Near and Far.

It’s been a month since I left St. Petersburg, but it feels like it has been so much longer.  That part of my life already feels somewhat dream like.  Most of my friends from Smolny (who I miss dearly) are back in the US experiencing culture shock after living in Russia or so long, and though I haven’t yet left the former USSR, I have been feeling a little bit of culture shock myself.  In so many ways Belarus is very similar to Russia, but in many ways it is like being in a completely different world.  Everyone speaks Russian but randomly throws in Belarusian words and speaks with a different accent and pronounce words differently (i.e. говорит or город sound like ховорит or хород, and двери не закрываются но зачыняюцца).  While many of their habits are the same, it seems that people here in general smoke less, drink less, and curse less than people in Russia.  Everything is cleaner, people are friendlier, and everything moves at a slower pace (even in the capital city, Minsk). 

Living in a village of 5,000 rather than a city of 5 million has also been a major change.  In St. Petersburg I could blend into the crowd and wander the city alone.  Here I am never alone and as  I walk down the street I attract stares from everyone who immediately recognizes me as not one of their own.  I daily get seranaded with the song, «American Girl».  Almost everyone knows everyone in Oktyabrsky, and there is definitely a small town feel.  People greet one another and stop to visit as they pass on the street, something that never happened in St. Petersburg.  Spending the summer in the country after months of city buildings and cement is wonderfully peaceful (even though my allergies aren't happy at all).  Every morning I wake up to the sun shining, roosters crowing, the breeze blowing in my window.  Almost every evening I go to the dacha to pick berries and other vegetables.  Most everything that I eat is fresh from the garden or made fresh locally: fruits and vegetables from the garden, homeade tvorog, bread baked fresh locally, juice made from the sap of birch trees.  Chickens and cows roam freely along the road, retirees sit out on benches playing cards and sharing in the town gossip, and babushki work tirelessly in their vegetable gardens.  Life is slow and quaint, and though it is a nice break from reality, I feel so disconnected from the rest of the world.  (Internet has been lacking which is why I'm only now posting, sorry for the silence!). 

As lovely and relaxing as my time in Belarus has been, I can't help feeling a deep longing to go back to my beloved St. Petersburg.  I fell in love with that city and I know that I part of me will always be there.  I miss the unpredictability of every moment, the absurdity, the people, the paradoxes, the soul.  I miss wandering the streets lost in the depths of my own thoughts.  I miss sitting along the canals all night long with friends, just passing time talking and being.  I miss the faces of those who I passed everyday but never knew personally: the babushki who begged for money in front of Vladimirsky Sobor, the homeless people who slept in my dvor, the handicapped kid that passed out flyers in front of my metro.  I miss the daily trek down Galernaya, the long hours of RSL classes, shaverma Wednesdays, the 22 trolleybus, the list goes on and on.  On the one hand it is wonderful to look back on my time there and remember every amazing moment.  On the other hand doing so leaves me in a state of mixed emotions: so happy because the semester was nothing less than perfect yet so sad because I am no longer living that life.  But I can't dwell in the past or worry about the future.  I choose to live everyday in the moment.  So as much I love Peter, as much as I will miss my friends in Belarus when I am gone, everyday and every moment is wonderful and unique, and by living each moment to the fullest there can be no regrets or longing for the past.