Ну, пора турист!

This translates to, roughly, “well, it’s time to go traveller!” And indeed, that time has come. My bags have been painstakingly packed, my language skills have been rigorously revisited, and my anxiety has been carefully contained.

But despite the fact that I have been mentally preparing for this trip since my freshman year of college, I am absolutely and completely terrified. Terrified not of being thrown in a Russian prison or being kidnapped and sold into human trafficking, or anything typical like that. I’m more terrified that I’m going to have the worst language skills of the group; terrified that I’ll be delayed en route to St. Petersburg, which will screw up the whole arrangement through the program; terrified that I’m going to somehow totally offend my host family without even knowing it. Basically, totally terrified about everything that I’ve actually studied in preparation for this trip. But, I suppose that’s part of the adventure: swallowing the fear and pressing on in spite of it. So, I’ll swallow my fear and move on tomorrow.

The past few days have been a whirlwind of random errands, laundry, dogsitting, and trying to see people before I leave. I’ve been…somewhat successful, and I apologize to anyone I missed in all that chaos.



Me and my shiny new passport/visa! Taking a picture of the actual visa would be kind of a bad idea...so I've heard...




Halfway through packing, I took over the living room without asking


All the worldly possessions I'm taking, packed into these three little bags...

My first flight leaves at 1:50 p.m., and I’ll arrive ten hours later at around 9 a.m. in Paris, France. Then I have just a one hour layover before my five hour flight to St. Petersburg. When I arrive at 3 p.m., I’ll be greeted by program officials and shuttled to a hotel just outside of the city for a two-day orientation.

I'm ready to disembark! Well...I think I'm ready. I hope I'm ready. God I hope I'm ready...but I guess it doesn't matter either way. I have no idea what awaits me halfway across the world. All I know is I can't wait to discover it.