things I’m excited about

As I previously mentioned, if you had asked me in September whether I was excited to go to Russia, I would have said something approximately equivalent to “meh.” But now, now you are more likely to get a sneaky sort of smile and a quiet “yes,” accompanied by a bouncing foot or two.

Here are my top 10 reasons why.

I am excited about…

1. St. Petersburg. Well duh, you say. But St. Petersburg has had a sort of magic element to it since I saw Anastasia for the first time in elementary school. So it’s not a cop-out to say that I’m excited about just being there.
2. fish. My family moved last year, from Maryland to Ohio. I go to school in Indiana. I haven’t had real, good seafood (or even lake food, to be honest) in a long time. Petersburg is on the water. They HAVE to have fish there. It HAS to be better than the frozen tilapia my mom gets in plastic packages from the grocery store.
3. the Hermitage. My university is a 10-minute walk (along a canal, no less) from the Hermitage Museum. Which has free admission for students of all ages and nationalities. I might just live there after classes, it’s okay.
4. my host family. I can’t wait to live with a family, get to know them, and learn their lifestyle. I am also super excited at the prospect of having my very own babushka, and maybe even a host sibling, which would be cool. Maybe even a host pet-cat.
5. the Olympics. To be in another country while the Olympics are going on there… will be awesome. Even though Sochi is nowhere near St. Petersburg, I’m sure the buzz will be there. And the Russia-USA hockey game should be really fun to watch, even though (to be perfectly honest) I’ve never watched a hockey game in my life.
6. White Nights. Assuming I figure out a sufficient excuse to stay for the summer, I will be in Petersburg for the month or so that the sun just never sets. Ever since I read Julie of the Wolves in elementary school, I’ve wanted to see what that was like… and I’m sure it will be even cooler in the city than on the Alaskan tundra.
7. language acquisition. Yes, the getting there is scary, but I really want to be more comfortable with the Russian language. Currently I know it well enough to read the dust jacket of the lone Russian novel in my home library and tell it’s trash, but I would like to get to the point where I could read it and explain to someone else (out loud) why it’s trash.
8. the Russian Orthodox Church. Not that I’ve been to one before, but I hear services are 2-3 hours long and entirely sung. I just love the ROC aesthetic. And Easter! Russian Easter! This year the Gregorian and Julian calendars overlap, so Easter will be the same day in both of my countries. But, fun fact: apparently, due to the lack of palm trees in most of Russia, Palm Sunday there becomes Pussywillow Sunday.
9. travel. There’s something about the idea of just getting on a train and going somewhere that really appeals to me. Hostels sound exciting. Riding a train through Russia sounds way more literary-romantic than it probably feels, but it’s a bucket list item. Also, I love the metro. I will get to ride the metro a lot, I hear.
10. warmth. No, that’s not sarcastic. It’s been consistently 40 degrees warmer in St. Petersburg than in South Bend, and my frigid little fingers are very excited to get out of the Midwest. Brrr. (But even before this month, the weather over there does tend to be warmer than here in the winter, and cooler in the summer, which I’ll take.)

I don’t know if I know enough to declare with certainty that all of these things will be as awesome as I think they will, but… I think they will. (Yes, I know that’s redundant.)