Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is the primary city in the southern part of Sakhalin island which is north of Japan (I found it impressive to fly east for over 9 hours and remain in the same country). I spent most of the month of January working here thanks to America's favorite liquid - oil. The area once belonged to Japan but the Russians were able to take control of the full island after one of the major wars - Wikipedia can provide a bit more detail if you are truly interested. Sakhalin island now has two major oil projects: Sakhalin 1 whose majority ownership is Exxon and Sakhalin 2 in which Shell was once the majority owner - luckily the government of Russia decided that after Shell had done most of the capital investment that Russia would like the state-owned Gazprom to own 51% of the project.

Sakhalin island is quite a nice place and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is located almost in a valley between the mountains. It was very beautiful with snow everywhere on the mountains. There were also "suburbs" where the expats from the oil companies live which reminded me of America. It did not take long though to realize that it was not America - that's not such a big problem though as I do enjoy my time here in Russia.

I had the opportunity to go skiing some on the weekends with some of the team members because there was a good amount of snow and there were days where we got over 6 (about 15 centimeters for you metric buffs) inches of the white stuff. The first place we tried was not so difficult - a straight slope similar to the Wagner trail at Seven Springs. The problem is that there's a tow-rope (actually a "T-bar") which pulls you the whole way up the slope - it gets quite tiring near the top. There's a great view as well (see pictures below).

The second time we went skiing on the easy slope I decided I would snowboard since the hill was not that much of a challenge on skis. I had never snowboarded though and I definitely have an appreciation for how difficult it is now. Taking the tow-rope up the hill was a disaster - the first two times I tried I made it about 50 yards (45 meters) and fell over. I had a teammate on skis take one side of the bar as I held onto her the next two times to get all the way to the top - it was just so much pain pulling on my leg while going up. I would go a bit down the hill, try to turn into the mountain (facing it) and fall. After falling it would take a few tries to get back up and off down the hill to fall again. I made a vow to myself to never snowboard again.

We also went to a larger mountain one weekend with a gondola type lift which was very cool. The slope was really challenging though and I felt out of control often but never fell - thanks to the skis probably.

The company we were auditing had a nice employee cafeteria with decent food for lunch everyday. Dinner was often a different story. Out of town in Russia we receive a per diem - most team members prefer to buy food at the grocery store in order to pocket the extra money. I did this about half of the time since everyone else was and a few times had dinner at the hotel. (I'll post a separate blog on expense reports in Russia.)

The hotel (Strawberry Hills) also had a nice gym which was great since I did no exercise for the full three weeks I was back home in the States over Christmas. It was interesting though at the hotel gym since I always paid a different price. The first few times I went it was 200 roubles, and then one night I had to pay 350 roubles, and then 400 roubles, one time it was 437.50 roubles, sometimes 450 roubles - it was all dependent upon what time of the day I went, not so much on time as I always try to stick to about an hour. I figure these price variations must be due to my lack of understanding the Russian language.

(NO! - I did not see Sarah Palin.)