Last Weeks, First Weeks, and the Near Future

Well, since I've been home for almost a month now I guess it's about time I updated this blog, huh? For those of you who wondered, I did survive the last month and a half in Russia without my computer! Except for one or two minor inconveniences, I actually got to the point that I hardly noticed it. But that doesn't mean that an electronics store wasn't one of my first stops once I got home!

Our last few weeks in St. Pete were super busy. I probably went more places and saw more things in the last 2 weeks than in the 9 months preceding them! Not to mention all the parties, get togethers, goodbyes, and last things. Here's a small sampling:

Baseball in the park with one of my linguistics classes (Athens)

Enjoying the Victory Day celebrations downtown

Going for a walk with two of Erica's students, Lisa and Natasha

Day trip to Vyborg, a beautiful city near the border of Finland

Visiting a museum at Peter and Paul fortress with Natasha

A boat tour of the city with Masha

On our last day, several different groups of students dropped by (unplanned) and it turned into an impromptu going away party! Then Dasha and Arina came over to spend the night, though very little sleeping was done. They helped us finish packing up the apartment and stayed so we could spend every last minute together and then they saw us off in the morning.

On the way home, Erica and I spent a week in Berlin with our friend Toni (Antonia), one of the German girls we met in St. Pete. It was a great chance to hang out and see the city and to get a little decompression time between leaving Russia and arriving home.

These first few weeks at home have been a great break, though I haven't been sitting around doing nothing. Between cooking for my family and taking on some of the housework, organizing and labelling my pictures from the year, studying Russian, and reworking my lesson plans for next year, I've been very busy. But it's a different kind of busy, which is a break in and of itself! Plus I feel like I'm getting a great head-start on the year to come. Which brings me to my next bit of news...

It looks like I'll be back in Kazakhstan for this next school year! It's been a bit of a roller coaster deciding where I'll be teaching. First, the school in Vologda where I was hoping to teach backed out, so I thought I'd be in St. Pete again. But then, due to the difficulties in finding teachers who would qualify for a KZ visa, ESI asked if I'd be willing to return there. I only found out for sure after I'd already left Russia, which made my goodbyes particularly hard. I never knew if it was "goodbye until September" or "Goodbye for good." I'm definitely sad that I won't be returning to see my friends and students there, but I'm also excited at the chance to return to another city and country that I love. And all this country and city swapping is making sure my blog lives up to it's title!

So that's the long and the short of it. I'll be sure to keep you posted as I wait to see where in the world God will lead me next!