a snapshot of kiev.

tourism and immigration.

Last night my friend Sasha shared with me an anecdote.

A man dies.  He has lived a good life but is given a choice: heaven or hell.  Unable to make up his mind, he asks if he can visit both places before he decides.  He visits heaven where everyone is sitting around calmly and peacefully.  He thinks that it is nice but maybe a bit boring.  He then visits hell.  It is like a big party.  Everyone is sitting around drinking beer and vodka having a good time.  After he has visited both places he is asked again where he would like to spend the afterlife.  Since the man has lived a quiet but upstanding life, he decides he wants to party in hell.  But as soon as he gets to hell the devil grabs him and throws him in a frying pan.  The man is immediately in shock.  As he lies frying in the pan he exasperatedly exclaims to the devil, "When I visited before it was a great party!  That is what I thought hell would be like."  The devil responds, "There is difference between tourism and immigration."

And this, kids, is why I have to come back to America.  Because if I don't I'm going to be fried up like a kotlet and eaten by the devil (I'm pretty sure that's how one of Dostoevsky's characters met his end).  

what a cutie!

Sweet Little Marusia

the bane of bureaucracy.

There are lots of things that I love about Russia/Belarus (I may have mentioned that once or twice on this blog).  Then there are some things that make me want to pull my hair out.  One of those things is the impossibly convoluted and inefficient bureaucracy and all the paperwork that goes along with it.  Once upon a time I thought that the US government is extremely bureaucratic and hard to maneuver, but after six and a half months in the former USSR, I will never take for granted a) the benefits of being a US citizen/having a US passport, b) the comparatively few bureaucratic hoops we have to jump through to get things done, and c) the freedom and possibility of America.  If you’ve talked to me at all while I’ve been abroad, you’ve probably heard me talk about my visas.  They’ve been the theme of my time abroad (Therefore it's only appropriate that I complain about it to the whole world:).  There are only two countries in Europe that Americans need visas in order to enter, and of course I chose to go to both of them. 

Friday I got finished applying for the last of three visas that I have painstakingly had to procure over the last six months.  I’m heading back to St. Pete in a week to fly home and I need a transit visa because my student visa has expired.  If you’ve never applied for a visa (especially applied in a country where you are not a citizen and where you have to communicate in another language), here’s basically how it goes down: spend a couple of hours trying to navigate vague and unhelpful consulate websites to realize that you have absolutely no idea what documents they really want or which application is current; bring every document you have to the consulate, and after they finally let you in the building, find out that (surprise!) you don’t have enough documents; go back to the consulate the next day with all necessary documents; wait to go through security; spend two and a half hours going from window to office to window to office to table to recopy all forms to window to office to window to… (all the while trying to give suitable answers in Russian to questions like: Why do you need to fly out of Russia?  If you want to go to Russia why are you going to Ukraine? Were you really a student there?  Why do you want to stay 48 hours?  This isn’t really a transit visa…); finally get the man in the office to sign off on my visa after arguing my case/more or less pleading; go to pay at cash register; realize that I don’t have enough cash to pay for the expedited visa and that she won’t take my card; leave the consulate and ride the tram ten minutes in the opposite direction to find an ATM because there are none anywhere around; ride back to the consulate and go back through security; pay the lady a ridiculous amount of money (in Belarusian rubles after spending a few minutes calmly explaining to the lady that even though I am an American there is no way in heck I'm going to give my precious US dollars to government agencies that rip me off and make my life so complicated); leave the consulate with a measly slip of paper that tells me I can pick up my visa on the same day that I am leaving; PRAY TO GOD that they actually have it ready.

Basically this system is ridiculous but absolutely necessary to go anywhere.  And if I think it’s hard for me to navigate the bureaucracy as an American, it does not compare at all to the mountains of paperwork that Russians/Belarusians have to go through to get visas.  I need a visa for Belarus and Russia and nowhere else.  They need a visa for basically everywhere in Europe except Belarus and Russia.  My friends Sasha and Egor (who I am staying with in Minsk) are planning to take a trip to Italy at the end of the summer, so they are in the miserable process of applying for a Schengen visa (for all you Americans who have the luxury of not having to know what that is, look it up and appreciate the possibilities of your passport).  As the three of us sat around the apartment worrying about our visas, we couldn’t help but laugh at the irony (we all need visas to the place where the other can go without a visa, no problem) and began to plot ways to somehow switch passports in order to make life easier (yeah, we never figured that one out...).

I say all this to say that I have come to appreciate being American more during my time abroad.  Don’t get me wrong.  America is not without its problems.  It is very far from perfect.  But there is no denying that, for the most part, life is just a little bit (sometimes a lot) easier there.  Despite the difficulties, despite the imperfections, despite our own issues with bureaucracy, there are still more possibilities for more people.  I won’t take that for granted again (and I’ve left a paper trail all throughout the former USSR to make sure that I never forget).   

I'm чумачечая...

That explains a lot.

up is down.

one week/блин/I haven't even left and the nostalgia begins (bear with me y'all)

My days as an expat are coming to a close.  One week from today I will be on a plane heading back to America. [insert dramatic pause here] Yes, AMERICA.  Needless to say, I have very mixed feelings about this fact.  Some days I get lost in thought thinking about how great it will be to see my family, to kiss my pooch, to sit on the porch at the Fair, to go back to Rhodes and move into my new house with some of my dearest friends, to eat purple-hull peas, watermelons, Central BBQ nachos and Jerry’s snow cones supreme (just to name a few).  I get excited looking to the future and all I left behind to come here because that life is good too.  But then I think about what it will be like to not be here and, well, I just can’t bear to do it.    

Last night I was sitting on a park bench with Karolina and her friend Vika.  Karolina asks me,  “So, have you decided when you’re going to Piter?” (My travel plans are perpetually up in the air, I am in the former USSR after all).  I reply, “Yeah, actually this time next week I’ll be there.  Crazy, right?”  “And then you’ll be in America!” she responded excitedly, expecting me to share in this sentiment.  But all I could think was, “Блин.  Я не представляю...Америка.”   That thought freaked me into a silent shock as I realized all at once, all over again what that means.  It means that everything that has become normal will disappear.  The way that I now talk, act, dress, interact, buy things, read, dream, travel, understand, eat, drink, and think is all about to change.  Living in America is great and I am glad to be going back, don’t get me wrong, but life there is very different from life over here.  Going so suddenly back to that world is, basically, absolutely terrifying.    

I've been abroad for a good while, almost seven months now.  A lot of time has passed and a lot has happened, both here and at home.  Shortly after arriving in St. Petersburg, I remember asking my roomie Neha (who spent last semester in Argentina) if she thought that she changed a lot during her semester abroad.  Honestly, I thought she would probably say yes.  She, however, responded by saying no, that she actually discovered she is exactly who she thought she was all along.  She asked me if I thought I was changing, to which I replied, I don’t know.  At the time I was in the middle of experiencing so many new things at once, and I really couldn’t put into words how that was affecting me.  I couldn’t say for sure if I was changing or not.  But as I look back at my semester and I see where I was at the beginning and I see where I am now, I think that Neha had it right.  The way that I live has changed.  The kind of experiences I have on a daily basis has changed.  But I feel more self-aware than ever before.  I feel that a part of me that has always been there has had the chance to live freely and wildly in Russia.  And, oh it feels good.  In the words of the great Emliy Tamkin, if my soul had a voice it would probably speak Russian with a Southern accent.  That’s who I am.  Piter helped me to see that very clearly, and not being in Piter (or in Belarus) will not change a thing. 

So this is my last hurrah, my last chance to take in every moment.  In the next week I will be in four different countries.  Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and America.  And once I’m in America, well, I’ll be in America.  That’s the final destination (at least for now).  And despite the nostalgia, despite the shock, despite that part of me that’ll still be floating somewhere along the Neva, I think I will really be happy.