Reflection

As I was sitting on the couch of a friend last night, I tried to reflect on a trip that became one of the most unbelievable experiences of my conscious life.

People often asked me how I managed to sleep 1.5-2 hours a night on average and still smile and be full of energy, and the answer is very simple: I could not get enough of this trip, and enjoyed every single second of it. If anything, our conversations with our friends from St. Petersburg made me realize how fortunate, lucky, and privileged I was to be participating in such an adventure. From their perspective, integrating such an event into a language program is fascinating, alluring, but also somewhat incomprehensible due to the fact that they did not imagine it was possible for a school to provide its students with such a remarkable opportunity.

I vividly remember the question I received from Sasha Koustov after describing life at Conn during our formal discussion, which was: "Is is really that good?" The perspective that I gained during the trip makes me even more confident in the resounding "Yes" I was going to give as an answer. I am not quite sure what I have done to deserve such a gift, but I am forever thankful for having received it.

For that, I would like to say: THANK YOU SO MUCH, Prof. Lanoux, for providing me with the most diversified and enlightening set of experiences in addition to an additional motivation to excel in Russian, and THANK YOU, classmates and Anichka, for sharing this wonderful trip with me and for being such amazing travel companions.