Man in Motion

Two days from now will mark a year since I arrive in Russia. It's hard to believe all that has happened since. Although I came here with a vague plan to apply to graduate schoolsl while I was here, I had no idea that, at this point, I would be looking forward to entering a master's program in Intercultural Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Or that the world would be in the throes of economic crisis. Or that I would have taught English to a group of women from Tajikistan--a country I had hardly heard of before coming to Moscow.

At the same time, I find myself ready to leave. I've battled homesickness most of the time I've been here--not always very successfully. It's hard to believe that in just 50 days--seven weeks and a day--I will be flying back to New York. I will be there for a few days before I head on to Philadelphia to look for housing. After that, my plans are less clear. I have determined on doing some travel, by Greyhound and Amtrak (or even possibly by plane, since domestic fares are so low right now) within the United States and possibly Canada.

My exact itinerary, however, is still unsettled. I will definitely start in Boston and move south and/or west. Right now, I am trying to weigh the relative merits of Montreal, Baltimore, Charleston, Savannah, Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco; my mind is quite literally all over the map. Eventually, I will probably head home to Kansas to see my family for a week or two. And then in late August, I will head back to New York to spend some more serious time with good, old friends there.

Naturally, I am very eager to get moving. For a long time, I've had a certain kind of restlessness. That restlessness propelled me on to Taiwan and ultimately on to Moscow. Now I am ready for the final bang that, I hope, will enable me finally to settle down.

I am ready, in other words, to be a man in motion.