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Siberian Sabbatical

This month marks the end of winter, and I feel pretty good. Not because from here on out winter is behind us and spring and summer are very imminent, but because I survived. I can tell people now how I survived a whole winter here in Siberia. Forty below feels like nothing. In fact, the Russians had a version of our Polar Bear Club and took a dip in the river – I can tell you that I will never take for granted our 20-below temperatures. The grey and cold has finally begun to lift, and I feel this great sense of joy – like some sort of holiday spirit that I missed out on this year. Never again will I have to step outside in the morning and have my nose and eyes immediately freeze shut. I am a survivor!

This month I would like to talk about what it means to be an American. This isn’t some patriotic essay for the VFW club, but a way to inform you all about something I think many of us take for granted. You must realize that the Cold War is over and the tensions between the United States and Russia are nonexistent. People on the whole, usually when the weather is -30 degrees and above, are very kind to me as a foreigner.

Americans, and foreigners in general, are very rare in my city here. I can probably count on one hand all the Americans living in Irkutsk. I really don’t speak English anymore, apart from calling home, because fluent English speakers are about as rare here as skim milk, though I am surprised at the number of Russians who study the language. English isn’t considered a foreign language; it is a standard language. Schools make it mandatory to study English and consider all other languages optional. I have realized that our language is one that is used everywhere. Everywhere that I have traveled to the signs are all in English – except, of course, the operations for the toilet. People almost seem to take pride in showing off their English memorabilia.

Even with this lust for English, there are very few Americans and other foreigners who speak English here. I am usually the very first American that people have met. Most of my friends have never even seen a real American before. Usually people invite me over to their houses to drink tea and tell about home, and when I travel to small villages, all the neighbors visit to get a look at the American. I am basically treated like a celebrity here.

I recently traveled to a city a little bit smaller than Irkutsk called Angarsk, known as one of the main chemical and gasoline producers in Russia, and I haven’t quite felt right since I returned. I went to a school to tell about my life back home. When I entered, about 200 eager faces were awaiting me, complete with news cameras and photographers for the newspaper. After the school I went to a few different museums. When they found out I was an American they called their “higher-ups,” and they personally guided me. After that I attended a hockey game that the team invited me to. In short, they kicked some serious butt, and it was a little hard to go back to my normal school the next day.

However, even in my normal life, I am treated very well. The director at my school shakes my hand everyday and lets me use his computer, which is a sign of high respect in Russia. School lets me come and go as I please; I think it helps their reputation to have an American studying in their school. I go to the one and only American restaurant, Subway, and I am treated like a god – I know how the sandwiches are really supposed to taste.

One of my all-time favorite things about being a foreigner is speaking in a foreign language. I absolutely love speaking in English here because everybody looks at me as if I am a piece of licorice or a s’more – which are nonexistent here. When I am on the bus, I like to call one of the only other English speakers and my only fellow exchange student, Willow, from Canada. We then have a long drawn-out conversation about voltage converters and our registration. Absolutely everybody turns around and stares at me as if I was, well an American. I especially love having an accent – it is a real girl getter.

This month I also switched host families and I am very pleased with my new family. Our apartment is huge; I went from living in a three-room apartment to one three times the size. We also have excellent food – chicken breasts, apples, yogurt, walnuts, raisins, all of which are expensive and I haven’t eaten since I was in the United States seven months ago.

Food is actually one small part of what I have been missing in the United States. There are so many things that you all are used to and I would kill to have. For example, school. This may sound silly but school is one of the main things that I really miss. The building is huge and in very good shape; my school here was built under Stalin and hasn’t been remolded since. That isn’t even mentioning the lack of athletic facilities. All the computers put together at my school in Russia are probably the same as one of the three computer labs at my school at home. School buses are out of the question. Music is nowhere to be found. In short, I will appreciate Gibraltar a lot more when I return.

School is one of the many things that we have as Americans that most people in Siberia don’t have. I cannot begin to tell you how good life is back home. I can only tell you it can be a lot worse. These things I have mentioned are only a few of the things we have in the United States that I took for granted before I left. It gives me so much pride to see how much people here respect and admire the United States.

However, pride is bittersweet and remorse fills me with how little we know not just about Russia, but about other countries and cultures in general. Compared to Russia, few people back home study a foreign language with very much vigor and interest, and I think I can say around the world people study English this way. It is a way out for these people. If you know English then you got it made; you can communicate with the world. For us, that isn’t a problem. We have lived with this way all our lives and don’t know anything different. We don’t realize what it is really like to not be an American. I propose that everybody should start and try studying a foreign language – for when you study a different language you study not only the language but the different culture as well.