Snow

It snowed here yesterday. We had heard weather forecasts predicting about 7 inches - um yeah like I believed that - and it had been so cold this week that it made the inside of your nose hurt like hell when you stepped out into the cold, but when I looked out the window at 6am there was nothing there. Oh well, I thought.

But when I opened the door to go out at 7:30 there was a blanket of snow on the floor and it was continuing to fall - omg - how exciting. We don't get much snow in England and when we do it rarely settles so two things happen: 1) Everything comes to s standstill - trains, buses, schools close etc etc because we are ill equiped to deal with it and 2) Everybody goes mad with excitement and will make the most of it. When I came back from spending 3 months in Russia I found the snowfall we sometimes get in England very disappointing. In a way having snow every single day for that long ruined it for me - nothing would be so magical again... but yesterday I began to feel a sense of excitement creeping back in - maybe time has made it more enchanting.

I have to say that it was perfectly timed, as in the past week or so I have been incredibly nostalgic for all things Russian and Russia. This is crazy because I have never really been that fond of the language and culture. Don't get me wrong - I appreciated the language and found living in the country an amazing experience, but it never had a place in my heart. What you need to understand is that I didn't choose Russian, it was an option I had to take to get into University. I didn't choose University, it was an option I felt I had to take because I didn't know otherwise. And I struggled so much during the year leading up to University and the 4 years I was there.

I dreaded leaving home for years before I did and when, on my first day, I had to register into my halls of residence, I hid timidly behind my dad. My parents knew that that experience would "either make or break me" and every time I called home they expected to have to come and collect me. And the beginnings of my University life were a real struggle. It took me a good couple of months to really make friends and if it wasn't for having a really intensive course with mounds of work to do (learning Russian from scratch and trying to get to A Level standard in a year was a lot of work!) I don't know how I would have coped. As it was I really began to struggle healthwise and my only choice was to keep moving forwards.

I know look back on that year with tender fondness - it was the year I began my life as an independent and capable adult. It is the year I truly began to see how strong and resilient I was. It was the year I first discovered romance - however disastruous that one turned out. It was the year I went began a major spiritual crisis, which would continue cause me to hide parts of myself from the world for fear of rejection. It was the year everything changed for me...

Within all this I was learning so much Russian and my improvement was easy to see. I was far from a confident learner but I did know deep within myself that I could do it. My second year was a blessing and a curse - I went through a nightmare to come out into feeling more at peace with my beliefs - and my language teaching and learning went downhill completely. Followed by an eight month period of pretty much no Russian I found myself living with a Russian lady who spoek no English whatsoever and whose personality I clashed with on a major scale.

Russia, then, for me, was an absolute nightmare. I, once again, became that timid little girl, hiding herself in her room and letting everybody else talk for her when out and about. I worked so hard to get my language level up to scratch but I constantly felt it was lacking. I hated that I had become that person again and I hated that I was so far out of my comfort zone that I had to face the fact that my self-esteem and self-worth were so low I would try to please everybody and change myself to fit in with their needs. My landlady was an incredible teacher for me - showing me my faults, but man was that a tough time.

And so, although I appreciated the language and really wished I could appreciate living in that amazing culture for 3 months, I seriously couldn't. And by the time I reached my final year at university my confidence in my language was so low I don't think anybody truly believedhow little I believed in myself. And I began to hate Russian.

So, for me to suddenly feel a desire to listen to Russian and its melodic pronunciation and see those fairy-tale churches in the snow is a pretty unexpected event. Something within me must have shifted. Somewhere I must have found peace with my past - I know I have been working on a lot of things lately and have come to peace with a lot of my issues but I hadn't realised this was one of them - and it just happened in a split second - just like that!

So yesterday's snow, though exciting in its own way - held something fairly special to me yesterday :o)