Privyet! (Hello!) My name is Nadezhda Braun and I am currently teaching English and studying Russian.
I haven’t always lived in Omsk, however. In fact, this is my first week in Omsk, and my first week in Siberia. I grew up in a very small town in southern Minnesota, surrounded by cornfields and farms. However, because my mom began her career as a Russian teacher, I always had an interest in other language and cultures. Even when I was little, I loved traveling to see my aunts and uncles around the United States with my family. This initial love for travel led to a greater interest in travel as I got older.
In high school, I applied for a scholarship called NSLI-Y to study Russian abroad. I was fortunate enough to receive the scholarship, and spent a summer studying in Nizhny Novgorod (pronounced: "neezhnee novgorod"), Russia. Nizhny is an exceptionally beautiful city, located east of Moscow at the intersection of the Volga and the Oka rivers. After that summer, I knew that Russian was a language that fascinated me, and that I needed to follow a path that would allow me to continue studying it. This path ultimately led me to the University of Notre Dame.
While at the University of Notre Dame, I got to go back to Russia, this time for four months! I lived in St.
