Tomorrow morning at approximately 4AM marks the moment I sometimes felt would never arrive, my swift departure from Russia. At the moment, to much surprise, I am sitting alone in my room and trying to do the best I can to take in what will be my last night in St. Petersburg.
In order to occupy my final moments in St. Petersberg as stereotypically as possible, I feel that it is important for me to reflect on my time as a student and resident. I will say that my sentiments toward my academic experience are no different than normal. I started this academic session extremely excited about what I would learn and hopeful that it would somehow stick to my brain in a way that spurred intellectual advancement. Of course, by this point in my academic studies in Russia, I have been sufficiently jaded and beaten down by it all and am finding it hard to discover the point to all of my stress and strife. I will admit that I have learned quite a lot more than expected within this past week and a half and it has been lovely. I actually feel like I am leaving this situation having learned at least a LITTLE bit of something and being able to converse more easily, which was one of my main goals.
My feelings as a resident of this city are without the fifty/fifty split of good and bad though. I have learned a lot about this country from my experiences here, encounters with a variety of individuals, and research and a great deal of it has just been extremely discouraging, especially related to my field of study and career goals. Fortunately I was able to find hope again in the form of Bellona: St. Petersburg. I met with the directors of the program yesterday in the late afternoon to discuss their organization, its goals and objects, and current work they are doing. I was relieved to find out that, from what they mentioned and what I have had a chance to read thus far, they seem to be doing fairly well for themselves. It is just good to find out that there is one organized body in Peter fighting for the Environmental Rights of Russians. There are a few others, but Bellona gets my vote as “number one” thus far.
Huh. I will admit that I cannot wait to go home though. I have loved most everything here, aside from class (on most occasions) and the damn public transit “system,” and I am very sad to be going. I feel like I have hit that point in cultural immersion when you just resign yourself to the fact that you are not home anymore and that you will not be for a while, BUT instead of sticking it out for an entire semester I am going home. I am not looking forward to reverse culture shock either. It has been rather freeing to only have people understand me when I want them to…I wonder what embarrassing things I will say in public until I get used to everyone speaking English. This has just been a great experience and I am so lucky to have had the chance to be here for at least a little while. With luck, this hopefully will not be my LAST adventure abroad OR my longest.
