If I drink a glass of kefir before bed every night, will I become Russian? If I eat cabbage soup with sour cream at least twice a week, will I begin wearing high heels every day, like so many Russian women (young and old) do? (Spoiler: Even if I live off cabbage soup with sour cream for the rest of my life, this will never happen.) If I eat tvorog and buckwheat kasha and yogurt for breakfast every morning, will I stand at the bus stop without self-consciously checking my reflection in the windows of every passing bus, making sure I look normal, convincing myself that people’s eyes are just passing over me, not lingering on me because I look like an alien? (By the way, speaking of aliens, I’ve never actually read Stranger In A Strange Land, but the title was floating around in my head for some reason.)
My cashier in the supermarket today asked me if I had twenty kopecks when I paid, to make the change she gave me even. I didn’t understand, so I began giving her rubles. She smiled and said, in Russian, “No, these,” and pointed to a kopeck. She didn’t roll her eyes when she realized I was a foreigner. She didn’t try to cheat me of the change she owed me. She didn’t throw my groceries on the floor, stomp on them, and exit the store in a fit of rage, leaving a mess of cabbage and kefir and tvorog and buckwheat (look, I’m trying) at my feet. So why do I constantly have to remind myself that the vast majority Russians would not react in such a way to foreigners? (Maybe I have xenophobia-phobia (an irrational fear of irrational fear of what is perceived to be foreign (which is a word I made up (so don’t google it))).)
Regardless of what the people with whom I interact think of foreigners or Americans, I am slowly learning that I need not be embarrassed when I am “found out” as a foreigner (especially because being “found out” is unavoidable as soon as I open my mouth, as I mentioned here). To me, an important part of being a 20-something is experiencing, for the first time, a sense of confidence (and even comfort) in many of the things I do and think — the things that “make me me.” I should not slow this process by over-thinking everything I do while I walk around Krasnoyarsk or over-analyzing every unsuccessful conversation I have in Russian, beating myself up over each mistake I make.
KJA 