things I'm nervous about

I’ve been encouraged to do lots of pre-thinking about my time in Russia (as if I needed prompting…), including the things I’m nervous and excited about. That way, 6 months from now, I will be able to look back at poor, naïve, sheltered little Katie and laugh at her. This is one of my favorite activities, so I’m all in.

**NOTE** Few of these are well-founded fears, but if reading them will make you nervous on my behalf, I ask you to stop reading here.

I am nervous about…

1. getting sick. I come down with a significant cold about once a semester anyway, and I hear those are tough to get rid of in Russia. I hate being sick, and I don’t know how I’ll handle being sick in a place where communication alone requires mental effort.
2. making friends. Again, I have trouble with this in America. I warm up to people pretty slowly, and I don’t feel like I can call someone a “friend” at all if I’ve known them fewer than 2 months. Which means that, for at least the first 2 months (without any fellow ND students there), I’m in trouble. Hopefully the language barrier won’t doom me forever.
3. loneliness. This is kind of related to the last, but slightly different. I’ve spent time being lonely. I know how little I enjoy it, and how little I enjoy other things when in the grip of it. I don’t want to be an un-fun bum all the time because I miss people.
4. getting mugged by gypsy children. This is a sort of euphemism for “standing out as a Yankee,” which emerged from my Russian 101 professor’s story about being accosted by gypsy children who sensed her Americanness, but who then left after being convinced of her street cred. I have no street cred. I have a lot of Americanness. I hope I can fake it well enough.
5. my wardrobe. I don’t dress particularly well even by American standards. Frankly, most of what I wear is pretty colorful and a little ridiculous, and not particularly European-sophisticate. I hope paisley skirts aren’t too strange to Russians. I also hope my hair bows won’t relegate me to 5-year-old status.
6. keeping in touch. There is a delicate balance between living on the internet and never speaking to your friends. This is a balance I have never yet achieved (see: average 1 phone call/semester to my best friend from high school vs HOURS DAILY spent Facebook chatting with various people this summer).
7. language acquisition. As I told a friend the other day, I’m really looking forward to being fluent… not so much becoming fluent. Talking about literature in Russian for 75 minutes every other day could be stressful; I will have to speak Russian (regardless of my ability to do so with any class or finesse!) way more than that.
8. food. I’m pretty much incapable of going longer than 2-3 hours without food. When I do eat, I can only handle modest amounts before I feel like I’m going to explode. Will I have time to eat enough between classes? When I eat with my host family, are they going to give me absurdly huge portions I can’t finish?
9. summer plans. I want to stay in St. Petersburg this summer. I would also kind of like to make money doing it. I don’t really know how that will work, legally, and I’ll probably have to spend some time this semester figuring it out... I know how difficult and attention-consuming that can be.
10. toilets. Anyone who has travelled with me knows: I have an absurdly small bladder. Free public toilets in Russia, clean or otherwise, don’t exist. Woe is me!

There you have it. Top 10 anxieties. Maybe they will be worth stressing about… but aside from the wardrobe thing, there’s not much I can actually fix now (and even that is questionable. I like my clothes!). Maybe I’ll check in with these at the end of the semester, but then again I might forget.