I would be completely exhausted after stretching myself thin by trying not to fall asleep all day in an attempt to sleep through the night and I would go to bed only to wake up two hours later.  There's a 9 hour time difference between here and back home.  Last year one of the students was having such a tough time that she looked it up and found that for every hour after four hours of time difference, it takes a day to recover.  That sounded about right last year.

For whatever reason, I slept through the night last night (my first night here) and felt fine all morning.  I got up and Slava, a very good student and even better friend from my class last year, and I went for a walk through a couple of parks.  He met me at the airport yesterday, along with Katya, another friend here who is a Master's student and helps run the program.  In our ride to the hostel we discussed what was new with each other and I told them that I'm taking classes for beekeeping and that Russian bees are prized by beekeepers back home.  He found this interesting since his mother and grandfather keep bees at his home in south Russia (much warmer than Moscow).  He called his mother last night and talked about it with her.  We joked around about trading bees for iPhones.  Slava sent me money this year to purchase an iPhone for him because it is so much cheaper in the United States compared to Russia.  His unlocked phone was about $700 (iPhone 5) and here it would be about $1200-1300 in U.S. currency.  I brought it with me on this trip.  He said if I kept sending over iPhones, he would send over all the bees I wanted.  Ha.

Because of all of the discussion about bees, Slava thought that it would be interesting to take me to a shop that sold honey and wax.  It was a very simple room about the size of most small kitchens back home.  The store owner/worker had customers so we walked in and had a look around and left about a minute later.  There wasn't much to see inside.  However, outside of the shop were signs describing the different varieties of bees they have here in Russia, along with different types of hives/boxes they use here in Russia.  My phone died (it doesn't like the cold temperatures) and Slava took pictures of it on his new iPhone.  I'll post them as soon as I get them.

 The other reason for such an appropriate title to the first post is a sad one.  My baseball coach from childhood, who is much more to me than just a baseball coach, passed away this morning.  Other than "take a lap", "sleeping is for when you're dead" is one of the most memorable things I remember him saying.  It's nothing profound or original for that matter, but when I hear someone say that, I always think of him saying it when I was young.  It was probably said when we were competing for the state championships in Toccoa, GA and unlike all of the other teams in hotels, we were camping out in tents.  I'm sure he made some attempt to get us up and one of us mouthed off about being tired.  I'm almost equally sure that right after he said "sleeping is for when you're dead", he said "take a lap".

In regards to men in my life, he's right up there with all of the family members that I love and respect.  He's right there with my grandfathers, dad, uncles, etc...  He's an amazing man that taught me to dig deep for the best in myself and allowed me to see what could be accomplished when I did that.  He did wonders for my self confidence as a kid and he deserves as much credit as anyone I could name off in regards to where I am today and the man I have become.  Those that know me, know that I love baseball and I love coaching.  I love baseball because of him.  I love coaching because of him.

It pains me to think that I'm not going to be able to be there for his wife and children, whom I consider family.  I know as soon as I get back, I'll be taking a trip back home to pay my respects.  However, in this age of technology, I was able to call his son and another friend of mine.  We all played ball together.  Today for us, there is crying in baseball.  Love ya David!