Call It Education.

I originally intended to start this blog from the very beginning of my journey—starting with the guard at airport security in Minneapolis who threatened to steal my beloved raccoon scarf (“Dayymn girl, I might have to keep that. MMM I kinda like that”), and going into detail about the rather cantankerous Russian woman I spent more than 8 hours trying to sleep next to, who, I kid you not, gave a legitimate beating to the man in front of her for reclining his seat back. I was going to make some jokes about the fact that upon our plane’s landing all the Russians gave an enthusiastic standing ovation (and were quickly reminded by the flight attendants to remain seated because the seatbelt sign was in fact still on). Then, I was going to go into detail about the struggle I had finding my friend at the airport, all the taxi drivers I wanted to punch in the face, and my epic fail of a first conversation in Russian:

Woman: Excuse me, please, can you tell me how to get to the baggage claim?

Me: Erm yeah.. Left. On the right. No. On the left. Straight. Right. Yes. Baggage. Yes.

Woman: Oh.. Understood.

(Sadly, I’m pretty sure the only thing she actually understood was that I was just some confused foreigner who she should not have wasted her time questioning.)

And while I’m sure that these stories at full length would have been of GREAT interest to everyone, you’re going to have to be content with just those condensed versions, because as I sit here and try to type on my bed (a couch situated about 6 inches away from a bed shared by a 23 year old student and her boyfriend in a janky old-school Soviet style apartment), I’m trying to remember how exactly I got here. And I can’t. Because it’s literally already been by far the craziest, most confusing and absurd experience of my life. And I thought I knew what to expect when returning to the Motherland..

In this new world I’ve somehow been transported into, purses are sealed into plastic bags before entry into Walmart-like supercenters and then pulled around in carts, excuses like “This family can’t host anyone until Tuesday because the wife has to take her drivers test” are accepted without further questioning, and when your boss says he’ll call you at 11 he really means he’ll show up unannounced at the apartment at 4.

For now I’m going to leave the details at that. First of all, because trying give anything an adequate explanation is seemingly impossible right now, and secondly because my host is beckoning me to join him for a cold beer on the balcony. My first night with them I made the “mistake” of telling him my opinion that all Russian beer is terrible, so it has become his mission during my stay to ensure that I try every kind of Russian beer and can thus make what he calls “an educated statement” about it. And as an educator now (I've officially taught one "real" English lesson!), I can't argue with that. So, cheers to education! I'm definitely getting one.