One week to go before the big trip, and it's literally all I can think about. I'm sure I have a to-do list the size of Alaska, but whenever I try to think of something to do to get ready, I just get overwhelmed and end up studying Russian. Could be worse, but those nightmares about being woken up by my mom saying I'm late to go to the airport and I have to leave with what I have packed and done right this minute are becoming more frequent (and realistic.)
I haven't kept a regular blog since high school ended, and really, I've kind of missed it. Hopefully that means this won't be one of those travel blogs where people set it up, write the obligatory "I'm so excited, I'm going to write every day!" post and then forget about it once they land in their new country.
This is ridiculous, I've been speaking and writing so much Russian this week on Rosetta Stone that my spelling in English is awful. Things like spelling 'once' 'wonce', or 'write' 'wright.' I imagine this will only get worse as time progresses, and this blog will soon be the only place I speak any English at all.
The name of the blog is pretty ridiculous, no? I was making fun of myself, saying that all the blog titles I could think of were Soviet references, cliche, or as cheesy as 'Nina in Russia,' but then I realized they are the proper names, clearly. So Nina in Russia it is. So there.
At this point, I know I only have 7 days left, but I just don't want to think about how I'm spending them. If I get it in my head that I want to spend 'quality time' with my family, my friends, my dogs, Chris... I get overwhelmed by how little time I have and I freak out, and then I end up with days like today, where I didn't even leave Amanda's apartment, which I stayed in by myself without even Amanda until 6 pm.
It's not helping particularly much to just try to think about Moscow instead... I mean, my language is nowhere near ready, everyone in my family thinks I'm going to be shanked or sold to traffickers, I have absolutely no clue who my host family is, and I've never been in a city bigger than Denver. Ooooookay.
Aaaand this is becoming a little bit too little like a surface-level travel blog where I post pictures and itineraries and a little too much like my high school blog, where I wrote my innermost whinings for the benefit of my best friends (and the high school enemies that came across the address.) I will lighten things up in future posts, to be sure. You've got a good enough idea of my pre-show jitters, hopefully my next posts are all sunshine and verb-conjugation woes, as a good study-abroad blog should be!
До свидания,
твоя Нина
