When I was just a couple months into being a teenager, I went to Russia in 1993. We were the first group of Americans allowed into the Udmurt region, and we tra

When I was just a couple months into being a teenager, I went to Russia in 1993. We were the first group of Americans allowed into the Udmurt region, and we traveled from Saint Petersburg to Izhevsk to meet our host families for a short stay, and then to Moscow before leaving the country. It was the first time in my life when I saw anything like that. I remember a few times when I said things that I still cringe at saying to this day. Prior to entering Russia, we stayed in Stockholm. Stockholm was a shining jewel compared to Saint Petersburg, which itself was a shining jewel compared to Izhevsk. I remember I asked out loud if a hotel was going to "be like Sweden", completely oblivious that I was embarrassing the Americans and Russians around me. Things like this that still make me cringe today. The city of Izhevsk was famous for being the home of the inventor of the AK-47, as well as the Baikal munitions plant, which supplied a lot of the world's Soviet ammunition. I remember seeing a group of children, perhaps six or seven years old, running through the street and drinking from a bottle of vodka. A few months later, our Russian host-family counterparts came to stay with us in the States for about as long as we were in Russia. My grandmother gave me a hundred dollars (kind of a big deal in '93 heh) to take my counterpart shopping. When we were at the store, I remember talking about buying some toys and taking my counterpart to the toy section at Walmart. You know what he did instead? He bought Levis and cans of coffee for his family. I still cringe every time I think about how I behaved back then, but for sure it taught me an enormous amount about the world in a very short time.