Preparation Step 1: Scheduling

Despite the late start on this method of tracking myself for family and friends, there's still a lot that's been going on and still has yet to be prepared! The main focus of this blog is to keep everyone up to date on what will happen in Russia this summer, but should my travels continue after graduation, no doubt it'll keep being updated.

So to start with: why Russia? I've wanted to work as a translator for quite some time, but unfortunately, there's not much call in America for French translation. So, while I'm not dropping my French studies, I'm adding Russian to the mix. This semester is my first introduction to the language, and as usual, I decided to plunge right in and head to Russia for a true cultural experience! I'll be in Saint Petersburg (Сaинт Ретербург if you go with the cyrillic spelling!) from May 14th to June 26th, with my time split between (very intense) language lessons and soaking in the culture. Our itinerary is going to be very busy, including such things as museums, palaces, ballets and operas.

The greatest challenge so far has been working with the Study Abroad office. Their forms have been disorganized, offering only a small window to enter a 100 character+ address, for example, and not having a line to sign and date the applications, resulting in over half of the accepted students being called back in to sign and date, the day that visas were to be mailed out. There has also been a fair bit of confusion around the fact that another student, who name was similar to mine when converted to cyrillic, has repeatedly been mixed up with me, resulting in emails sent incorrectly and bad information given. Good times.

Once that was taken care of, and I was sure I was going to go on the program, the problem of flights raised its ugly head. I went through airfare.com, as I am a starving student and can't afford fancy tickets. They gave me two options for flights out- one with a 10 hour layover in NY, the other with a 2.5 hour layover. Naturally, I chose the 2.5 hour one, as the total flight time alone is upwards of 20 hours. Only after I had bought the tickets (which are non-refundable, and cost $350 to change), did it pop up with a warning: "Please note that you have to change airports in NY!". It had given me 2.5 hours to get from JFK to La Guardia... at 4:30 pm... on a Friday... and the airline I was connecting to required checkin an hour in advance.

Since the change fee was $350 plus the cost of the ticket difference, and a one-way ticket to NY is about $150, I figured I could just skip the first flight on the outbound and pick the itinerary back up in NY. Being paranoid, however, I figured I would call the agency and confirm that that was ok. After many, many hours on the phone talking to operators who barely spoke english and refused to give me anything but "If you miss one flight, the whole ticket is cancelled", I was finally able to reach someone with a brain who agreed to take that flight off my itinerary. I assured her that I wanted no refund, the rest of it was fine, just take that flight off please. She re-sent an itinerary without that flight, I got another one with 5 hours between flights, and I feel a bit more confident in my ability to get out of the country without an ulcer.

So as it stands, I am set to get 9 credits this summer, jump a year ahead in Russian classes, and have an unmatched experience in a country about which I know next to nothing! Despite advancements in communication, Russia still remains very hard to capture. No one is allowed to enter the country without a visa, and you have to be invited by a Russian family or company to get a visa. Even better, no one is allowed to leave the country without an active visa, so no stragglers! The culture is vastly different than even our European cousins; for example, the question "How are you?" is expected to receive a full response, and an answer of "fine" will be assumed that you hate the person asking or are hiding something very, very suspicious! Moreover, smiling at strangers is a sign of weak-mindedness... that's going to take some doing to get used to.

Pretty sure that's plenty of information to throw at you guys for a first post. I'll get my itinerary, flights, and contact info over there posted soon. Cheers!