Round two in Russia
Exactly a month after I left Irkutsk on a three-day train to Moscow, I returned to the glorious and icy “Paris of Siberia” eager for semester two, but slightly anxious, too.
On my January travels, I didn’t make to the real City of Lights, but I have no regrets—Moscow, Germany, and the Czech Republic (with the week on the Trans-Siberian…) served me well in recovering from the first four months in Irkutsk, as well as in 
getting excited for the last four and a half.
Nonetheless, the mixed feelings remain, but since I’m not planning on leaving Irkutsk until semester’s end, they are likely to be sticking around. But, is that such grim news after all?
The dilemma. Is what I’m learning outside the Russian classroom making up for what I feel like I’m missing out at Middlebury in Vermont, academically? Do the challenges of negotiating social, volunteer, and professional lives in Russia balance out with the rewards of the cultural experience abroad—in a city a far cry from sharing the beauty of a Paris or Venice, to boot?
Despite the sporadic difficulties reminiscent of the USSR, the chance to spend a year abroad is a phenomenal one, in any case. The same half-skeptical questions come back, but so does the same, right answer: it’s on me to make the most of it all, and to make the “most” the “best.”
The game plan. Step one: continue what I was doing, but bigger—Russian courses (check), literature courses (an independent study and a mainstream, this time), and cultural learning (more weekend museum trips and traveling).
Step two: add more, and be bold in doing it—be involved (continue volunteering, intern in the media, teach English), be creative (sing in the IGU choir, find private time on the piano), be healthy (stick to the swim-tennis-ski schedule), and make unexpected friends doing it all.
The evaluation. Can I do it? Heck yes. Ready, go.
