June 21st, 2011
Two years ago today, I first stepped out of a plane and onto the soil of Siberia. Or the asphalt of the Tomsk airport. I was then yelled at for taking a photo of the plane. But minor details like that don’t matter. When two months later I stood on that same tarmac (and again got scolded for my photography), I told myself I would never come back. Now two months later, I’ve accumulated 10 months of exile here in the middle of Siberia, and am preparing myself for another 14 months here. How I ended up here again was somewhat of an accident, and I was a bit amused this morning to stumble across a message I wrote to my friend Nicole the day before I left to return to Russia back in September. For those of you who don’t know her, Nicole was in my study abroad group two years ago, and is one the nicest and most genuine people I’ve ever met. She is currently serving 26 months in the Peace Corps somewhere in Georgia. If she has a blog, you should read it.
The note I wrote to Nicole back in September underlines the uncertainty that has followed this entire experience. For those of you why know any details of my trip, I never intended to stay here in Siberia, I originally intended to live in the city of Petrazovodsk with my friend Dustin, but more or less got stuck here after coming to visit my friend’s host sister whom I had met on my study abroad and had corresponded with for a year afterwards. My plan never involved staying here at all, let alone living here for 8 more months. Here is an excerpt from that letter:
“I forgot to reply as to what I was up to yesterday. Or I didn't forget I guess but I didn't want to post it on facebook because I've been keeping it secret. Anyways, on Monday I'm going back to Russia in the hopes of finding some sort of work and improving my Russian. I'm going to start in Moscow for two weeks and then hop a plane to Tomsk to do some visiting/eating at Sibirskoe Bistro. After a few days there I'm going to Petrozavodsk where Dustin is living for his Fulbright, so I'm going to stay there with him since it's free. I'm going to try to get a job someplace and if that fails I'll try to give private English lessons.”
Reading this made me look back and smile a little bit about the naivety with which I embarked upon this whole adventure. I’m a little bit surprised I did it at all, and a bit more surprised that I succeeded to the point that I have. Packing up and moving to a completely different country without any sense of a plan o or job prospect is a really stupid idea that I don’t think I’d recommend anyone trying. Someone probably should have stopped me but luckily no one did. I’m not sure if I expected to succeed, I just didn’t consider failure as an option. If I hadn’t succeeded, I think I would have felt like a terrible failure and fallen into some sort of depression, so it’s good that I did.
A lot of people, both back in the states and here in Siberia, have asked me why I’m choosing to stay here another year. My original goal was to simply become fluent in Russian so I could move to NYC and find a job and pursue my love of music, and to some degree those goals haven’t changed. I’m not going to lie, I don’t particularly like it here, and I think most people know that. I myself question what I’m doing here at times. However, despite not exactly enjoying my surroundings, I do find it to be interesting. I’d honestly love to move to another city here in Russia, somewhere in the south west with a warmer climate and a more European culture, but I’ve chosen to stay here in Tomsk because I don’t want to start over, and moving would undo the months of networking I’ve done, which is really the only way to move up in pay here. There is also the issue of starting over when it comes to friendship. It is analogous to the first few months at university when you go through 75 groups of friends until you find people you actually click with, and I’m just now starting to click, although I am also trying to reconnect with the people who I used to hang out with here every day when I first arrived. Being here is lonely enough, and I don’t want to have to meet new people all over again.
Preparing to stay another year forces me to examine a lot of questions about my future, such as what am I doing here? How long do I intend to stay? What do I hope to accomplish? What will I do when I get back to the United States? I unfortunately don’t have answers to a lot of those questions, which worries me a bit because I don’t want to get stuck in the rut of complacency. As I’ve said time and time again, I never intended for my path to lead back here to Siberia, and Russia is a big place which I would like to further explore. Perhaps I’d be much happier in another place. However, exploring different places here will take more time and at some point I have to return to the United States. I can’t stay here forever, and don’t want to stay here forever. I have dreams to pursue back home, mainly music, and I don’t want to be too old by the time I get back to seriously pursue any of my goals. I feel a bit like the main character in Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” in that at the moment, I really do have no direction home, and that bothers me a little bit. My response to the question “how does it feel?” is that it makes me feel uneasy.
Another problem with staying too long is my growing inability to relate to other people when I get back. Throwing yourself head first into completely different country and culture forces you to grow up quite a bit, and question a lot of things about yourself. This type of experience fundamentally changes you. It doesn’t necessarily change who you are, but it does force you to do some serious self reflection and pick what you value and who you want to be. When I get back, I will have spent at least 2 very formative years of my life living in a culture and place that I’m not part of, that that’s not something a lot of people deal with. I’m dealing with all the pressures, anxieties, and uncertainties of post college life, except I’m facing those problems in a language and place I will never, ever fully comprehend. I’m not taking the “holier than thou” approach, I am just doing something different than most other people, and I don’t think I’ll be able to just snap back into place when I get back to the United States. I found it hard enough to relate to other people while I still lived there, so I can only imagine how much harder it will be when I get back.
I’m having a similar experience here just because I am a foreigner, and that automatically sets you apart from others, especially in a place that doesn’t have a lot of Westerners. One of the things that is really strange about this whole experience is the minor celebrity status you can achieve as a foreigner in such a small place. The second you open your mouth you can be assured that everyone is going to turn around and stare at you, which is something I’ve more or less gotten used to. People approach us on the streets all the time, the papers want to interview you about your experience here, some people take your picture, and others want to start fights. I think being “special” is paradoxically one of the things I will miss the most, and at the same time absolutely won’t miss at all. It will be a strange day when I can stand on the street talking on my phone and no one turns around to look at me, but that day is a little ways in the future. I’ll be interested to hear how other friends of mine who have just returned home after spending a year here take to adjusting back to their lives in various countries. I guess I’ll find out in about a month.
I think this post is long and disorganized enough already, so I’ll sum up what I’ve been up to in a future post after a week or so, because these past two months have certainly been interesting, and I think my experience here will only get stranger. Hopefully I’ll have some good news to share come next week, but at the moment I don’t want to jinx it. I’ll also someday post pictures. I promise. For now though, I’m going to just hold on tight and see where things take me. And I’m sure that after a year, looking back on this post will certainly be interesting as well.
