One Month Out

As Winston Churchill said, in his very distinctive way, “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. It is in that spirit that I begin my preparations for the coming fall term to embark on what promises to be the most interesting trip of my life. There are so many unanswered questions I have, many curiosities and hunches that need to be explored, and with so many places to go and things to see I have my work cut out for me. I will do my best to find an answer for that riddle, after unwrapping the mystery, which I have freed from the enigma. I realize that even if I spent a lifetime in Russia, I could never wholly understand such a diverse and complex country. However, I will do my very best to try and learn all I can, speak as much Russian as I can manage, meet and share as much as I can and hopefully gain a new understanding and perspective of myself and my life along the way.

If you had told me 2 years ago that I was going to be spending almost 3.5 months in Russian I would have said you where crazy and did not know me or what I want to do in life. If you had told me a year ago I would have said its cool idea, but I will never go through with it and could never learn to speak any Russian. Well, many things have happened and changed in interceding year; many long nights of studying Russian (with some other classes thrown in there somewhere), several trips and conferences, and many hours with my wonderful family and friends later, I am a different person then I was even a year ago. So far 2010 has been the most eventful year of my life and it promises to get even better in the coming months.

I hope with this blog to be able to share highlights of my upcoming experiences and adventures with you, my friends and family. While this blog will be no mean replace conversations either in person or via other means of communication, I hope that it will help me to stay in touch and share what I see, hear, smell, taste and do in St. Petersburg and on my weekend trips to other places in the region. It is my intention to post what I find attention-grabbing and know that others would be interested in. Additionally, I hope that this blog can serve as something of a journal to help keep track of events as they happen and preserve memories of the preparation, travel and life of my new life experience in written word and pictures.

I will be departing for London on August 25th, and from there St. Petersburg on August 28th.

One month from today IT begins....