Leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again.

I'm not sure how this happened, but I'm leaving Russia tomorrow, and I don't know if/when I'll return. In some ways, it seems like I just stepped off the plane, saw Russian everywhere, and thought, "what have I gotten myself into?" But it also feels like it's been a long time. 

Weighing heavily on my mind are the amount of changes I'm about to go through, which seems so odd, because life is the same here as it was a week, a month, or even six months ago. In a way that's comforting, because I know life will continue as I've known it on this little corner of the world. 

I've never been good at preparing to say goodbye to a place or the people in it. Despite the fact that I classify myself as a thinker and a reflective person, I'm never able to process my departure until it happens, sometimes not even until afterwards. I remember sitting at the final campfire on the last night of camp surrounded by crying girls, trying to will myself to cry. Even willing other sad thoughts and punching myself in the leg. But I wasn't ready yet, and not much has changed.

As with any ending, I've thought and talked a lot recently about "the lasts". The last time I see Red Square, the last time I frequent my favorite bars, coffee shops, and other haunts of Moscow. And of course, the last time I see the people I've grown close with over the past year. But I'm not quite so worried about these "lasts". My greatest memories in Moscow may be some of these times, but hopefully not only those. I'd rather remember the times that I didn't know would be memorable until later than the times I was so concerned with the future and how I'd think back on this experience.

I may post again when I've had some more time to think, and maybe found some closure. My mind has been split for a while: I'm living here and enjoying the experience and sad to be leaving, but I'm also excited to go back to America and embrace the next adventure. As well as drink water from the tap, have great iced coffee and Mexican food, and not be stared at for speaking English on the street.

In closing, I would say the biggest emotional response I have to leaving is that I'm proud of myself. That seems like a pretty self-righteous way to end this, but blogs are kind of self-righteous, and it's the truth. This experience was hard, and surprising, and dull and hilarious and odd and confusing and frustrating, and fun and new and exciting, and I'm pretty sure there was a month or two in the winter when I was vitamin D deficient and mildly depressed. But I grew, and I made it, and for that I am proud and grateful.