3 days...

Alright, my first real entry! This will have to serve as something of an intro for the journey upon which I’m about to embark. For those who don’t know already, next Monday I will be leaving for St. Petersburg, Russia for six months, during which I’ll be taking Russian language courses at the State University there and having all sorts of terrific adventures no doubt! Why Russia, you ask? How many times have I heard THAT question? It’s valid enough, mind you - why decide to go to the world’s most northerly major city (the 4^th largest in Europe at 4.6 million) in the middle of the infamous Russian winter? Why not go somewhere nice and less crazy on my first trip abroad, somewhere like Germany perhaps? Well I’d love to visit Deutschland and I plan to do just that soon enough, but the inexorable pull of Russia is too strong! I find so much about the country absolutely fascinating: its dramatic and monumentally tragic history, its beautiful language, and its rich art, literature, and music. Part of Russia’s allure is no doubt the fact too that it’s such an unknown to people here, including myself… such a vast, mysterious place. Even after years of reading all sorts of Russian books, taking courses, and attempting to learn the language, I feel that I’ve barely scratched the surface of understanding the country Churchill famously called “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Best just go and experience it myself!

Although the past four years of university have been great, I’m really looking forward to this radical change in my life, a chance to try something completely different from everything I’ve known. Plus, by the end I’ll hopefully have an amazing repertoire of my very own travel stories that will come in handy when my well-travelled friends tell me about their amazing trips to Europe, etc, etc while I sit in jealous silence. Up ‘til now my only far-away journeys have been family trips to Hamilton, Ontario aka the Lunch Bucket City!

I’m not expecting it to always be an easy time or a pleasant experience; I’ve heard enough stories about life and travel in contemporary Russia to know that there are plenty of problems over there. But it’s all part of the experience - I’ll take it how it comes.

That said, the Russian winter is still a worrisome prospect... I mean, facing cold that’s enough to freeze panzer armies in their tracks and turn the finest soldiers of Napoleon’s Grand Armée into a tottering pack of ragamuffins, what chance do I have? I’m from the toasty Okanagan, for Pete’s sake!