I really should have done this three weeks ago...that way my first few entries would have been devoted my its-a-small-world-afterall first impressions of Russia upon seeing McDonalds written in cyrillic and whatnot.... I tried to keep a handwritten journal for the first few days, but it metaphorphisized into into a place to write down emergency contact numbers, adresses, public transformation hints and a list of heard-ten-times daily vocab words that were supposed to be memorized but weren't, before reaching its mature form on Wednesday as my notebook for my Russian film class. Jet-lag and the fact that all my airline tray tables were flimsy, difficult-to-write-on-kind ones that you pull out of the arm rather than from the seat in front you produced primarily unreadable and incomprehensible thoughts. But the initial reflections I have managed to rectify can be found below, re-reflected upon after my first month here.

From what I remember, I spent my final three days in the US sitting in front of my half-packed, yet already overweight suitcase, accomplishing nothing but increasing my anxiety by reading and rereading the school in Russia handbook, whose contents contained a few too many statements about Russia leaving a "permanent emotional mark on even the most mature and able students. " Its final sentence read something like "some of our students have accomplished more than just survive Russia, they've actually gotten something out of it, but only through extreme effort." While some of my stress stemmed from my (well-justified) lack of confidence in the time management and organization of my packing skills, this book made me afraid of Russia itself. Also, from the time I received my study abroad packet in April and the reality dawned on me that in less than five months I'd be on a five hour planeride from Moscow to the (what most visitors described as inaccurately and oximoronically) self-proclaimed Paris of Siberia, I had heard few good things about my future home. The Economist warned me weekly that not even investment capital, and therfore clearly not naive American college students, should make an any effort to associate with Putin's Russia. Former Irkutsk middkids, though insistent that their times spent there proved rewarding, always latently credited their love of the place to the enjoyment that emerges from experiences described in those "tough times make us stronger" adages. And my final conversation in Russian at language school was with a Professor from Saint Petersburg who assured me and fellow students that we would daily see fistfights streets of Irkutsk resulting from barbarious siberians' inability to civilly adapt to new capitalist conditions in Russia.

I guess I'll conlcude this probably unsuccessful attempt to begin this blog somewhat philosophically by saying that the culture shock and dangers of life in Russia described in all three of our pre-Russia study abroad packets, in an hour-long power-point presentation at orientation, and again in booklets that we received in Moscow and Irkutsk containing "only new information," haven't really shocked me (though I've definitely seen and experienced them) as much as how quickly my anxiety lifted upon arrival. My ascension into this fearlessness to face scary Russia began as our plane descended into Moscow. I was sitting next to someone who, earlier this summer as we took the language pledge (to speak only Russian for the next two and half months), shook an entire row of auditorium seats during some sort of bizarre nervous convulsing. Her surprising calmness on the plane served as the first check against my own excessive, yet internal bizarre nervous covulsing. But I think my true savior was the view through window of Russian housing developments. From what I understand, suburbia didn't exist in pre-Putin Russia. During the Soviet and Yelsins eras, everyone lived in those depressing, multistory, monument-to-utilitarianism apartment buildings. But within the past seven years, Russia's metropolitan landscape has looked towards the actions taken by 1950's american city for guidance. The results were easy to see. Everywhere, BIG, cookie cutter, box mansions/monstrosities, often constructed in what I guess is california neo-meditteranean style more appropriate to Orange Country, covered what was expansive steppe only last year. Due to brandnewness, none of the roads were paved and few houses looked inhabited. But even though these urban vacant buildings destroyed the pristine traditional Russian landscape that all guidebooks insist still exists just outside of Moscow, they somehow made me happy, providing "something familiar in what I thought would be a world of unknowns......blah blah blah." And while I may never accept the fact that I was cured by collosus of cul-de-sacs, I'll always remember them as the first indication that Russia would be a place of far more familiarities than I expected. This realization isn't too original, but its been a central theme of my relations with the place over the past few weeks. I would like to write about familiarities right now and about unknowns and about all the big events of the past month. I've started to, but I don't have time to proofread anything right now because my Babushka expects me home home momentarily to eat a meal that will no doubt be very tasty, but that I (probably futilely) hope will not exceed in calorie count the two chicken wings, cucumber, three tomatoes, bowl of rice pudding, bowl regular white rice, square of cheese, and loaf of bread that composed only my breakfast this morning. Da zaftra. I'll be back back tomorrow.