Getting To England, Part 1

The Anya Story

In July of 2005, I went to Russia to help with an English language camp just outside St. Petersburg. During this camp, the American students were all put in rooms with two or three Russian students.

For the first week of the camp, I was rooming with Anya, Tanya, and Anfisa. At the end of that week, Anfisa left and Tanya tag-teamed with her friend and coworker Sasha. Anya -- lucky her -- was the only roommate who got to put up with me for the whole of the camp.

I was possibly the luckiest of the American students; all of my roommates had a pretty good grasp on English, and they were all rather friendly girls. Anya, Tanya, and Sasha were all great friends from university and actually lived together during the school year; they let me into their group surprisingly easily, much to my delight. And, oddly enough, we were nearly inseparable during the whole of the camp.

Goodbyes were bittersweet; I had no idea if I would ever see those girls again.

As luck would have it, Anya ended up in the States the following summer, working at a Girl Scout camp in Illinois. When the summer ended, she and I met up at Intervarsity's chapter camp in Minnesota, and then she headed back to SoDak with me for a few days. Our reunion was happy and fun from beginning to the miserable end, when I had to rather coldly drop her off at the Minneapolis airport.

The following year was one of turmoil for me, as I graduated and moved to Cheeseland. We stayed in touch via occasional emails -- and then I started to make plans to visit St. Petersburg in 2008.

Two attempts at getting a visa failed, and I had to concede defeat before trying a third (very expensive) time. I was angry and more than a little saddened. But then Anya said something unexpected -- "Well, I'm getting married in England next year. Perhaps you could come to that?"

(To Be Continued...)