Halfway Point: Finally Already

Today, I got a day off. The only thing on my schedule was to visit the museum director, Tamara Pavlovna, and tell her how my trip went. I had wanted to go alone, but Venya insisted we go together at 11:00. When I showed up on time, Venya had already been there half an hour, telling Tamara Pavlovna everything about the trip, so there was nothing left for me to tell.

But Tamara Pavlovna was smarter than to believe everything he said. I complained about Venya's unnecessary trip into the countryside after I had already wanted to go home, pointing out we could have hitchhiked from Vinnitsy on Sunday and returned to Vytegra two days sooner. Tamara Pavlovna agreed with me and thoroughly scolded Venya.

“What were you thinking, dragging her from village to village when there's no cell phone connection and no running water? You worried her poor mother to death. Her boyfriend probably already found a new girl. She has work she's supposed to do on the internet; she missed a whole week of it.” And on and on.

After a couple days of failing to explain to Venya why the two-day extension to my trip was a problem, it was cathartic to hear Tamara Pavlovna champion my cause. So I let go all my bitterness and started to focus on how much Venya helped me during the trip. Before long, all was forgiven, and we were laughing and telling anecdotes about our travels—the 89-year-old woman who told me she fell in love with me, and the schoolkids in Shyoltozero who dubbed my random traveling companion “Uncle Venya.”

Now that the stress of traveling has passed, I can say it was a good trip, and I'm glad Venya was there to help, even if sometimes we completely failed to understand each other. It happens.

The rest of the day, I spent doing what I wanted to do, which was mostly wandering around Vytegra and eating cookies in the park while the sun was shining and the air was warm. I met an old woman in the park who claimed she could barely tell I have an accent. I think she was hard of hearing.

In the evening, a student dropped by, and we had an impromptu English lesson, practicing talking about the weather and family. She is 15 and very committed to taking lessons from me, because she wants to work as an English translator when she grows up. She plans on coming every other day until I leave Vytegra. I find that I really enjoy working with students on their English, and the pay is decent, so I'm happy with this arrangement.

So I had an easy, relaxing day. It strikes me that my trip to Russia is halfway over. Two weeks from today, I board a plane to fly home. I halfway feel like I've already been here for an eternity, and yet I also feel like I only just arrived. I'm homesick, yet there is still so much more I want to see and do before I leave. It's strange how two weeks can feel interminably long and inscrutably brief at the same time. When you travel, time doesn't fly; it runs in circles until you get dizzy.