Ready to go!

So FedEx just came at 2:45 today with my passport and included visa. I also received my plane tickets so I'm all ready to go. I'm just finishing packing and cleaning... but mentally I'm ready to go. I'm not really nervous at all... just excited to go. I've been preparing for this moment for a year now, so even though I only have less than 24 hours left in the United States, what I'm doing feels natural.

About Blagoveshchensk

So one thing I forgot to post was information about the city that I will be living in for a year... Blagoveshchensk! Blagoveshchensk is the capital of the Amur Oblast and has a population of about 250,000 people. It is located in Siberia/the Far East, on the intersection of the Amur and Zeya rivers. The mur river forms the southern border of Russia with China. I will be able to look across the river and see China! The city across the river is called Heihe and has about half a million people living there. The present-day city of Blagoveshchensk was founded in 1856 as a military outpost. During the Chinese Boxer rebellion, the city was shelled for two weeks, and it was taken by the White Army during the Russian Revolution. The city does a lot of trade with neighboring China, and has a port, an airport, and is connected to the Trans-Siberian Railway. In the Summer, the temperatures reach +35 C (95+ F) an in the winter, the temperatures drop to -20 to -30 C (-4 to -22 F).The View from outside the Murzakova's apartment window

Leaving on a jet plane...

I just received my final itinerary yesterday! Looks like I have a lot of traveling ahead of me. I am departing from Columbus on Tuesday, August 25 at 1:48 PM. From there, I will fly to Chicago, and then arrive in Los Angeles. Once I am there, I will meet up with another exchange student, Laura Secor, from Oregon, who is also going to Russia. We will depart LAX for the 6,000 mile trip to Seoul, South Korea, at 12:20 AM Wednesday morning. On our way across the Pacific, we will cross the international date line and lose a day. After a 6 hour layover in Seoul, we finally depart for our final destination, Vladivostok, on the east coast of Russia. We will arrive in Russia at 3:50 PM on the 27th. The trip to this point, including the change in time zones, is 52 hours over 8,500 miles. On the 28th, there is an orientation in Vladivostok for all of the incoming exchange students to Russia. Then, on the 29th, I will get on a train on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Blagoveshchensk (or Blagoveschensk, I've seen it spelled both ways), my host city, where I will arrive two days later, on the 31st. I will be taking the two-day train ride alone, but the Russian Rotary is paying for my ticket and my food for the train ride. So, from the time I leave Columbus to the time I arrive in Blagoveschensk, I will be traveling for 6 days.

The day after I arrive in Blagoveshchensk, on September 1st, I start school at Blagoveschensk State Pedagogical University. At the university, I will be studying with the students in the English-French department. I can get extra Russian tutoring for free if I exchange my English for it, and I will also be studying French (from Russian), because of my interest in foreign languages, and my exchange to France last summer. The rector of the university was nice enough to let me study at the university because of this and my age, and I really appreciate that he did this for me. In Russia, secondary schooling only goes through 11th grade instead of 12th grade like here in the US. This means that in Russia, you enter the university when you are 17/18, and since I am 18 and will be turning 19 while I am there, he allowed me to study there. I don't get to choose my classes, and I may have to take some classes at the secondary school if I can't handle the university classes, but I am going to do my best in my university classes. It will be difficult at first, since I do not know a lot of Russian, but I will be trying to learn the language as fast as I can. I'm going to try to not speak any English to anyone (except in my english class!), so hopefully I will pick it up quickly.

The first two weeks of my exchange in Blagoveschensk, I will be staying with my host counselor, Larisa Patlay. She and her husband Victor have two children, a son Vadim and a daughter Evgenia, who are both studying in Australia right now. They are vegetarians, and they offered to serve me meat while I stay with them, but I think I am going to try being a vegetarian for the two weeks that I am living with them.




After I live with the Patlays for two weeks, I will move in with my first host family, the Murzakovas. Anna Murzakova is actually a Rotary exchange student who is here in the US right now for the year. She is staying in Charlotte, MI. She has a younger sister, who is 9, a mother and father, and a dog, Masha. They live in an apartment in the center of Blagoveschensk.

So now you all know what I will be doing for the first month or so of my exchange. For the first month, I will not be in contact with anyone with the US and I'm going to try to not be on the computer that often. I'm not bringing my laptop with me, so I will not have an English keyboard, but I'll try to keep my blog updated.

With only about a week to go, I am getting pretty excited to leave. I have my suitcases open on my floor and I am starting to pack them up...