I am grateful for:

Making it to 22.

I had a birthday! I’m now just beginning my 22nd loop around our sun. What a wonderful and exciting prospect.

Since my birthday only came a few days after my arrival in Novosibirsk, I didn’t expect anyone to take note. In all honesty, celebrating my birthday makes me a little uncomfortable. I don’t really need all that attention. BUT I received so many warm wishes and gifts from people who barely know me at all. A beautifully illustrated book from Dima, a Flemish pin from Ruben, lots of goodies from Siobhan, my faculty, and even Siobhan’s boss (who literally has never met me).

Face pains.

I’m smiling a lot and it hurts. But in a good way!

Olesya!

I’m certain Olesya will come up many times through these posts. I hope Fulbrighters all over the world have someone like Olesya in their respective host countries.

Olesya met me bright and early at the airport my first morning in Novosibirsk. Later that same day she brought me grocery shopping before inviting to her apartment. We had tea and sampled traditional desserts and she went through her closet and gave me all sorts of things that I need but couldn’t fit in my suitcase to bring over (flip flops, oven mitt, mugs, sleeping bag, bowls and cups. So dreamy, right?). She just has the biggest heart, and it’s clear her students love her for this too. Also, Olesya is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Really just brilliant.

Olesya was a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant in 2012. She taught Russian at a college in Indiana. She managed to visit NINETEEN states during her time in the U.S., which amazes me. Thanks to Olesya, I’ve connected and hung out with so many students and learned SO much about teaching.

My first half marathon.

This is deceiving — I did not, in fact, run a half marathon. But I did do 21 kilometers of hiking/bushwacking/climbing/jumping through the woods outside the city. I gotta say, it felt like home. But this wasn’t like most of my White Mountain adventures as this was a competition and we had to find different markers throughout the forest. I was on a team with three wonderful women from my university, including Olesya.

A trip to the zoo.

It just so happened that I had planned to meet up with some students to go to the zoo on the same Sunday that happened to be my birthday. I’ve been to a lot of zoos but I gotta say this one is pretty stellar. And absolutely massive. I think we spent almost 5 hours walking around and we still didn’t see everything. My favorites were the bears. As we were walking by the monkeys, people were throwing bananas up and over into their cages, and the monkeys did a good job of catching them. The whole scene was probably breaking lots of different rules, but I still smile when I think about it.

Several people have told me that they immediately know I’m not Russian because of my “big American smile.” I wonder what they mean by that.