Я не говорю на русском языке

Alright, I have promised you that I would explain to you all soon why I was talking about Russia before.

Some time ago I wrote here about a project my thesis supervisor assigned me to in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Unfortunately we are still waiting for the funding approval of this project to come through. Since I have a thesis deadline in September that is non-negotiable, we can't sit around and wait for that. Instead, he has now offered me a different project for which everything is already arranged. This project, as you will have guessed by now, will take place in Russia.

The focus of the project is slightly different but it still involves analysis of the healthcare offered to tuberculosis patients. The Red Cross is running a TB programme in several Russian regions and my project centres on the evaluation of the effectiveness of this programme in one of these. I am being thrown in at the deep end a bit by my supervisor because the information I just gave you is pretty much about all I know myself. I only know that I am expected to be travelling to Russia and spent about two weeks doing interviews with people there. That is of course, if I can sort out my visa application on time.

The Central Asia project is not necessarily out the window either. If the funding approval comes through soon, I just might get to work on that after my thesis project. It is all very exciting what is happening now but to be honest, I am somewhat worried I may be getting in over my head. For somebody who only last year was still trying to purify proteins from E.coli my career is making a very drastic sudden move. It is what I really want to do and why I came to London in the first place. It's just scary when dreams start becoming reality.