Today

Pack your bags for a city in Western Ukraine that nobody knows the name of. Pack your books, your black sweaters, and pictures of the ones you love. Kiss your mother and father goodbye; don’t look back when you get past security. Buy yourself a coffee and wait at the gate for your flight. Hold tightly to your passport and re-read your flight itinerary. Look around at the people sitting near you; where are they going? Are they sad? Wonder about them and wonder if they’re wondering about you. Try to distinguish the different languages being spoken. Board the plane and curl up next to the window. Breath in recycled air for ten hours. Listen to your music and read letters from home. Let a few tears escape, then brush them away because this time, you’re going at it alone. Touch down in Amsterdam and stretch your legs. Fight off sleep with books and small coffees. Board another plane and fly to Budapest. Accept a tea from the flight attendant and stumble over your words when she asks where you are from and where you are going. Walk around the city in a tired haze. Eat street market food. Feel your pulse quicken and think: “Tomorrow, I will be in Ukraine.” Go to sleep and wake up and board a train to the Ukrainian city that will be your home for the next few months. Make your home in a little flat. Let your books form a fortress around your bed; tape pictures of your dog and family next to your pillow. Think of yourself as the luckiest girl in the world. Take baths in the small bathtub and fall asleep with wet hair, wrapped in wool blankets. Learn the bus schedules and the idiosyncrasies of the tiny elevator. Train your heart to be gone. Remind yourself that you have chosen to be absent and your solitude is a beautiful thing. Remind yourself that you are young, beautiful, and you are allowed to fall in love with a different country. Walk the dusty, cobblestoned streets and listen to the men play music on the bridge. Sit alone in a café and drink coffee with milk. Pretend you are Ukrainian. Recognize the stray dogs you see every day. Nod a hello to the goat you see every morning. Barter for apples in broken Russian and burst into a charming fit on laughter when the old man gives them to you for free. Drink old red wine with new friends. Write to your mother and father and tell them that you miss them. Stand on the little Soviet balcony when you can’t sleep. Take a weekend train trip to another city; lay back on the tiny bed and feel irrationally happy about being in the middle of nowhere. Let people miss you. Meet new people. Pay attention. Write it all down, only for yourself. Sit down and write in the notebooks you brought from home. Don’t filter your thoughts; write down everything you have seen and everything you have heard. Learn how to teach English through trial and error. Sit on the floor of your bedroom and make crafts for the children. Make pumpkins and spiders out of construction paper. Fall in love with the kids at the orphanage even though you’ll be gone in a matter of months. Adore them even though you will soon be just another goodbye. Daydream about wrapping them in blankets and watching them watch Lion King for the first time. Let yourself be sad because you know that will never happen. Stop worrying about germs and let every kid grab your hand as much as they want. Sing “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” forty thousand times. Wake up on a day that is not specifically special, do your morning routine, and come to the quiet realization that Ukraine feels like home. Think about how your heart will likely always be in two places now; and know that that is both a gift and a burden. Put off thinking about saying goodbye.