{"id":14,"date":"2002-08-07T15:55:00","date_gmt":"2002-08-07T15:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/archives\/2002\/08\/07\/back-to-the-motherland\/index.php"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T07:00:00","slug":"back-to-the-motherland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/archives\/2002\/08\/07\/back-to-the-motherland\/index.php","title":{"rendered":"back to the motherland&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In two days i&#8217;m taking a 9 day trip back to russia.  It&#8217;s hard to even begin to describe the excitement that i&#8217;m feeling.  My parents took me out of russia when i was only 3 years old, and i have never been back since.<br \/>\n<center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pages.sbcglobal.net\/5mighty\/vlad_small.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s weird.  I&#8217;ve lived pretty much my whole life here, 23 years, and yet still i totally feel a strong connection to the country in which i was born.  Even though i don&#8217;t really do russian activities, or talk in russian very often, i still definitely feel that i have this core russian-ness about me.  I just feel that in so many ways, i really understand russian people.  i know where they are coming from&#8230;. what their mindset is.  And yeah, granted, pretty much all of the russians i know are also pretty americanized&#8230;.  but there&#8217;s still this weird common bond that all of us have.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s gonna be so weird to all of a sudden be somewhere where *everybody* has that common bond.   every person i see will have that same core and inner culture that around here i see so rarely.  i&#8217;ll be hearing russian spoken everywhere.  i&#8217;ll be eating russian food&#8230; and seeing russian sights.  i&#8217;ll be totally immersed in it all.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s always nice in life when you can connect w\/ people about your past.  for instance, pretty much everyone i know now used to go to raves, and on a certain level we can all connect in that way.  we all shared a certain lifestyle, certain experiences, and music together.. and because of that there&#8217;s this common feeling that we all have.  even if i met someone i didn&#8217;t know, who used to go to parties, i&#8217;m sure we could have some great conversation and bond over past experiences that we shared&#8230; even though we didn&#8217;t share those experiences together.  in that same way, i feel like there are so many russian past experiences that i share w\/ millions of people that i don&#8217;t get to reflect on quite as often.  and now here&#8217;s my chance.  a dream come true&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>-vlad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In two days i&#8217;m taking a 9 day trip back to russia. It&#8217;s hard to even begin to describe the excitement that i&#8217;m feeling. My parents took me out of russia when i was only 3 years old, and i have never been back since. It&#8217;s weird. I&#8217;ve lived pretty much my whole life here, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/archives\/2002\/08\/07\/back-to-the-motherland\/index.php\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;back to the motherland&#8230;.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-san-francisco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}