Between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Vladimir Putin, Russia was a country in transition. The old traditions of Soviet and even Imperial Russia were mixed with the new influence of the Western World and American entertainment. And in the easternmost oblasts of Europe, a small industrial town on the Vyatkan River introduced its first ever exchange student. This memoir is of the very first American to live in post-Soviet Kirov. He had never before met a Russian, and the students at the Chemiko-Biology Lyceum had never met anyone from the West. The experience that he and those he spent time with impacted their lives for decades to come.