Five Days to Pack
“So, where
are you going? Russia, right? Moscow?”
“Not
Moscow. We’ll go to St. Petersburg, the
Baltics, then Germany, and finally Denmark.”
“Sounds
great. Wish I could go.”
I’ve had
some variation of that exchange at least ten times in the last few days. Dr. Javier Garcia and I are leading a Juniors
Abroad group (15 students), leaving Portland a few days after spring semester
ends. My new wife, Sarah, a veteran
international traveler, will accompany us.
Friends may think, and some of them tell me, that they envy me. Maybe.
But they aren’t thinking of what has gone before. In the past, when I taught Juniors Abroad, I
was very much the “junior” professor; my colleague (Ron Mock in one case,
Caitlin Corning two other times) did the hard work.
I’ve been
preparing for months. I first proposed
the trip in fall of 2017; after it was approved, students enrolled in spring
2018. At that stage, Roger Newell was to
be my faculty partner. His book, Keine Gewalt! No Violence!, describing
the German churches’ response to Nazism and Communism, provides much of the
academic substance of the course. But in
summer 2018 Roger reluctantly decided, for health reasons, that he ought not to
go on the trip. We decided to ask Dr.
Garcia to take his place, and Javier quickly agreed.
In fall
2018 we prepared our budget, which meant planning the trip in greater
detail. I discovered a gold mine disguised
as a human being: Viktorija Giedraitiene, who works at LCC University in
Klaipeda, Lithuania. Viktorija has managed
US student group trips to various destinations in eastern Europe. She planned the first half of our trip (Russia,
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), including museums, churches, historical sites,
and more, even preferred restaurants!
With spring
semester 2019, preparations shifted to high.
Our class (GEED 365J) began meeting on Tuesday nights. Students made class presentations on various
aspects of Baltic or Russian culture (food, religion, music, even German
beer). They all read Keine Gewalt! and wrote papers on one of
its chapters. Sarah visited the class
and gave packing advice. We invented quizzes
for review purposes—and for fun.
(Weinerbrod is not a hot dog.).
For health reasons one of the students had to drop the class, but 15 are confirmed
to go.
In February
we applied for Russian visas—NOT a user friendly process—which added cost to
the trip. The application required we
send our passports to an office in Washington, DC. Our actual passports! In a FedEx truck! You can’t leave the country without a
passport. After three weeks of mild
anxiety, the visas and our passports arrived.
I began to think: “This is actually going to work.”
Airfares
have been paid, hostels and hotels reserved (paid in most cases), insurance
forms filed, temporary cell phone upgrades made (don’t want to lose students), and
foreign currency acquired. I’m going to
give each student 3000 rubles the very first day. Don’t get excited; it takes a pile of rubles
to buy a sandwich.
Now we’ve
come to final preparations. Earlier this
week we had the student bring packed suitcases to class so we could practice walking
with luggage. We’ll do a lot of that in
airports, train stations, and hotels. It’s
important not to overload one’s suitcase.
I suppose I’m
about 95% ready. I’m not Rick Steves,
the famous travel guru. Somewhere along
the way I’ll wonder why I didn’t remember to bring something. That’s part of the adventure.
Of course,
before we head for PDX, there’s the little business of grading . . .
