It is 5:28am and I mind is completely awake. Hello jetlag. The one phrase that I have memorized in Russian is on repeat in my head, “Hello. My name is Natasha. It is nice to meet you.” Over and over. Now that I think about it, there are probably hundreds of more useful things I could have been memorizing. Like, “I am lost”, “Where is the bathroom”, and “I am sorry”. But it is a start.

We are currently in Helsinki, Finland, waiting until Sunday when our Russian visas become active. It was a long journey and took 24 hours, 1 bus, 2 plains, and 3 trains. I am preoccupied thinking about how the exhibition will work out with the installation. I managed to compress the work for the show into my carry on luggage so that I wouldn’t need to worry about loosing it. It is hard to picture that tightly packed stack of drawings expanding into a gallery space, but I believe it will. And I am not quite done. One of my installations will contain 100 drawings… and I am still working on it. I have about 18 left to draw. I think that we will start the installation on Monday, so that gives me a couple days still.

It is nice to be in Helsinki to get over the worst of this jetlag before Russia. It is like going back in time, back into winter. Especially coming from Vancouver where it was 20° plus  full on leafy-green, early summer. It is windy here and cold and just the first signs of spring.

Well, I should really try to get back to sleep. “Hello. My name is Natasha. It is nice to meet you.”