Three...

Three trips to Moscow... Ah, ah, ah!

It occurs to me that we leave in about ten days for my third tour of duty in Moscow.  It's an odd mixture of knowing exactly what to expect and having absolutely no idea what to expect.  I try to take the advice I gave the students going in this year's group: don't base your expectations on what anyone has told you about previous years... this will be its own experience, and it will be special and it will be yours and it will be exactly what it is and nothing else.  

But I can't help but speculate, wonder, remember the awesome and the awful memories... it's the burden of knowledge that comes with my very strange and very frickin' cool position.

I have to say, I'm nervous about a lot of things though.  First, I'm nervous that I know so many of the people in this year's group so well.  It has a lot of room for great fun and wonderful shared experiences, but it also has added potential for conflict.  I'm sad about leaving my brand new apartment after only three weeks, disappearing for a month, coming back for two and a half weeks, disappearing for a week and a half... and then FINALLY getting to start living here.  We've done a good job of settling in and setting up the common areas so it feels like OUR place, but it's still just a little strange - by the end of June, I will have lived in the dorms at the Moscow Art Theatre FOUR TIMES LONGER than I have lived in my apartment.

WEIRD.

And don't get me started on leaving my kitties in their new digs with their fuzzy new roommates... without Mommy to protect them!  Of course Brian will take excellent care of all the fuzzy children, but I can't help but do the worried mommy thing.

Still... these are the minutia.  These are the burrs under my saddle that will be wiped away when I set off down Тверская on the familiar walk to the MXAT school, when I see the now familiar faces of the phenomenal teachers, when I rise to my feet at the end of a show, tears in my eyes because of the sheer beauty of the thing.

I'm going to miss my new home with my awesome roomies (especially the tall, human-shaped one), but I'm going to have yet another amazing Russian adventure... and it will be unlike the others that came before it... and it will rejuvenate me for another grueling year of PhD studies... and I will fall in love with Moscow and my fellow travelers all over again!

Of course... before then I have to write a conference paper and pack and get my s**t together for my prospectus... and prep for my summer job (yeah... I have a job in the middle of all this madness)...so... uh... how do you say, "gulp!" in Russian?