An Unforgettable Junior Semester!

AIFS' St. Petersburg program was a language intensive program, which I really liked. Before I came into Russia, I did not know a shred of Russian but when I was paired with my host mom, who pushed for me to buy an English-Russian Dictionary and sat with me every night as we drank tea and spoke in Russian, it was the best experience of my life! I remember the first time we have a lengthy conversation - it was about 4 hours - but of course my Russian was not grammatically correct, but she encouraged me to speak and corrected my mistakes. The staff were very helpful, especially when I needed to go to the doctor. They even went out of their way to help set us up with volunteer opportunities and conversation partners to enhance our Russian. The teachers were also great. The classes were taught in English, besides our Russian class. Learning from a different point of view is definitely something that helped expand my point of view.