Leavings

Wow, it's been a while (as usual). Probably the best way to begin this is to say that this morning, I got up at 9 am (luxurious Saturdays), beat my roommates to the shower, and then flipped on the news. There, I was informed that Hilary Clinton had left the presidential race. I looked up the word for 'race' just to make sure. I feel absolutely no connection to American politics. In November, I quit trying to follow the news - 30 minutes of reading on the BBC website every once in a while just doesn't cut it, I find. It's going to be weird coming home.

Speaking of which, I'm set to leave in 7 days. This is unfathomable to me and I haven't even thought about hauling my suitcase out from underneath my bed yet. I don't think it will sink in until I'm at least halfway to Moscow, at which point, I will probably cry. Melodramatic perhaps, but the truth.

I have had a really incredible last month here: so many things have come together in such a majestic fashion. For example, my 'e-tickets' turned out to be real paper tickets and got sent to my parents' house in the states. Then, my poor mother spent a ridiculous amount of money DHLing them to me, only to have the office here claim the tickets got sent back to the states, while the internet claimed they were in Mexico ... ah. But I have them now and it's all good. 

Saying goodbye to many dear friends who are heading back to Korea and China has made May and June a difficult emotional affair and now it seems to be my turn. Today I sat on the bus between a old man with a huge furry (and awfully smelly) dog in his lap and a very suave young man who, if I had lit a match, would have combusted, due to all of the cologne. Russia is a country sure to delight the olfactory senses. Will my nose be bored in America? This is the sort of thing I've found myself contemplating lately.

I passed all my exams - was pretty excited about that. As of now, I have 3 days of classes left. One of our professors just finished up a week's worth of impromptu lectures on Russian economics in the last century, which was a stretch for most of us language-wise, but very interesting.

The family I tutor for gave me a very special gift - a plastic shopping bag filled with whole smoked very dead fish from a Siberian stream. My roommates and I spent an afternoon ripping their heads off and eating them. It was ... memorable. They were surprisingly tasty, but I concluded I much prefer lunch sans decapitations beforehand.

I have so many things I want to tell you all about, but it would be several thousand pages, I'm afraid.

Ah boy. I'm really excited to be heading home. But it's going to be really hard leaving.

As you can see, I have hardly anything substantial to say at this point. Will let you know when I can work these feelings down into my fingers and from there, into coherent sentences.

Peace be with you!