Back in the USSR
I'm here!! After a very long flight and some not so good airplane food, I have arrived. :) We've all checked into the hotel and are having a computer party in the lobby where there is a wireless signal. Anyway, I'm probably off to bed soon because I'm exhausted, but I just thought I'd update quickly to say that I have survived in Russia for about 8 or 9 hours now and plan on surviving for the rest of my time here... I miss everyone already!
A beginning, a middle, an end.
So, I’m not exactly in Russia yet. In fact, I couldn’t be more not in Russia. I’m sitting at my computer at home listening to the one and only Billy Joel. However, I feel as though my adventure is already beginning and my year away from home has started.
Today was my last day of language school. All summer I had been itching to get out of there. Although I had a lot of fun a lot of the time, and I certainly made larger improvements on my Russian than I ever could have imagined, I was also often bored or tired and wishing I had spent my summer in some other way. So just as the language pledge broke, I was in the car faster than you can say достопримечательность. My biggest surprise came, though, as I got into the car and began to drive. Suddenly, I was filled with one of the strongest feelings of loss I had ever experienced. At first I thought I had forgotten something in my room, or had forgotten to turn in my key. What I realized, however, was that that “I’m missing something” feeling actually came from missing Middlebury itself. Now, I realize this may sound a little corny, but at the time, tears came streaming down my face. I was leaving the place I had called home for the last two years. And although I’m leaving for “only” a year, I feel as though that year is going to be one of the longest of my life. By driving away from Midd, the meaning of that one year had suddenly come and smacked me in the back of my head, and along with that meaning came memories, feelings and friends that I knew would not occur again for a year.
The tears didn’t stop for a long time. I kept thinking about friends, about little adventures we had, about Proctor. I knew I was going to be missing these things more than anything else over the next year. But then, in almost an instant, the tears stopped. Somewhere between the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks, and somewhere in the middle of “Turnstiles”, it occurred to me what I would be getting instead. The truth is, I’ve been waiting for this next year ever since sixth grade when I fell in love with the French language and with languages in general and with traveling. Suddenly, I realized that in eleven days, I would be on a plane to Moscow. Moscow. I would be able to walk into a store and easily (well, maybe not easily, but at least successfully) converse with the people there. I would be able to walk the Red Square, scoff at GUM for the second time of my life, and stop and stare at St. Basil’s for as long as seems necessary. I was going to be traveling abroad. I was going to be learning and living a language. All of a sudden, I was no longer worried that I was leaving Middlebury, although the sadness was still there. I was no longer scared that eleven days wasn’t enough to get my bearings and gather myself before starting my adventure. I was ready, and I was excited.
I really have been waiting for this year for at least the past nine years of my life. I want to see the world, and that’s what I am ready to do. Leaving Midd, at last, was an end and a beginning, and right in the middle of the two, I realized that it was both, and that it was able to be both. After Moscow and after France, I’ll be back at Midd, but I believe that I will have changed incredibly. Well, I’m now ready for that change to begin.
