RUSSIAN WHITE NIGHTS

SPONSORED BY THE RUSSIAN FLAGSHIP PROGRAM

RUSSIAN WHITE NIGHTS

When I think back to the summer of my sophomore year at UW-Madison, I see a collage of images, conversations, and events that transformed my life. Within two short months, I went from being a farm-raised Wisconsinite who had only ever left the country once, to having lived and traveled abroad in a place with a rich, ancient history: Saint Petersburg, Russia. After packing three years of Russian into two academic years and a summer in Madison through the Russian Flagship Program, it was time to become fully immersed and travel abroad. I chose to study in the city of Saint Petersburg because of the image of the old, imperial capital with its unique Russian twist on all things European. These ideas had been cultivated by my Russian Flagship instructors and tutors who had told me about their experiences in the city, showing me images of the city’s landmarks, canals, and palaces — not to mention that Saint Petersburg is the city of Russia’s most famous and influential poet, Alexander Pushkin. A romantic image was already in place in my mind, but little did I know how much more surreal and emotional its realization would be. Before any of this would come to fruition, I had to overcome my doubts and fears. I worried about how intense the culture shock would be, and about the people of Russia. I was nervous for my homestay, as I did not know much about the person whose home I would be living in for the next two months. Some of my tutors, faculty, and staff from the Russian Flagship Program were Russian and had created a positive image of friendly and kind people. However, I recognized that just a few people were not necessarily representative of the entire country. When I arrived in St. Petersburg, those fears were washed away Thanks to the time I had invested in learning the language, I was able to communicate with most people with ease, and anticipated cultural differences like stern, unsmiling faces on the streets and the lack of a sense of personal space. I was not prepared, on the other hand, for one of the more natural elements of the experience — the summer “white nights.” Nighttime lasted for only four hours of the day, which made the scenery beautiful in the hours-long sunsets but totally ruined my sense of time. At my homestay, I found out that Olga was an amazing, intelligent person. Despite the fact that she spoke no English whatsoever and I had only started learning Russian two short years ago, during my first night of staying in her home, we sat up discussing the history of the monastery next door and the tomb of the ancient Russian hero Alexander Nevsky. The white nights let us lose track of time until midnight, when Olga realized the hour and quickly whipped up a huge meal for the both of us. Russians, unlike some of the Western Europeans, had no “set time” for eating meals, she said — it was just important to eat three in one day! Perhaps she was just being witty, but this evening, a testament to how far I had come in my understanding of the Russian language, became the first image in my collage of memories from Saint Petersburg.