kiwi attempts russian assimilation.

Coming to you all straight from the desk in New Jersey that was very familiar to me six weeks ago. Right now, everything in my house seems foreign and somehow way different than I remember. It doesn’t help that my parents had the outside of our house redone, and we have new appliances and things all inside, so it actually is different, and it’s not just my imagination.

I feel the need to catch you all up on the happenings of the weekend, even though I’m home, and I bet nobody cares what I’m writing here anymore.

Friday night was our “Last Supper.” We had a group dinner at a really kitschy place, which I’ve already told you is called Russian Kitsch. :) It was the most bizarre place, but we had fun. It was kind of an awkward night because of a few people, but basically there was a band singing a lot of Elvis songs, so how awkward could it have been? haha. The food there wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the best night we’d all had together. We made a list of our email addresses and phone numbers and it was a really sad sort of gesture. I really don’t have anything else meaningful to say about it.

Saturday was probably the worst day of the whole trip, at least for me. I really have no idea what was the matter with me. More than half of the Rutgers group left on Saturday, and saying goodbye to them was half sad and half awkward, and it’s so hard to explain. Like, through this whole trip I feel like I’ve really learned to be independent. It was the first time that I had ever really lived away from home, and I wasn’t relying on my parents for much of anything. But I also feel like this trip was also one of the first times that I’ve let myself be so completely interdependent on a group of my peers. I’ve never had a group of friends that I’ve been around so much, and relied on so much. Like on this trip, I was constantly with other people from my group, and whether we were “Friends” or not, we needed each other. A lot of us learned the language entirely from scratch together. We needed an entire group of us to translate signs and menus, order things, ask directions, learn the transportation routes, go on tours, etc. With any of the other friends or people I’ve known at home, I’ve never had to rely on them for anything, we just did whatever and had fun with it. It’s really hard for me to explain. So, watching most of our group leave and then be left behind was extremely odd. I felt really lost for the rest of the day, and I can’t explain it. I wasn’t even this sappy at high school graduation. We basically had an entire day to kill, and only Liz, Maria, Joe, and I were around. We decided to go to Pizza Hut and get some Wi-Fi and decent food. On the bus ride there, I listened to my iPod and I had the most annoying experience: my iPod was on shuffle, and every song that came on either reminded me of Russia or home. It was a mix of songs that we developed inside jokes about while in Russia, songs Liz gave me, old dance songs, Michael Jackson, Bye, Bye, Bye, and songs that I have no emotional attatchment to but that had gut-wrenching titles (I almost started bawling when New Found Glory’s “Coming Home” came on.) So I really don’t know why, but I was on the verge of tears for the whole time, and I was mad at myself. haha. So we had an awkward day to kill, and we waited it out in “da Hut.” After that, we all kind of just went back to the dorms to pack. And party. No, I’m kidding. No party. Liz and I watched Spinal Tap in our kitchen, and Joe came up to our room toward the end of it. We played music back and forth for awhile, but nothing productive came out of that. Mila had been in Gatchina for the day, saying goodbye to family friends. She came up to our room for a bit, but Maria was having this really random sob-fest after watching some TV show (ask me if you want the whole story.) and Mila basically couldn’t take it and just left.

Yesterday was a very long and intense day. I left our lovely dorm (R.I.P. 801) at around 9 am St. Petersburg time with Liz and Mila. We picked up Pirog and Svetlana and we were on our way to the airport. Our plane left at 12:35 and we got to Helsinki at 12:30. Liz made a typical toolish comment about time travel. :) haha, just kidding. I did a twinge of shopping in Helsinki, because I don’t know if/when I’ll be back. I got a tacky FINLAND t-shirt, and a copy of the Twilight book in Finnish. Then we got on our flight home, and I officially was ready to be back in New Jersey. I watched so many movies on the way home, it was ridiculous. I saw 17 Again, Watchmen, He’s Just Not That Into You, and Mosters Vs. Aliens, plus some episodes of How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory. While watching all of these things, I kept thinking about the really simple things I missed at home. I had told everyone, while still in Russia, that the first thing I was going to do when I got home was to get a glass of water straight out of the tap and drink it down. (By the way, I totally did.) At customs at the airport, the guy checking my passport kind of grumbled “Welcome back,” and I practically squealed “GOOD TO BE BACK, SIR!” I should really be more embarrassed of myself. (I’m not.) I was wearing my Russian olympics hoodie, and the guy collecting some of our forms was like “What does that say?” And I squealed (again.) “RUSSIA!” (because it says Russia in Cyrllic.) and he stuck his tongue out at me and threw me a raspberry. I was like, um, does this mean I can enter the country? I sprinted past him, anyway. Other stuff went down at the airport, but I am rushing to get to the part where on the car ride home, I got to call in my Chinese food order. It was the best thing ever. You know you’re in America when you can order take out from your car. I tried texting like a mass group of people that I was home, and then I could hardly keep track of the responses I was getting, so I just stopped that. If you’re interested, you can like text me now, because the mass amounts of “YOU’RE HOME<3333!!!!” texts have died down and I can probably answer you this time :)

So anyway. There are so many more things to say, but for blog’s sake (ha. ha. ha.) I will end now. I am thinking of creating a new blog for my “real life” (since Liz thinks Russia is not real life.) and linking it on here, to keep this one as my travel log. I will post something on here if I do create something new. Otherwise, thanks to my friends at home for reading this and keeping me connected to home. And to the strangers who have found me somewhere along the way, I hope my Russian antics have kept you entertained.

<3