Шинник

Every day when I come home from school, I think of all the other things I could be doing, and start to fantasize about the things I will do when I'm done teaching in the Delta. Usually, I daydream about going as far away from here as I could possibly go, to another, even more backwards place, Russia.

I spent a semester in Russia my junior year, and now, whenever things start to get unbearable, I check the price of that one way ticket from Memphis to Moscow. It's still too expensive. Or I'll check the news from the city I lived in, Ярославль (Yaroslavl'). Our soccer team, Шинник (Shinnik) which roughly translates into the little tire men, is now bottom of the table, with one win from twenty-two matches. I only hope to be doing that well when my tenure as a coach begins (seriously, we haven't won a game in three years). I really do want to go back to Russia.

My newest idea is that when I'm done with MTC, I'll hitch a ride over to Springer Mountain, GA, and just walk home. The AT runs through my back yard, so I could do it, no problem. I could start tomorrow. But as much as I say I would love to do these things, right now, instead of teaching, on some level at least I don't really mean it. Because if I left now (or after just a year) I wouldn't be a traveler, I'd be a fugitive, on the run from my failure. But if I am going to fail at this (and I will fail, a thousand times, before I get it right once) I'd rather go down fighting then running.

So my conclusion is that there is nothing wrong with daydreaming a bit about where else I'd like to be in two years. Nothing at all. By then, I'll deserve some kind of reward. But by then, maybe I'd be in the frame of mind to make it a class trip to Russia (amazingly enough, they did it before at my school, about 10 years ago).