Well, I finally managed to reset my password and gain access to this wonderful site that Daniel created for our journey.    

       You’re probably wondering who the heck I am; well, I am Rachel E. DeForrest. I am a senior at UWT, and I was one of three students chosen to travel to Moscow, Russia to co-produce a magazine with the Russian students. I am the former News and Assignment Editor for the Ledger, the UWT student newspaper. Now, I write for pleasure, and it has been a nice change of pace. I am also a mother of two, so this trip along with just attending school on a regular basis has been a challenge.

       Let’s recap the trip. This was my first time flying for more than 5 hours in a stretch and this was my first time outside of the U.S. Therefore, the journey for me was very different from my fellow travelers. The flight there was long… really long. Anybody who has traveled to another country knows what I am talking about. The air is dry and you try to distract yourself from the fact that the air you are breathing is the same air you’ve been breathing the entire flight, which means is simple terms the air is recycled. But, I put that in the back of my mind. Except for when three people were sick on the way home, I prayed that I, too, did not become sick on the plane.

          We arrived in Moscow tired and hungry. There were light snow showers, so I, of course, was excited. SNOW. Have I mentioned how much I love the snow. But, that would be the only day snow touched the ground and stuck around. Diana picked us up at the airport. She is a kind, often soft-spoken MSU student, and she managed to have two cars waiting for us at the airport.

        Let’s talk about the culture shock for me. Probably for everybody else, I was the only one to really notice how different our culture is from Russian culture. I chalk that up to my inexperience as a seasoned traveler. Or, maybe they noticed but just did not talk about it as much.

        People drive fast. I am not talking 60 mph fast, I am talking 90 mph fast, and once I saw the speedometer reach that fast speed, I decided it was time that I not pay attend to the speed anymore. Drivers veer in and out of lanes; squeeze their small, agile cars into tiny openings in the traffic. The drivers manage to stay calm during the rush of getting to one place and another, and that shocked me. For if I was driving in the same circumstances, I would be honking my horns and spitting curse words left and right. But, these people seem calm, well, at least those who I rode with in vehicles. The traffic is bad, but that is another blog for another day when it’s not 5:50 in the morning.

        Almost everybody sported some type of boots in Moscow. I assume it was because the weather is so cold and snowy. I did not see too many people wearing tennis shoes. Jackets are a must. I spent a few of my days wearing a sweater and a dress jacket and I felt fine, but a few of the MSU students worried that I would be too cold. I worried that I would be too warm and start sweating. I never pulled out my waterproof, fur-lined boots. I suppose that is a good thing because I have never worn them. It would have been my luck that my feet would have responded to the shoes by developing blisters, and that is just something I am so glad I did not have to deal with because people walk…everywhere… and fast.

      The pace of people in Russia is different from the pace of the people from the PAC West. (pacific northwest). People in Russia have places to go and they speed walk from the Metro to the streets, to the underground crossings, to the streets above. They seem to always be in a hurry to get from one place to another. This differs from the nonchalant stroll that people from here have. We have a carefree attitude that when I get there, I’ll get there, and it will be okay. It is as if we are taking a long stroll in a little park watching birds fly by. NOT in Moscow,… they move the beat of some disco-nightclub-techno beat that has 16 beats per second. Talk about getting fit. Live in Russia for a week, you’ll gain legs of steel.

       I have to admit that I was very quiet on this trip. I would have to say that was because I was in complete culture shock. It’s difficult to understand if you are a seasoned traveler and have been everywhere. The memory of being outside the country may be buried deep in your mind, but for me, I was hit with differences. I did not want to offend anybody so I often stayed quiet unless something absolutely needed to be said. I was also a little ashamed that I wasn’t able to pick up the language. I have never had a knack for learning a language. Look at my transcripts, those are my lowest grades, and I worked my butt of in those classes more than I have in any of my other classes. I hear the words differently and say them differently. The students at MSU know multiple languages. Not just English and Russian, but German and Chinese and many other ones. I felt like in our culture we are lazy and are taught or even forced to learn a language. We, as a culture, assume that we don’t need to learn a language because everybody will know English. I think that is naive. I applaud Daniel for being able to study Russian before we left Tacoma, and then integrate it into his conversation with the students. I just felt ill prepared and even now, I can’t say thank you in Russian without butchering it. The shower in the morning became my place for practicing the words I picked up in Russia, but I never grasped the language. Go figure.

       The experience in Russia was different. Yep, I used the word different because I can’t seem to find a word that fits my experience. It was good, it was enjoyable, it was fun, it was difficult, it was unique, it was new. My writing wasn’t up to my normal standards. And, it’s not that I haven’t been writing because I have been attending “campus beat” events and writing news briefs for pleasure. I think I was still absorbing everything around me. I was often distracted by the differences around me, and the architecture and the people in Russia. It is quite the experience to travel abroad for the first time.

       Overall, how did the project go? Great. We produced a high-quality magazine. The content is absolutely on point. I couldn’t have wished for more diverse choices in articles and the skill of the writers was on point also. I am sad that I bonded with the students the last few days while I was in Moscow. I wish that I was able to relax more and just breathe. But, that’s what e-mail is for.

       The students from MSU were wonderful. They took us to restaurants, gave us tours, partied with us, and let us see how their culture differs from ours. But, more importantly, they helped me to see that students from MSU and UWT are really not all that different. Students run into the same kind of problems, have the same kind of likes and dislikes. Though we live in different countries, we share so many things.

        It’s those choices that make us who we are, and it is with those choices that we are unique from each other, but also the same. The theme of our magazine was choice. It represents our countries, our students, our lives. Check it out. 

 ~Rachel 

Making the Zhurnalist: UW Tacoma’s 2008 Moscow Trip