First Beginnings

31 January.

There’s Jan Jacques from France, Mark from England, Anna from Holland, Rhia from Canada, Paolo from Spain, Christian from Denmark, Brendon from Oregan, Becca from Virginia, Lina from Germany, and many other Chinese students whose names I cannot pronounce nor even guess how to spell. Our dorm is just like any other college dorm: people hanging out in the kitchen cooking together and drinking tea, running back and forth across the hall from room to room, drinking together on a Saturday night. I’ve met so many people within the past two days that I can’t even imagine how many great friends I will have during my time here. For the past few days I’ve had nothing to do and have felt no guilt spending extra time under the warm covers, debating electronic music with Jan Jacques, and qualifying any outing into the subzero degree weather as a great accomplishment. I’ve actually enjoyed my lack of access to the internet, and I’ve much better spent my time staring at the ice crystals on my window that completely obsure my view of the crazy Siberian locals who I can hear playing basketball outside my window in -15 degree weather, in the dark.

My roommate and I have been living off of cereal and chocolate, though tonight we have endeavored to cook eggs and toast. I have no idea what the future holds: my class schedule is still a mystery to me, I haven’t yet started my internship, and evidently I have yet to really experience authentic Irkutsk temperatures.

Even as I think of how much more cold I will encounter and the length my stay here, I am nothing other that excited for what is come. I plan on affording my schoolwork as a secondary concern and taking advantage of the everyday opportunities to speak Russian on the street, meet people from all around the world, and making up for the misery I endured last semester under piles of reading and paper assignments. I set as my goal to read Anna Karenina in Russian by the end of the semeter, taking it only one chapter a night. Although today I guiltlessly put off starting it and instead popped one of my OC dvds into my laptop and watched it my bed with a cup of instant coffee.