I haven’t submitted anything to this page for some time now, though I must say it is not due to lack of activities and incredible moments. In the past month I have run the streets of Moscow, cooked shashlik in the park, played soccer through the woods, screamed with the Spartak soccer fans in Moscow’s stadium, enjoyed spring time in all its glory, rode through the city in a limosine, toasted in Red Square, and fist pumped at the concert of a popular Russian band. I have taken two over night trains to St. Petersburg and back, walked the same paths as Russian Zars, dipped my hand into the bay of Finland, partied all night in the alleys of Petrovska-Razumovksaya, cheered on Russia at their Victory Day parade, and watched the twilight fireworks from the roof of a twenty two story building. To say the very least, my time has been one chain of amazing events that should certainly be worthy of many blogs. I am not sure why I haven’t been motivated to write about it. Perhaps it is due to a small disconnect with home, and a profound contentment with everyday life in Russia.
You see, my blog page started as a way to record my Russian adventures; adventures that were outside of the norm for me. Somewhere along the way, though, all of my activities began to become normal day life. At that point I think it became weird to blog about that (though I know people do it all the time) and there went my motivation. Russia no longer felt like a story I needed to share, and instead had become my life. Of course it may have just been because I got lazy. I’m going with the first explanation though. Another setback in journaling has been the sheer inability to do so. Successfully conforming such a dimensional experience to fit within the limits of a blog page is an impossible task. It troubles me that I could never put into writing an explanation that would do this experience justice. I could search the pages of the dictionary for the perfect words, but even Mr. Webster could never help me write in a way that gives a reader a complete understanding.
Now though, I cannot help but reflect back on that adventure. Just as quickly as my life in Moscow started, it ended, and a few plane rides is all it took for me to physically leave Russia – a piece of cake really. Now, if only it were that easy to emotionally leave Russia, then I would be in great shape. The level of difficulty in leaving Moscow has surpassed that of almost all other events in my life, and I think it may take time before I stop aching to have it back. Of course I am not really sure that it is in fact possible for a person to live anywhere for four months and not long for it once they are gone. It really can be somewhat of an empty feeling. At the risk of sounding extremely unoriginal, I’d like to say that I left a piece of my heart in Russia. Lucky for me though, I also took so much back with me that I could not feel more whole. I’ve actually had this blog written for a while now, but I took my time in posting it. I guess the idea of “my last Russia blog” seemed too final, and I wasn’t ready to make that transition. After contemplating this, though, I figure that we are always in some sort of transition; always moving, always changing, and always growing… its just something to embrace, to enjoy, and to accept.
