Word of the Week: Homesickness

Homesickness: n. 1. Sadness because one is away from home. 2. What I was experiencing in massive amounts on a random Sunday last month.

After completing my first two months in Ekaterinburg and watching homesickness wash over each member of our international cohort, I have rethought exactly what homesickness means and why it afflicts us at a given moment.

From what I can tell, homesickness—much like culture shock—occurs at the moments when we no longer have patience for Russia, when we have a string of bad luck with salespersons and buses, when all we really want is a triple latte to go and instead we get a tiny cappuccino in a teacup that we have to consume in a café that is blaring techno music. It is in these moments that I long to be home. Usually, the feeling passes within a second, a minute, or an hour; I start speaking Russian with ease for a few minutes or I go to a museum and see something that I’d never see in America or Midore screams in excitement and I remember just how cool it is to be here. But every once in a while, the moments pile up too quickly and that’s when real homesickness hits.

And then what does it mean? It is still unclear, but from what I can tell, homesickness means actually grasping the physical distance between myself and my homeland. There are days when you all feel just a moment away. And there are other days when I think I can feel every river, hill, city, country, lake, sea, and ocean between myself and America. These are days when I know that I am trapped in the middle of an enormous landmass called Eurasia and that really, there is no escape.

I picked homesickness for the word of the week because a few weekends ago I battled my way through the worst wave of it to date. I actually had a wonderful weekend, but a series of unfortunate events that occurred within a hour of each other caused me to finally lose my patience with Russia. I came to Jen and cried for as long as I could. When I stopped to take a breath, she looked at me and said “Yup, it’s been a month.” As it happens, four years of living in Russia arms you with some skills for beating homesickness down. She sent me on a walk to an internet café an hour away and in the meantime went out and bought an American movie in English, orange Fanta, and popcorn. When I came back, not only was all this American comfort waiting for me, but also a huge ice cream cake that Midore had purchased especially for me. In the end, I not only felt better, but found myself thinking about how lucky I am to live with these wonderful people. I love our international community, because we are all battling our own way through a unique version of culture shock and homesickness, but we somehow manage to do it together and help each other out as we work our way through Russian life and culture.