Last Days....

So, tomorrow is my last official day in Yaroslavl, and I have such mixed feelings about it!!! (Really, I was like a crazy person today, swinging between being super excited and just about crying). On one hand, I miss everyone soo much back home! On the other, this has become my home too!! How do I leave one to go to the other?

As any AFSer could understand, the end of the year is the hardest. You rush to try and get everything done, see everything and everyone, but you know that you really can't. There's no way to fit in everything, no matter how hard you may want to, but it doesn't make it any easier. Today we finished souvenir shopping, saw a park on the other side of town, went to the Planetarium, and went out for pizza. It was amazing, and sad and perfect and I wish it wouldn't have ended. The park turned out to be more of a big 18th century, beautiful building, and then a couple of ponds around it, all with "No Swimming" signs posted right by where the boys were jumping in. We dipped our feet in too, watched some adorable ducklings and took plenty of pictures, which I may or may not end up putting up when I get back. We'll see.)))

Tomorrow, I'll finish packing, we're going to go swimming, and then we'll figure something else out to do.

As I've said before, and as many of my AFSer friends are writing on their blogs right now, there are just so many conflicting feeling that come with this ending. This year has been such an amazing experience, one I barely have the words to describe, and the end of it is so terrible, and so wonderful at the same time. In some ways, the end of this year here in Russia is simply a continuation of my life back in the US, but in so many other ways, it is the start of something completely new. I keep telling myself that, reminding myself that this isn't even really the end of anything at all, but it's hard. It's hard to say goodbye and not know when I'll be returning. It's hard to know that when I do return, so much will have changed without me. And it's hard to know that no matter what I do, everything will change anyways and I can't stop it.

I'll try to embrace the change, take it in stride, and not just move on, but incooperate everything I've seen and learned this year into what I make of the rest of my life. I won't forget those lessons, or the people that taught them to me.

For now, I'll let my last word from Russia on this blog be in the form of a video that I think captures a lot of how I feel about my time here. Enjoy!

At Home in Russia

I'll see you soon, be home on Monday.

From Russia,

With Love,

Bettina