T minus 8 days until I set off for Russia. After months of waiting for my letter of invitation and the ordeal of jumping through hoops of rightly filling out my paper work and using the proper method of payment to purchase the visa itself, I was able to pick up the completed visa from the consulate in Houston today. Thus, by the will of God, it seems that I my adventure in Russia is inevitable.

Many of my friends and family do not understand my fascination with this part of the world. I say "this part of the world" because I am interested in the former USSR in general, and not necessarily Russian proper. Indeed, during my time in former Soviet Central Asia, I was not studying Russian and often found myself sympathizing with the regional revivals of languages and cultures that were marginalized during the Soviet period.1

To quickly summarize why I decided to fill my 14 hour language requirement at the university with Russian instead of Spanish, my initial interest in this language was due the fact that it was easier to study in America than the language I learned in Central Asia. Since most of my friends in the city I worked in spoke Russian, I figured I could learn the language and maintain meaningful correspondence with them. If all goes to plan, I will visit the area I worked in after the semester ends and thus realize this goal. This may be a complicated process, but I trust that God will provide me the opportunity to reunite with those precious people I lived among several years ago. In light of the fact that I do not foresee a long-term opportunity to return to that particular region in the future, such a visit would allow me to find closure to my experience there so many years ago.

And so, I wait for that great airplane ride to the wild wild east. Lord willing, my next post will be from Russia itself.

1. Just in case there are Russians reading my blog who are offended by this statement, I will say that I do see value in promoting the study of Russian in former Soviet states. The knee jerk reaction of some post-Soviet countries to completely do away with Russian education in order to distance themselves from Russia proper is not necessarily wise. These countries still need to communicate with their neighbors. And even within these countries people need to communicate with their neighbors in the next town. In a country as linguistically diverse as Tajikistan where the guy in another clan on the other side of the mountain may not speak the national language, some sort of common language is needed. Since most people over the age of 18 have studied Russian formerly and/or acquired it as a second native language in childhood, it seems that Russian should remain the regional lingua franca. That is just my geopolitical two cents

Also, to further lighten the blow of my sympathy statement above, I must comment on the complexity of the language itself. I admire anyone who can carry on a sophisticated conversation in a synthetic language (as opposed to analytical languages like English, Spanish and French) with 6 grammatical cases, three gender forms for nouns, and some incredible consonant clusters and still make themselves understood. Honestly, can any non-native speaker of Russian really say the following transliterated sentence as fast as they can say the tongue twister "Susie ate a sardine sandwich": Vo vtornik mi vstretimsa, shto bi gotovitsa ko vstreche s svetlanoi mikhailivnoi katoraya sostaitsa v tretsivo sentebrya? If you could do this on the first try, I'd give you a cookie.