Elena Kirillova ‘14
East Asian Studies major / Computer Science minor
Associated Kyoto Program, Japan
Academic Year 2012-2013
As I was wracking my brain trying to figure out why I went abroad, I realized that I myself never had a concrete reason or a proper goal for doing it. My reasoning has always gone something like this, why not just go and see what happens?
Why did I study abroad? In fact, I studied abroad 3 times.The first time I left Russia, my home country, was to go to a school in Wales, UK, called United World College (UWC) of the Atlantic. That year my Russian high school received a scholarship to offer to two graduating students the opportunity to go to Wales, and I happened to be one of the lucky two. At the time of the offer I was looking to apply to a university in Saint Petersburg and major in optical engineering. If I was to go to Wales I would be doing another two years of high school but this time in English. Even though I had studied English for 7 years in school I did not speak it. But UWC of Atlantic had a castle on its grounds and was right on the ocean so I thought, why not? And so went my time in Wales.
Having endured two years of linguistic isolation and having finally acquired a decent speaking ability in English, I wondered – should I go back home or should I consider applying to a university elsewhere? By this point I wanted nothing to do with engineering/physics and was thinking of majoring in Computer Science and Japanese. I weighed my options. Going to a college back home meant spending my last year in Wales preparing for the Russian Unified State Exam, since my results from two years ago would soon expire. Meanwhile, my school in Wales hosted the SAT right in that castle I mentioned earlier, the American application process seemed many times easier, and if I went to a Liberal Arts college I could major both in Computer Science and Japanese. There is nothing like liberal arts in Russian universities.
And that’s how I ended up at Colby. I did a google search “Colby sushi” and read something about sushi in the dining hall and thought, this is it. Little did I know, what a rare occasion sushi is on Colby’s campus.
Now, finally to my study abroad while at Colby – I was double majoring in Computer Science and East Asian studies as planned, and once I found out about the year-long Associated Kyoto Program in Kyoto, Japan based at Doshisha University with which Colby is affiliated, I jumped at the opportunity because when else in your life might you have a chance to go somewhere like Japan for a whole year while still not being an adult with all that adulthood entails? Also, I had taken so many Computer Science classes in my first two years at Colby that I wanted to get away from my laptop.
And, oh, did I ever! During my time in Kyoto I lived with a Japanese family in their traditional 100-year old wooden home in Kyoto, spoke only Japanese with my host family, and biked to my university in Kyoto everyday for my classes in Japanese language, history, and religion. As part of a competition between the different Japanese classes in my program we created this video in which we are singing about how much suffering we endure studying Japanese. The lyrics include things like “transitive verbs, intransitive verbs – why are you so different?..” and “Tomorrow is a quiz on Japanese characters and I am crying…” :). My class won the competition!
Outside of classes, I was able to visit many parts of Kyoto and Japan. With my program we went to Hiroshima and Miyajima, partook in a tea ceremony at the last surviving house of noble poets with Kimiko Reizei, visited the Great Buddha of Kamakura and the Great Buddha of Nara, and watched the mount Wakakusa burn during an annual festival. In my free time, I went jogging in the Kyoto Imperial Palace Park, did some couchsurfing with my fellow AKPers in Hokkaido and Okinawa, stayed at a ryokan during a skiing trip in Nagano enjoying bathing in a hot ofuro after each day of skiing, molded a chawan in Shigaraki, and fell in love with black sesame ice-cream! And the list goes on!
After a year in Japan studying Japanese poetry, history, religion, and linguistics, etc., I returned to Colby and spent my senior year translating a Japanese fairy tale into English and researching the life of a Japanese Buddhist potter.
In the end, studying abroad exposed me to life: different ways to behave and look, things one can do, and ways to perceive the universe. It helped me become me by showing me the wide variety of ways life can be. Ironically, I have landed in Maine after Colby and plan to stick around this time. I am proudly living the Maine slogan “The Way Life Should Be” by drinking Japanese sencha tea daily and rolling rice balls for lunch (onigiri), cooking Russian traditional desserts and soups for my loved ones and speaking English, something I would never be able to do unless I had gone to Wales.