Back at it

I arrived back in Krasnoyarsk today at 12, and couldn't have wasted time if I tried. By 3 I was at the university, meeting with people, trying to rearrange my schedule so as not to be teaching on saturdays, getting an emergency translation correction assignment, handing over documents to get myself all officially situated again, etc. It was a little overwhelming, but I saw a lot of faces I'd missed and was warmly greeted by some of my favorite students in the halls.

It's always a slightly shocking transition to start work or school again after as long of a vacation as I've had. But one can't be on vacation forever.

It's been an excellent January, and I feel lucky that even though I had to say goodbye to Oberlin, I still got to have a winter term. Phase II of my January travels began with an action packed couple of days in St. Petersburg with Fulbright colleagues Matt, Brendan, Riley and Kevin (stationed in Vladivostok, Tomsk, Kyzyl, and Novosibirsk, respectively), followed by a few days of Fulbright seminar in Moscow. Throughout our time in the capital cities, we played hours and hours of cards, and spoke English together with a special kind of ferocity bred most likely by the glut of native speakers to associate with in our provincial outposts.

The end of the Moscow conference put Brendan, Riley and I on a train back to Siberia. Train life was so soothing I felt like I could potentially have made it all the way to Vladivostok. We continued to play a lot of cards, sang some songs, ate lots of products, slept a lot, and made a new friend who wanted to know everything we could tell her about the Caribbean--which wasn't much.

Two days and two nights rolled right by, as did a solid chunk of the Russian Federation, and we popped up in Novosibirsk without a very clear idea of how we were going to get to our next stops. Brendan and I left Riley at the train station to head home to her Tuvan clan, and began some complicated negotiations with taxi drivers to get back to Tomsk. We eventually agreed on a scheme that involved taking a taxi to catch up with the last bus which had left a half hour before. As crazy as it sounded, it worked out ok and we made it to our destination. The next few days involved more cards, more relaxing, more jokes about words, and then, at long last, it was time for me to head back to Krasnoyarsk.

So here I am, and here I will be for a while longer. Stay tuned.