
A long bus ride took us into the mountains to our final destination: the home of a middle-aged Russian man named Sasha. He took us for a walk around the pla

But I had to be polite and everyone else was eating it so I did and it was AMAZING!! Lesson learned: I will never turn down foreign or bizzar food again. You can’t judge a book by its cover. I would never ever think to eat this crazy plants but it was one of the best meals I ever had.

I was sitting next to one of the

At the end of the next day though, I made my way back to the ship just in time to catch the last little ferry boat back to our ship, and who is there to greet me!? SASHA!!! He drove 1/2 hour to the dock JUST to say goodbye to ME!! Can you believe it? It was so awesome. He can't speak a word of English so he went and found a random person to translate. He had brought me a liquor that he made himself from local plants for me to take home to my family in Pennsylvania, but we're not allowed to bring alcohol on the ship so we drank the whole bottle right there on the dock there! lol He told me that he is going to learn English so that he can talk to me and that he will come to Pennsylvania to visit me and cook for my family!

(FYI, that is not the SAS ship behind us in this picture!)
I just feel so blessed to meet all these people and make such good friends. This was the most amazing three days of my life. Right now I'm staring out the window at the most AMAZING sunset I have ever seen, over the Russian mountains...
I was sitting on the boat this morning I was looking out to Russia and thinking about how amazing my life is and how lucky I am that I can look out a window and SEE RUSSIA!! Who gets a chance to do that?? I have had so many amazing experiences so far and its only day 13!! Can you believe that! Semester at Sea is awesome.
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Going back and reading this post five years later (and editing it for this blog) I'm thinking a lot about the impact that Semester at Sea had on me. After my first international port my eyes were already opening up to how huge the world is and how isolated we are in the states from the cultures of the world. The biggest lesson of this particular trip was that people are the same everywhere. A smile really is international and can break the barriers of language. I am so glad that someone committed international passport fraud, or I never would have gone on this trip.
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