May 12--Wednesday

Heat continues unabated. Today we were hosted by Shawn McKenna a member of the MBS Board of Advisors.

He hosted us at the Swiss Hotel in Moscow and arranged for a absolutely superb set of speakers representing different areas gender and age of international entrepreneurs--restaurant, real estate, pharmaceutical and real estate businesses--Shawn from our board on restaurants, Levan a close friend of Shawn's who is from Turkey and in international construction (literally everywhere), Mike, a great guy who came to Russia in 1993 on a one way ticket and has been here ever since then and has worked in pharmaceutical and real estate, and Zhensa, a young woman in the travel and tourism industry. We spend the morning together in conversation.

All the men noted that they did not speak fluent Russian at all (but they understood a great deal) and this was of interest because all of them are quite successful in their areas of business (the young woman was from Russia but had lived in England, Switzerland, France and the U. S.).

Then Shawn took the entire group to one of his restaurants for a terrific lunch after the presentations. My guess is that folks are going to go back to hotel and rest--and the younger folks will probably go out.

Tomorrow we visit a famous Moscow art museum (Tretyakov Gallery) and then to our afternoon train to Syktyvkar (26+ hours in an overnight sleeper berths). All are well, again, the heat is wearing and blisters form walking in dress shoes have taken their toll.

J