Return to Vladimir

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, mostly because I’ve been sick the whole month of May 😦 Allergies in Elabuga hit me hard, and what started out at seasonal sneezing and itchy eyes turned into a full-blown bronchitis-y sickness that drove me to antibiotics and laying in bed for four days straight. Thanks to Hanna’s z-pack and the help of a doctor back home, I was able to avoid going to the hospital here and recreating my experience with Konstantine the dentist.

Now that I’m feeling better, the end of my time in Tatarstan seems closer than ever. Today marks the first day of June, which means I can say that I will be going home this month. This is both exciting and bittersweet. Although I am ready to go home, this semester has been a time of deepening the relationships that I made when I first got here, and I know there are so many people that I am going to miss. I want to continue this train of thought, but first, I can’t forget to recount Hanna’s and my adventures in Vladimir at the beginning of May right before I got sick.

Vladimir has held a very special place in my heart since I studied there through the Critical Language Scholarship in 2012. Through some “coincidental” acquaintances (nothing is ever coincidental in His kingdom), I was able to get involved in a local church, and some really special friendships developed. I remember my summer there as a time of hope and adventure and growth, and I will take every opportunity I can to go back and visit the special people that made my summer so meaningful.

As most things happen in Russia, our plans to Vladimir were made fairly last minute. With some hastily bought e-tickets and backpacks stuffed with clothes and chak-chak, Hanna and I flew to Moscow from Tatarstan at 6:00 am, where we would meet our крутая program officer Marina and catch a train to Vladimir. We ate Georgian cheese bread and гуляли without a care and thought we had plenty of time to make our train at Kurskiy Voksal.

Marina, me, and Hanna outside of Kievskiy Vokzal in Moscow.

Hanna and I made it to Kurskiy Vokzal (the train station) with at least 30 minutes to find our train. Moscow train stations are usually easy to navigate, but Kurskiy was a different story. We walked into the buzzing atrium of chaos to find no information about our train’s platform on any of the many screens. What began as leisurely scanning the screens quickly grew into a panicked search as the minutes ticked by. With less than fifteen minutes to find our train, we were running up and down platforms, frantically begging passersby for this seemingly nonexistent information. The first man we asked looked at me and said “Eto tupik!” Assuming that this word shared the same root as the word “tupoy,” which means dullwitted, I thought he was calling me stupid for not being able to find the train, which didn’t help my mood. More running. Allergies and humidity and a heavy backpack made me feel like I was running through marshmallow fluff. Ten minutes was now all we had. We ran up to the main platform and addressed a policeman with a bull-dog face, who addressed Colonel Sanders’ younger brother (Hanna’s observation 🙂 ). Colonel Sanders’ younger brother was surprisingly smiley for a Russian man, and joyfully pointed toward a distant platform. “This is tupik, girls. You still have five minutes!” With a heavily breathed bolshoye spasiba, we were off, sprinting through that marshmallow fluff toward a distant yellow train. We made it to a turnstile where the women on duty kindly let us through without a problem when they saw our red-faced distress. “Just say your last name, girls, and go!” With a “Miller!” and a “Johnson!” we were sprinting toward wagon number 6. We made it. We actually made it. At 3:15, 3 minutes before the train was to leave, we stepped onto a peaceful, almost domestic scene of children eating ice cream and mothers chatting and a guy playing his guitar. The train began to move, and we were headed toward Vladimir. Victory. Adrenaline. We both agreed we hadn’t had that much fun in a long, long time. Thus began our adventures.

On the train writing about our just-making the train with a feather pen that lasted for about 5 lines.

When we got to Vladimir, we took a bus to the hostel I had booked. The only problem was that the hostel didn’t actually exist. Although the website had looked a little fishy, (the last review had been written in 2012, and there was a notice about not ordering online because they were moving locations), I received e-mail confirmation of our reservation. The address of the hostel turned out to be a very regular apartment, and every other hostel I called was booked due to the busy holiday weekend. This is where my friend Masha came to the rescue. Masha is one of the wonderful people I met through the church in 2012, and I was already planning on visiting with her the next day. She works at a hostel that is located inside the church building, and although the hostel was already full, she spoke to the director for us and they let us spend two nights in the church library!

The next day, Masha and her brother Daniel came with us on a picnic to my favorite place in all of Russia, the Church Pokrova Na Nerli. This church was built in the 12th century and stands on a small hill in the middle of a field that has a small path that leads to it. Some have described the walk as a pilgrimage, and I would agree 🙂

 

In the early spring, the field is flooded and you have to take a boat to get to the church. It is at once simple and picturesque, earthy and magical. Here is a picture that Hanna took that will do much more justice that my words could:

I was also able to buy my mom a beautiful shawl for Mother’s Day at the beginning of the field:

The next day, Hanna, Amanda (another Fulbrighter) and I met up with Bethany, the girl who had originally connected me with the church. She and her fiance, Oleg, who I had gotten to know during CLS, invited us to a shashlik in the countryside in honor of their friend Zhenya’s birthday. On the way to Mordysh, which sounds so much like Mordor, Bethany and Oleg stopped the car to show us a very out-of-place sign:

“Welcome of Detroit.”  I would have thought we were in America if it weren’t for the grammatical mistake.

While the guys prepared shashlik, the girls chopped cheese, kielbasa, and veggies:

After eating enough to last us for a week, we were invited to use the banya, which is a true Russian experience.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Russian banya, it is basically like a sauna, except much more humid and almost hot enough to make a Maine girl faint. You go in with your comrades, where you chat, beat each other with aromatic branches, and sweat. If you stay hydrated and take frequent breaks, it is a very refreshing experience.

After the girls got done in the banya, the guys wanted to make more shashkik, so we roasted meat and laughed while the sun set.

Vladimir, I will return. I love you too much not to.

 

 

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No, You Can’t Kiss Me!

“Never talk with strangers.” Никогда не разговаривайте с неизвестными.* This simple advice would have saved me a lot of trouble if I had been conscious enough to heed it.

When I stepped on the train to visit my friends in Vladimir, I had no idea that I would soon be unwillingly locked in a Russian soldier’s embrace, his determined gaze meeting my horror-filled eyes as he got ready to plant an unwanted kiss on bewildered lips. Этого не может быть. Но это было. Here I was, stuck in an agonizingly long second, his homely face with pathetic brown eyes looking at me like I was a piece of grade A American beef…

THE STUPID GIRL WHO JUST WOKE UP

Now I won’t lie, the Russian platzkart has always exuded a bit of romance to me, the possibility for late night conversations with a handsome and charming traveler while speeding through the taiga has always seemed more epic than than a stale stroll on the beach. But just to get things straight, “Lieutenant B.”, as we’ll call him, was neither handsome nor charming. It all happened when I woke up on my platzkart bed to see a soldier in full uniform sitting on the bed across from me. He was homely and a bit stocky, with greasy brown hair and brown eyes. I must have looked startled at his presence, because he quickly said, “don’t worry, I’m just here to charge my phone, the only outlet is at the front of the train.”

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The layout of a Russian platzkart. Photo Credit: Glucke, Wikimedia Commons

“Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s fine,” I yawned, shooting him that reflexive, wide smile that my sleepiness had prevented me from censoring. That was my first mistake. In America, when a girl smiles, it’s polite. In Russia, when a girl smiles, it’s an invitation. Whether he heard my accent or not, I don’t know, but while my guard was still down, he asked me, “where are you from?”

Without thinking, I shot back “from America. I’m a teacher here.” Second mistake. Stupid, stupid, stupid girl. At the word “America,” something changed in this nonchalant Russian soldier, and before I knew it, he was sitting at the table across from me, ready to talk. Again, I stupidly took him at face value, thinking, “what’s the harm in some small talk? I only have an hour left on the train.” I asked him if he had a family, and his calculated response warned me of his real intentions.

“No.” he said. “I wouldn’t have gotten acquainted with you if I were.” With eager, puppy dog eyes, he told me “you’re very beautiful. It’s me who’s the ugly one.” Although I tended to agree, in reflexive “politeness,” I said “nyet,” and smiled.

When he offered tea, my first reaction was to hesitate; after all, the age old trick is the drug in the drink, but he seemed to read my mind, and said “relax,” and showed me a sealed tea bag to prove that his intentions were less than criminal.  He excitedly got two mugs from the conductor and poured us tea. Not wanting to be rude (stupid, stupid, stupid girl!), I sipped the tea very, very slowly, convincing myself that if the drink was drugged, then I wouldn’t get enough of it in my system to do any damage.

I joke about my “stupidity,” but in reality, by the time he had brought the tea out, I had realized that letting my guard down in those first few moments of consciousness had invited me to play this game of cross-gender interaction by his rules, rules that were very different from American girl-guy flirtation. There is a much more pronounced power differential between the sexes in Russia, and it became clear that this soldier felt a certain power over me. At this point, I did not want to make him angry. I had no idea how reactive his temper was, nor did I think anyone on the train would help me if something did happen, so I resorted to trying to play his game as best as I could, hoping that I could bide my time with fawning pleasantries until I could escape into the fresh Vladimir air. As the conversation went on, my nervousness took center stage, and the very words I didn’t want to say kept coming out of my mouth. Long story short, he found out I was single, and then he really turned on what he thought was the charm that might get him a green card.

RUSSIAN PICK-UP LINES

I don’t remember the sequence of Lieutenant B.’s wooing session, but the cheesiness and systematicity of his whole routine was hard to forget. In less than twenty minutes, this Russian soldier played me terrible Russian pop music to set a romantic mood, then sang me his own song, after which he said confidently. “You love it when I surprise you, don’t you?” (Ты любишь, когда я тебя удивляю.) He showed me pictures of himself as a child, and he asked me if it was hard for me to be without a man in my life. He could be my boyfriend just for the train ride. He could come to America with me.  He even bluntly asked, “so, do you like me?” But it was his Martin Luther King Jr. style speech that made me want to flee the train more than ever.

“What are your dreams?”he asked. After I answered, he began.

“I had a dream, to buy a car. I bought a car. I had a dream, to become a soldier. And I have a dream,” he looked at me suggestively, “to kiss a foreign girl.”

Oh no he didn’t.

“My friend dated an American, and he says they are so much more interesting to go out with. He says they’re different. And Russian girls have no soul. If you have money, they’ll be by your side, but if you lose it, they’ll leave you without a second thought.”

EATING PIG FAT

Yes, it got even weirder.

“Have you ever tried sala?” he asked. Now sala is a Russian food I had done a good job at avoiding on previous trips, but I had actually put it on my Fulbright Bucket list as something I wanted to try. From what I had heard, sala was gelled meat fat that you put on bread. Apparently, also the food of love. Lieutenant B. ran to his seat and brought me back a slice of brown bread with two chunks of congealed fat. I took a bite into the chewy, bacony fat and breathed a sigh of relief when it didn’t make me throw up. “So, do you like it?” he said.

“It’s not bad,” I said honestly, at which he decided to gift me with an entire bag of cut up fat and brown bread!

PHOTOSESSION

About this time, his soldier friend appeared in my section of the train, and Lieutenant B. asked him to take a picture of us. He wrapped his arms around me hard while his friend snapped a picture, and then, this was that fatal moment when he looked at me as if he was about to go for that foreign-girl kiss.

“Nyet,” I said firmly.

“On the cheek?” I made a face, and before I knew it, his mouth was planted on my cheek while another picture was snapped. Oy. His friend left, then he came over to me, combing his hair, (which apparently was supposed to be attractive?) and asked me, “Can I please just kiss you before you get off the train? I just want to feel the difference.”

What!?

Well, he would feel a difference for sure if he actually dared, my lips were so chapped they were cracked, and***ahem***, never having kissed anyone before, he’d probably leave with the impression that American girls were the worst kissers on earth. But more importantly, never having kissed anyone before, there was no way that I was going to let my first kiss be with some random soldier who saw me as nothing more than a check off a bucket list.

He was persistent though, and before I got off, he asked again, and in frustrated Russian, I said “I can’t!”

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I don’t kiss people that I’ve just met,” I told him. He deflated, finally accepting my “no,” and I breathed a sigh of relief as I exited the train. But I walked along the platform to the train station, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and I turned around to see Lieutenant B behind me, shooting me a creepy grin. I quickened my pace, thankful that he didn’t decide to follow me. Soon, I was safe with my friends in Vladimir, memories of the soldier taking a more humorous than scary tone, but I will say that this experience opened my eyes to the need to be on my guard at all times while traveling alone, especially in a culture where what I consider to be simple politeness can be taken as an invitation to kiss me, then marry me and then finally, get that visa to America…

*The title of a chapter from one of my favorite pieces of Russian lit, The Master and Margarita. 

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A Few Things Off My Bucket List

Before I left for Russia in September, I created a short Fulbright Bucket List, in which I brainstormed things I wanted to do before I left Russia. These past two weeks, I have been able to check quite a few items off my list. Here’s a short chronicle of items on my bucket list I’ve conquered so far:

Item #4: Ice-skating without landing myself in a hospital, or worse, finding myself at the hands of a dramatic Russian dentist named Konstantine. Those of you who have followed my blog for more than a year know that last summer while studying in Vladimir, Russia, I was introduced to the Russian medical system after splitting my chin while ice skating. Ever since my fall, I have been nervous about skating again, so I determined to face my fear and make it through at least one round of skating unharmed.  When my friend Elmira and I first set foot on the ice, I was wobbly and stiff, memories of my chin slamming into the ice closer than they had been in over a year. But after about 10 minutes of holding onto the bar, I gingerly started to make my way around the circle, and after about 10 minutes of this, I felt confident enough to have a conversation while skating. Unfortunately, the site won’t let me upload the video Elmira took of me skating, but here is a picture of us after the fact:

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Item #10: Write a poem in Russian

I love poetry, and I have found it fun to play around with it in Russian, even though I probably don’t have a strong enough grasp on word nuances and connotations to be confident that I am saying what I want to say. The first time I attempted poetry in Russian was at the age of 14 in my beginner’s Russian class, where I wrote a sad poem about not getting noticed by the boy I liked (Увидеть меня ещё нельзя). Since then, I haven’t really worked at anything serious, and the last one I wrote was a parody of an Anna Akhmatova poem for one of my friends, which chronicles our memories in Vladimir. Right now, I am teaching a creative writing course at the university, and I had my students write a poem in English. Since writing poetry is especially intimidating in another language, I promised them that if they did the assignment, then I would write a poem in Russian. I decided to write a few lighthearted verses on the torture that is Russian pronunciation, since I needed some catharsis for the frustration that comes with each Russian lesson. As the Russians would say, the poem is “ещё сырое,” or still a draft, but if you read Russian, feel free to read my work in progress:

Русское Произношение

Вы знаете, мои друзья

Какой у вас язык богат

Но знайте, также, ваш язык

Причиняет мне страдать

Русское произношение-

Жестокое мучение

Мягкий ль язык не любит,

Мягкий ть он ненавидеть.

Особенно по магазинам

Когда продавцам я обращаюсь

Язык тормозит, чувствую страх

И, вот, опять, я заикаюсь.

Поэтому, я каждый день,

Когда по улице хожу

Скороговорки глупые

Я повторяю, повторяю.

Однажды я надеюсь говорить без трудностей

без проблем произносить и ни, и ти, и ли,

Но сегодня надо ждать вопрос:

“Девушка, откуда вы!?”

Item #13: Travel to a city I’ve never been to before.

This past weekend, I was so excited to be able to visit my fellow Fulbrighter Hanna, who lives in the neighboring city of Naberezhniye Chelny (try to say that five times fast). Although geographically Elabuga and N. Chelny are close (45 minutes on the bus 🙂 ), each city has a very different culture, due to the fact that whereas Elabuga is pretty much ancient, N. Chelny was built around 60 years ago when the Kamaz car plant was built. N. Chelny has less aesthetic charm than Elabuga due to both its short history and the reasons for which it was built, but despite the lack of apparent beauty, it felt great to be in a larger city again.

The best part about the weekend though, of course had nothing to do with the city, and everything to do with who I spent it with. Can I just say that it was a breath of fresh air to be able to interact with another American, to have deep conversations about anything and everything without having to modify our speech, to share stories and find commonalities in our experiences, and perhaps most importantly of all, to be able to share the moment when we saw this Halloween costume of one of Hanna’s students:

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I definitely decided to come on a good weekend, since Hanna was hosting a Halloween party for her students. They spoke excellent English, and we had a wonderful evening eating, toasting each other, playing mafia, and watching a “horror” movie that was hard not to laugh through.

Hanna created an elaborate slug costume, which we learned (and will never forget) is called слизняк in Russian. I didn't have a costume so a student lent me a spare pair of devil's horns.
Hanna created an elaborate slug costume, which we learned (and will never forget) is called слизняк in Russian. I didn’t have a costume so a student lent me a spare pair of devil’s horns.

Here is a picture of the spread of cakes, pies, and salads that the students treated us to:

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…which brings me to the next thing on my list.

Item# 6: try one of the foods I have avoided thus far while in Russia

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This, my friends, is known as “Herring Under Fur Coat.” This dish is a mouth-boggling layered salad of herring and onion, potatoes, eggs, mayonnaise and beets. I have nothing against beets, or eggs, or potatoes, but I feel that just about anything is ruined if you add salty fish with crunchy onions. I also don’t hate mayonnaise, but everything in moderation, right? And by the pink glow of the salad, you can tell that moderation was the last thing from this salad maker’s mind. I came, I ate, and I will do my best to never do such a thing again.

I also forced myself to try one of these, but I couldn’t finish it:

Bread, butter with what I think was horseradish, pickles and fish.
Bread, butter with what I think was horseradish, pickles and fish.

Note: my goal is not to bash Russian food, since as a whole, I actually prefer Russian food to American. I love the dairy products here, the breads, the cakes and most of the salads, but I still have yet to understand the Russian obsession with both fish and mayonnaise. And of course, one of my favorite aspects of Russian meals is the absolute necessity of tea. Here is a picture of a beautiful pot of tea Hanna and I ordered while we snagged internet at a local cafe.

"Огородны чай," tea with mint, apple, cinnamon and strawberry.
“Огородны чай,” tea with mint, apple, cinnamon and strawberry.

Now that I’m back in Elabuga, I already miss Hanna, but there will be certainly more visits to come, since the bus only takes 45 minutes from her stop to my stop! Let the adventures continue.

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Moscow Whirlwind

After over a year of hoping and months of planning, I AM FINALLY HERE.  I am still jet-lagged and a bit overwhelmed, but I AM HERE!  You will be pleased to know that this time the Frankfurt airport did not outsmart me; I actually did manage to get on the right plane and arrive successfully to the Moscow Domededovo Airport as planned. Although achy, groggy, and sweaty, it was nice to step out of the plane to hear the din of Russian all around me: the lady who told me I was going the wrong way, the teenage girls talking about school, and my favorite, the mom teasing her little daughter that she better not go under the bars because she would be crossing the border without a passport.

I even managed to make the passport control officer(a breed which is known to be stern and heartless) crack an ever-so-slight smile with my delayed response to his questions.I couldn’t think in English, much less Russian, so when he asked me, “Where are you coming from,” I stood there dumbfounded for five seconds, probably drooling, trying to figure out whether he meant the U.S.A. or where my last flight had come from. When I finally went with “Frankfurt,” followed by a quick, “but I’m from the U.S.A.,” his mouth turned subtly upwards as he told me, “yes, that’s what interests me, where your last plane came from.” Before I knew it, he had given me a Da Svidaniya (Goodbye) and I officially crossed the border.

I had been told that the Fulbright Office would provide transportation for us from the airport, but as I wheeled my heavy suitcases awkwardly out into the mass of leather jackets and intermittent whiffs of B.O., I saw no one holding the promised Fulbright sign. Unfortunately, gypsy cab drivers have an eagle eye for the befuddled stare of a foreigner, and before I could get my bearings, a man who resembled a tall and skinny George Clooney approached me, convinced by my confused look that I could easily be ripped off. For those of you who have never heard of a gypsy cab, it is basically an unmarked/unregistered taxi that, well, should really be a last resort for transport in Russia, especially if you are a woman travelling alone. Our conversation went like this:

“Miss, do you need a ride?”

“No, I have someone coming. I am waiting for them and I’m not sure where they are.”

“Oh, you can come with me.”

“No, I’m waiting for them and I think they might be outside.”

“You speak good Russian…where are you from, Britain?”

“No, the U.S. Thank you, but-“

“You go call your ride, and if they don’t come, I’ll be here.”

“It’s okay, I don’t need one. If I do, I’ll let you know.”

He then kept shooting not-so-subtle glances at me as I called the Fulbright Office and waited for my ride. Thankfully though, soon I found the driver, a short, unassuming and polite man, and spent the next hour and a half, nauseated, in the pinball machine that is Russian driving. In Russia, the rules of the road are like Captain Barbosa’s code on Pirates of the Caribbean: they are more like guidelines. As the driver swerved in and out of lanes with only inches of room while talking on his cell phone, I looked out the window with a strange respect for Russian drivers and a confidence that I would make it to the hotel in one piece. I could never drive in Russia, but these drivers, wow, they have skills…

After checking into the hotel, finding wi-fi to check in with my parents, and running to a produkti to buy cheese, bread and juice to snack on in the room, I got as good of a night’s sleep as could be expected for a jet-lagged traveler. The next morning, I was able to meet my host mom from Nizhniy Novgorod for lunch at MacDonalds. She works in Moscow during the week and goes home on weekends, so our meeting worked out perfectly. It was so wonderful to see her, a familiar face in the midst of increasing newness, and although our time was short, it was very special. After sharing pictures from the past year while drinking tea and eating tiramisu (yes, they have that at Russian MacDonalds!), I went back to the hotel, took a nap, then got ready to go out to dinner with Drew, one of the other Fulbrighters who had come in early.

It was a fiasco in and of itself just trying to meet each other; after agreeing to meet each other on the first floor of the hotel, we both sat there, and waited, and waited, until I remembered that the hotel had two buildings! To test my theory, I asked the receptionist where he was staying, and it turned out that, yes, we had been waiting for each other on different floors, and he had knocked on a different person’s room and called a different room number. Eventually though, we found each other and had a really fun night on the town.

For dinner, we went to Yolki-Palki, which is a chain restaurant that serves traditional Russian food. With a stomach still a little restless from the jetlag, I decided to play it safe and stick with blini s sousom klubnika, pancakes with strawberry sauce. After a nice dinner, we strolled around night time Moscow for a few hours in crisp, misty weather. Since Drew had studied in Moscow before, he knew the city pretty well and we managed to get to Red Square, a statue of Dostoevsky, the library named after Lenin, as well as some other random finds, one of which was a stone platform on Red Square where beheadings used to be performed.

We got back at about midnight, which was when I met my roommate, Rebecca, who had just flown in. She left a note on the door telling me she was here so I wouldn’t be startled to walk in an find someone there, and the Russians in the room beside us found it very funny; according to her she heard them through the wall making fun of  her for about five minutes. All I can say is that I am thankful for the note, otherwise I would have made a very bad first impression. I am a very jumpy person, and I can just picture myself letting out a blood-curdling scream…

Anyway, after another night of bad sleep, I got up this morning and was to spend the day with my friends Masha and Bethany from Vladimir. I met Bethany through her brother, one of my classmates at college, when he told me that she also had a love for Russia. When I found out that I was going to Vladimir for my language program last summer, I contacted her since that was where she had lived the year before. She connected me with a wonderful group of people in Vladimir, one of whom was Masha, and it was actually not until today that we spent a significant amount of time together. Although the day was rainy and cold, we had a great time enjoying one another’s company, and I can’t wait to be able to visit my friends in Vladimir!

Masha, Bethany and I

Masha and Bethany

Finally, after a day in the rain, I got back to the hotel and ate dinner with a bunch of the other Fulbrighters who had flown in. We begin job training tomorrow, which will last for five days, then we will part ways and go to our host institutions. Right now I am a bit overwhelmed, really tired, and still wishing I knew more details about what I’m going to be doing in Elabuga, but I also am confident that I am supposed to be here. Moscow has been a whirlwind so far, but with a little bit of sleep and a lot of prayer, I’ll be ready to face whatever comes my way tomorrow!

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Your Tongue Will Get You All the Way to Kiev

Язык до Киева доведет. Your tongue will get you all the way to Kiev. My RD in Vladimir last summer shared this proverb with us to remind us of the power of using our voice. For many people, this little epigram is simple to carry out, but no matter how badly I desire boldness, assertiveness eludes me like the Roadrunner outruns Wile E. Coyote. It is embarrassing to admit, but despite my many times abroad, I cringe at the thought of approaching ticket counters. In reality, no one cares other than me if I make a fool of myself, but I still carry around the inflated image of scowling matrons and customs officers disgusted by the incompetence of stupid American girls. This image has stopped me many times from using my voice. On top of this my reticence to approach the ominous “other,” I rarely travel alone, so I have gotten into the bad habit of defaulting to the eagle-eyed directional skills of my friends.

When it comes to travel, I am a follower.

When it comes to travel, I am too timid.

Not wanting to impose upon the very people whose job it is to be imposed upon, I walk around terminals and train stations with unsure steps, hoping and praying that I actually board the right plane or train.

You’d think I would have learned by now that timidity in traveling is a vice that needs to be vigorously fought; after all, it was not asking questions that once landed me in the wrong airport without money or a phone. But still, no matter how badly I want to be assertive, no matter how many times I try to reframe the situation with psychological tricks, it still takes everything inside me to confidently state my question or concern to an unsmiling stranger. Add to this a language barrier, and the fear level spikes. I will never forget the adrenaline-filled trepidation that overwhelmed me as I approached the ticket counter to buy my first train ticket in Russia. Of course, it wasn’t as scary as I had imagined, but still, when I successfully bought the ticket to where I needed to go, I felt as victorious as if I had won a marathon, and almost as exhausted.

Now that I’m going to be doing extensive independent travel in my year abroad, I realize that putting so much emotional energy into such an everyday task will be exhausting. I’m going to need a lot more смелость (boldness) if I’m going to thrive in the rigors of the Russian travel system. So as a “warm-up,” I decided to take a trip down to Boston this week. It was my roommate from Gordon’s 22nd birthday, and I thought it would be fun to surprise her. All that stood between me and our reunion was a bus, a few subway rides, and a commuter rail. And I feel a little funny saying it, but I was scared. I was scared, but I couldn’t let that fear cripple me. I had to exercise my tongue. And as is often the case, things went much more smoothly than I had imagined in my worst-case scenario addicted brain. I almost got lost a few times, but I used my tongue when I needed to. And today, as I strode through the bustle of the Boston South Station, my steps were imbued with a purposeful bounce. The familiar traveling smells of coffee and cigarette smoke and city air brought back broad memories of trekking through Moscow and St. Petersburg, and at once I was confident, able, смелая. Язык до киева доведет; my tongue will get me all the way to Kiev, but first I had to let it get me as far as Boston.

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