Italians seemed so…individual. When I saw a person, depending on how they dressed, smiled, gestured, carried themselves, I felt like I could tell something about their personality. With Americans, I take that ability for granted—I spent 22 years developing an internal social road-map of America, and roughly placing people in it, given little information, isn’t that difficult. (Artichoke and Blueberry and I were talking about this, in the context of how the teachers relate. Blueberry agreed that the Brits were a lot easier for her to place, and Artichoke saw the whole idea as a negative pigeonholing of people. I think he's wrong, it just gives you a framework so you don’t have to completely start from scratch when you meet someone.)

With Russians, I have very little to go on. By and large, people I meet have similar mannerisms, clothes, ambitions, leisure activities, tastes in food, and opinions (or lack of them) on the state of the world. For a while I assumed I just didn’t know what to look for, that Russians had their own entirely different set of distinguishing factors to which I was oblivious, but the overall sameness feels more profound than that. (Interestingly, Natasha, who's obviously much more attuned than me, locates difference between people in the choices they make rather than how they somehow are.)

It's a far cry from the America where I grew up, where everyone was a unique one-in-a-million pearl who had never before graced the face of the planet and never will again. Given that upbringing, talking about sameness feel like a criticism. It’s not, entirely. It’s pleasantly disarming when I meet people socially and they immediately they act like we’re friends. Russians assume you’re okay, because why wouldn’t you be. You don’t have to prove yourself like you do in the States, which aside from being a relief seems to prevent that painful and rather distinctly American tendency to try way too hard to be cool.

But it’s also kind of lonely. I can't get used to feeling so interchangeable. It’s also frustrating to feel like I don’t really know people, and to wonder if it’s the lack of value placed on individuality or my own inability to see.