To Shun-Wei Yen from Yelena Anatolyevna Nikitina

Dear Shun-Wei Yen,

thank you very much for your letter, which I got in that wonderful envelope together with a lot of other great letters. I don't know your personal address, so, I hope, I can answer you there. I was REALLY happy to get your letter - it was a great surprise. When you work a lot as a teacher you can even forget sometimes that you are also just a human being and letters are not only a useful pleasure for your students - one of them absolutely unexpectedly is for you! It was a very touching moment for me to get it. It is an honor for me that you decided to write me a letter.

Thanks for telling about you. My son is 23 years old and daughters are 21 and 15. They all are not only my children but my students. Here is my youngest one with Bear.

I think that tennis is something special. My hobbies are theatre and reading - and teaching!

Now, when I know more and more about your country I like Taiwan a lot. It seems to me that it's amazing to live in the ever-spring place! Here is my photo in our spring forest - I like this season, the time of snowdrops (these are the flowers around me) very much.

I do enjoy our Teddy Bear Project very much. It is fun and now there are some more deeper things - the ones I didn't guess about when we were just thinking to start. We exchange our cultures and funny that little teddy bears help us. It seems to me that Miss Wu is a very good teacher because she wants to do more then she has to. My warmest hello to her and all your classmates!

Welcome to Russia!

All the best,

your Russian pen pal Yelena Anatolyevna Nikitina