David-CP6

On Monday Alena my conversation partner asked me if I could come to her presentation Friday.  I told her that I would talk to my boss and see if I could get off for a couple hours to do so.  After getting permission to get a long lunch on Friday I headed over to CIES to see her presentation.  I am still not sure what she was doing the presentation for but I was really curious about what she did for a living.  She had told me during one of our meetings that she was a photographer and that this presentation would feature some of her work.

I arrived on time as she was greeting some of the students and faculty to the presentation and showing us all the snacks that she had provided for us.  When she began she told me that she might ask for my help if she came to a part she could not explain clearly.  I told her that I would do my best. 

During the presentation she talked about three different subjects: Amber, Long Livers, and Gymnastics.  I had no earthly idea about what she was talking about when she said Amber and to be honest I thought it a messed up translation and that she meant something else.  Apparently the Baltic Sea is directly over an area that contains a ton of different fossils and a huge quantity of amber, yes the same amber that is in Jurassic Park the movie.  Amber in Russia is very valuable and is used to make all sorts of things especially jewelry.  I also learned that the government basically monopolizes amber.  Unlike sand dollars in our waters the government basically considers amber, trees, and everything else located on Russia’s land the country’s resources and that taking them constitutes a crime.  There is only one company that is legally allowed to collect this precious resource and sell it.  To make things more interesting, Alena’s presentation followed a group of illegal divers that dive in waters below 0 degrees to harvest amber.  After this part of the presentation she showed her presentation on what she dubbed long livers.  In this part of the presentation she interviewed people all over 100 years old with the oldest being 116 to find out what their secrets to a long life was.  I was blown away at these people and to see that they seemed as though they were not more than 70.  The last installment of the presentation covered Russian Gymnastics.  Alena had followed a group of gymnasts more than a year to in get a detailed scoop on the lives of these young people.  The rigorous training and hardship of these kids was really eye opening and disturbing on what went into producing a world class gymnast. 

Overall the presentation was one of the most interesting that I had seen in a while and I was very impressed by the photography of Alena.  Afterwards I talked to her about her presentation and was able to get some more information on some of the topics.