Koreans, card games, and crazy cartoons

Entry 20: October 24, 2011

            I was glad to wake up on Friday and discover I still had a voice. I hadn't been feeling very well throughout the week and had been worried that Thursday might have done me in. However, I was starting to feel better on Thursday. For my Capstone course from PSU, every week someone in the class posts a question on the group blog for everyone to answer. At the end of the week, the student who gave the question writes up a summary of all of the answers. This last week was my turn. I asked a question about langauge instruction. I had noticed that Russian English courses are not as shy in using Russian to explain things that are not understood. In America, after second year of a foreign language, English is usually forbidden from the classroom. I think that there are benefits and disadvantages to each situation and was curious as to what my classmates thought.

            As I had expected, everyone volunteered that it was better to conduct a class only in the language of instruction. This encoruages students to not think in their language and provides the opportunity for critical thinking and creative reasoning in the language of study. However, this also means that certain concepts will not be understood. A student may be able to formulate a question in the foreign language, and thus, things are missed. One of my classmates suggested that it is best if the instructors only speak in the language of study, but there should be tutors who are allowed to explain concepts and grammatical constructions to the students in their native langauge. Vova, one of the students in the tourism group, comes into the American Center and talks to me every once and a while. I had an interesting conversation with him and what he thought about the various types of language instruction. The Americans seem to think their system is better, and Vova felt the Russian system was more helpful. Go figure.

            I got the sad news from my mother that Bill Lasher, a man who had always been a great supporter of me throughout my life, had gone home to be with the Lord on Thursday. Despite my efforts to continue through the day like usual, I broke down after a few hours. Without Ludmila, Katya, and coffee I might not have made it through the day. Although I do not mean to lessen the emotions and struggles of anyone, I think that it is more difficult to except something unexpected and sad when one is not home. You always expect that something may happen to you while you are away, but, for some reason, things at home are expected to remain unchanged. Please keep the Lasher family in prayer.

            I wasn't very interactive for the rest of the day. I did a lot of sitting on the couch reading The Secret Garden. Katya asked me what it was about, and I explained it. One of my favorite things about the book is that the majority of the characters speak Yorkshire, and the dialect is written into the text. I found a good section to read to Katya. Accents and dialects are probably the best medicine for me. Tha' munnot think on sad things when there be nowt we wick can do to change it, ye ken? (The tag's Scottish brogue, but whatever).

            I went home early, made dinner, and finished the book. I did a little bit of homework, and made plans with Jackie for the following day.

           

            On Saturday I got up early to finish writing up my final story for Jackie and my book of legends. This one was fabulous and very detailed. Usually the stories I find are short, and then I add to them, but this one was pretty complicated in an of itself. My version of story goes as follows:

            A long time ago there was a group of masons who worked on the original Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin. One of them, Danilo Voloxvets, became a master builder during the building. After they were done, they could not find word, and they became bandits. Hearing of their raids, the prince of the region had the guards catch the group of bandits and throw them into prison. They were in prison for nearly a year thinking of the poor choices they had made in their life.

            Now at the same time there was a young girl Nastasia whose parents had been killed by bandits when she was young. The prince had allowed her to work in the Kremlin, and it was Natasia who was tasked with bringing the bandits their meals in prison. Danilo realized what he had done was wrong, and gradually Nastasia and Danilo fell in love. She secretly promised to marry him once he gained his freedom.

            After a while, the prince desired a new all to be built around the Kremlin with high towers. He came to learn that the bands in his prisons were great builders, so he let them out and order them to build. He was impressed with their work and made a deal with Danilo. The prince would grant the masons their freedom once the building was completed. The masons worked dilligently, but it was quite the task and was taking more time than expected. The prince had a Italian masterbuild, Petro Franchesco, brought from Italy with his helper Giovanni Tatti. Everyone took a liking to Franchesco, but Giovanni was an evil man who was always read to pick a fight and never laid a single brick himself.

            Giovanni noticed Nastasia as she went to draw water from the river, and he began to pretend to be a nice, wonderful person when she was around. She did not fall for his act, but was afraid to anger him. Finally when it was time to break ground for three of the Kremlin towers, there was a church ceremony. After the dedication, the citizens when to throw their person crosses, worn around their necks, into the pit that had been dug, as, acccording to tradition, it would ensure the tower would stand forever. Giovanni took the chance to try and embrace Nastasia, but she slapped him in the face. Surprised, he took a step back and fell into the pit. Danilo was overjoyed to realized that she had not feelings for the evil Italian, and, being the better man, he helped Giovanni out of the pit. Giovanni was humiliated and angry, so he stabbed Danilo through the heart. Despite his extreme pain, Danilo pushed Giovanni at the last minute, and he fell into a pit with boiling lye. The people rushed to get Giovanni out but it was too late. Danilo lay dead on the ground with the knife through his heart.

            Everyone was greatly grieved, none more so than Nastasia. Franchesco talked the prince into agreeing that both Giovanni and Danilo could be burried in the towers' foundations. The masons, who were the former band of Danilo, were angered by this but said nothing. They build Danilo's tower out of while brick, but Giovanni's tower was built with bricks the color of blood.

            Nastasia never forgot her love. Every evening she would walk along the outside of the wall, quietly singing a song about Danilo. After many years, the hills and river finally took pity on her. An underground river rose up and worked away at the foundation of the red tower. The tower crumbled and fell into the river, but the white tower stood as a monument to Danilo's honor and strength.

            The white tower still stands today, but all that is left of the 13^th tower is the base ruins.

            When I finished writing up the story (in Russian, of course), I gave Jackie a call. We decided to try out the cafe across the street from me before field tripping to Lenta. We met halfway and walked back to the dormitory for lunch. After lunch we jumped on the bus to go to Lenta. Jackie was just as happy with the store as I had been. Afterwards we returned to the dorm to watch some Russian cartoons I had been given by some of the professors. Some of them were funny, others were just weird. Our favorites were actually the older ones from the Soviet times.

            The next day I had planned to hang out with some of the Koreans. I took Aliza and Artyom to get coffee at Shokolodniza. Suddenly, I was the translator, and so I did all of the ordering. We order coffee, and then Aliza was hungry so I we got a menu and she had some blinochki. I think our waitress remembers me. I like her a lot. She's very friendly and patient. We were at the cafe for a while just talking about whatever we could think of. I found out that Artyom practically hates Chinese people, and there are a lot that live on his floor. This is made interesting by the fact that Aliza like the Chinese Artyom a lot and frequently talks about him. As always, we had an interesting trilingual conversation. Artyom invited me to a group dinner on Tuesday. Poor Korean food to come. Oh yeah. :)

            When we got back, Artyom went to eat lunch/dinner. Aliza and Feodor, the other Korean guy I had met when I had Korean curry, came to my room to teach me a Russian card game. Feodor's Russian and English are the best of all of the Koreans I've met so far, but the conversation remained trilingual. We played for a while, and then Aliza called Roman, who I realized was Russian as I heard him speaking on the phone. He came down after a while, and we all played together. I think it was 6:30 before we ended our game for the evening. Roman brought my Russian self-confidence back up a little, telling me my language was really good. Ah, the confidence rollercoaster of living in a foreign country.

           

            Today, Monday, is Yuliya's birthday, so lots of sweets are being brought out today. In a bit I'm going to go and listen to a choir perform in the performance hall on the fifth floor. They do a lot of traveling all over Europe, and are apparently phenomenal.

            I'm now on the downhill portion of my time here. Friday was the one month left mark, and I'll be flying out four weeks from today. The time sure had gone by quickly. I need to remember to call Galina Aleksandrovna, the teacher at the children's school, later today to see about coming back to the school. Bring on the business.

Phonetics, Folk Dance and Food

Entry 19: October 24, 2011

            I hadn't realized it had been so long since I've updated. I feel that I'm getting more and more busy which is great. However, it means I spend less time writing, and when I get around to writing I have more to write about. I'll attempt to be brief...but naturally I make no promises.

            On Wednesday I arrived at the American Cener to find several girls waiting for me. I thought we had agreed to meet after the first class, but apparently they thought we were meeting during the time of the first class. I'm not sure where the miscommunication happened, but I was only a few minutes late and we got right to cracking (That may not be a proper adjustment of that particular idiom, but sometimes, being a linguist, I take liberties I feel I can explain away. I will, however, spare you from such an explaination). They had a list of words demonstrating different English vowels, some tongue twisters, and some sentences they needed to go over. We began with the tongue twisters.   One girl would read the tongue twister after which I would repeat it slower. Then I would break it down into parts and have the whole group repeat after me. If I heard an issue, I would repeat something until I heard it corrected. Then, we went through the list of words. I would say the vowel sound in question first, then read the words one at a time to have them repeat after me. Three sounds that tend to be difficult for native Russian speakers are the “i” in “hit,” the “ir” in “bird,” and the “u” in “cup.” These sounds either do not exist in Russian or do not exist in a stressed position. Thus, it makes it difficult for a native Russian speaker to hear these sounds right away. If they weren't hearing it correctly, I would try to explain what they needed to do differently and would sometimes just make them hold out the sound so that they were listening to it. As a last result, I would repeat what they were saying and contrast it with what they needed to say. Although I tended to go straight through the list, if there was a problem word, I would periodically go back to it. The word “girl” we revisited several times. I swear that's probably one of the most difficult words in our languages. A rhotarized schwa followed by an lateral approximate? What were we thinking making “girl” a basic vocabulary word?

            When we went through the sentences, I would read the sentence alone, and then I'd go around the circle and have each girl read it. I would then repeat any problem words or phrases, and the girl would repeat it back. A few words, I had everyone work on. “Three” is actually quite a tricky word. “Th” is another curse of the English language. There are no clues as to when it is voiced as in “the” or unvoiced as in “though.”

            I worked with the group for about an hour and a half. I saw improvement, and I think they had a good time. I certaintly had a blast. I think my dream job would be working with people on their accents.

            Originally, I had thought that the folk dancing night I was leading on Thursday was sponsored by the American Center, but it was not. It was an open event. Therefore, I realized on Wednesday that Russian needed to be my primary language of teaching. This, naturally, struck instant terror into my heart because it meant I needed to learn how to say several things like “on the ball of your foot,” “take your partner's forearm” and so on and so forth in addition to making sure I was using the correct imperatives. Luckily on Tuesday, I had written out the dances extensively in English so that I could do some translating. Yuliya was grading papers on one side of the table and would occasionally ask me questions about sentences. I, in return, would ask her how to properly explain certain things. I asked her how to say “twist” as in “doing the twist.” She asked me to demonstrate, and after I did, she said it was best just to say, “Делаете так” (Do this) and then show the movement. I realized that was probably going to be my favorite phrase the following evening.

           

            Thursday morning, I worked on finalizing a few things for the idioms club. I had made the handout the week before, but I wanted an additional game so I drew up a game board. As the theme for the week was food, nearly all of the idioms would be easy to play pictionary with. Therefore I invented my own version of pictionary with a more interactive board, and asked around until I found some dice.

            In mid morning, I went to proctor a test, as the instructor had another engagement at the time. The class was pretty well behaved. I know the instructor had talked to them about how bad cheating is considered in America. It's a little different here. There were a few students who got rather stern looks from me during the exam, but over all, they were fine.

            When I got back, Katya and I needed to go pick up some snacks for the evening. We hopped on a bus and went to Lenta, which is like the Russian version of the combination of Fred Meyer and Costco. It's an amazing place. We grabbed tea, chocolates, and some tea cakes. Afterwards, we did not head right back to the bus stop. Katya got a phone call so she just gestured as to where we needed to go. When she got off the phone, I asked where we were going, and she said she didn't know exactly. There was a store where you could get plates, napkins, cups, etc. cheaper than usual if you were an organization, and it was used by the American Center. She'd never been there before though. We went to a few wrong buildings before we found it and had to do a little backtracking. Naturally, it was a little sketchy and around the back of a building. Everything is set up and displayed in a room, and you walk around with one of the clerks and say how many of what items you want. Then she put in the order and gave it to us. Then we had to go to a different place to pay. After that we had to go out of the building and walk around back to the warehouse where we found a box of things. Granted we already had two very full bags of food, and now we had a huge box of stuff (200 cups, 200 plates, 14 packets of napkins, which was the minumum, silverware, etc) which we realized at that moment we could not carry on the bus. We asked to two workers if they had a few bags. We had to pay a rouble per bag, even though the box was free, and stuffed them full before heading back to the bus stop. We had a ridiculous amount of things in our hands, it was quite laughable. We were cutting it close on time. We got back about five minutes before the idiom club. Throwing everything down on the couch, I quickly made copies, and then we began.

            As I said before, the theme was food. On the handout I had listed out the idioms on one side with blanks where the food should have been. On the right there was a column of all of the foods. I gave the group 10-15 minutes to try to guess which food went where. Then we went through them, finishing off the day with pictionary. Two of the idioms of the day were “to go bananas” and “the whole enchilada.” They don't have Mexican food here, so I had to explain what an enchilada was. When going through the idioms, Katya supplied “enchilada” into the “bananas” blank. We've decided that “to go enchilada” is how we will refer to random salsa dancing outbreaks during Forro, as in Forro you aren't supposed to move your hips.

            After the club, Katya and I moved things to the kitchen. She helped me go through my dancing instructions, and then I went home for an hour an a half to rest before coming back to set up for the evening. There is a large open space on the fifth floor, and that is where the event would occur. We didn't know exactly how many people were going to show, but we ended up having somewhere between 25-30 at most.

            The first dance went well, but the second one was “And then some...” which, if you have danced with me before, is the dance with haying...and it was a complete disaster. I would try to explain something, and then Katya would repeat it in slightly different words. After a few failed attempts, we realized that there had been a slight misunderstanding between Katya and I as to one important step. We tried one more time, and then just decided to scratch it and try something else. I was trying to figure out what to do. I picked “Guild the Devil” for the next dance because it's the easiest, and is fun because you steal partners. That one went over well, and we ended up doing it twice. Then we had a break to eat food and liquidate. During the break I learned that, although the majority were Russian students, we also had a Chinese student, two Slovaks, and Asa (the Norweigan girl I had meet before) in attendance. I had a good time talking to people, and they did seem to be having fun. I was trying to figure out what to teach next, as the ones I had left had complicated sections. I decided that the Virgina Reel was pretty easy, usually takes a while, and could easily be simplified. Thus, I changed a few things and taught it. It turned out to be the favorite of the night. It was the easiest for me to teach, everyone learned quickly, and everyone had the most fun with it. At the end of the night Katya suggested we dance one more dance but, instead of learning a new one, we could just take a vote for the favorite, and then dance that one again. The Virgina Reel was the hands down favorite, so we closed out the night with it. Over all it seemed that people had a lot of fun, and several people asked when the next lesson would be. I was pretty disappointed with myself over all, as I felt that I had done a poor job and had been endlessly frustrated with my language difficulties. Usually, when I teach, I change the instruction as I go to accommodate the issues I observe. It was very hard for me to do that this time around. Katya helped me out a lot. Thus, I guess the evening was a success overall, but it definitely took my self-confidence down a few knotches. If we have another session in the next few weeks I'll need to choose a few different dances and figure out how to makes certain things simpler.

Art in Leaves and Brazilian Forro

Entry 18: October 18, 2011

            On Saturday morning I worked on some homework and some phonetics records for LUNN, but I started to feel antsy and wanted to do something. I gave Jackie a call to see if she wanted to get together and hang out for awhile. We decided to go to a cafe, and then go over to her place to watch a movie. Although we were going to use my computer, because it has better sound, she has a couch, so her place is better for movie watching. However, during this conversation, I got a text from Katya, so I told Jackie I'd give her a call back. Jackie was looking up the menu at a cafe we had walked by several times to see if the prices were reasonable.

            Katya said we could go to the museum around 4:30, but instead of the festival or the theatre, she planned to go to Forro in the evening, which is a Brazilian dance style similar to salsa but without the hip movement. Naturally, that sounded like a blast to me, so I said I'd love to go with her. Jackie was interested in the museum, but not dancing, so Jackie and I planned to meet up and then part ways after the museum. After ironing my fun dancing skirt and bemoaning the fact that I left my dancing shoes in the 907 (which, if you're not from Alaska, is our area code. It's turned into college student slang for our state), I headed out to meet up with Jackie.

            The cafe was very nice, and we had a whole little alcove to ourselves. There were some more American like things on the menu, but I decided against the burger and fries. Jackie, however, went to order the burger with cheese, and the waitress want to make sure she understood that there was no meat on the cheeseburger...it was literally a “burger” of cheese. Jackie said she wanted the burger with meat, and when the waitress left we looked at eat other very confused and trying to hold back laughter.

            When we were done enjoying our lunch and warm drinks (the day was bitter cold), we headed off to get some art supplies so that Jackie could color the drawing she's working on for our Capstone project. After we were done at the art store we still had an hour or so to kill and didn't really have any desire to be outside for long periods of time. There was a small mall a little ways away, so we decided to go in and look around. We walked in and there was a string quartet playing, which made me very happy. We walked around window shopping, and then sat on a bench on the second floor listening to Mozart and Vivaldi. When we were walking back to the place we were going to be meeting up with Katya we were both humming all of the songs the quartet had played, and that got us started on other classical songs. Although I think that we should probably both keep our day jobs, it made the walk back more fun.

            We met up with Katya and two of her friends by the Theatre of Drama, which was not far from the museum. We walked back around a few buildings to an apartment building. There was a doorbell-like button with the word “художник” (artist) above it. Katya pushed this, and the artist himself came and opened the door. I think this gentlemen is now my favorite artists. He does not use any paint in his art. Instead, he collects leaves throughout the year, presses them, and then creates all of his pictures out of them. He said he just uses glue and a scalpel. The pictures are breathtaking and phenomenal. It's interesting to see how many colors there are in leaves. If you have access to facebook, I've put an album up there of some of his work. Some of them look nearly like photographs. I was shocked to see that he was selling his work for 600-1000 rubles (1000 rubles is about $33). If there was an easy way to get pictures back to Alaska, I would have purchased several of his. I'd never seen anything like it before.

            After the museum, we all parted ways. Katya and I went to a store to pick up some snacks for the tea break at dancing later, then went to the Minina Square to catch a bus. We ended up taking a trolleybus to a different stop and then taking a second bus from there. I must say that I much prefer the trolleybuses. They are less crowed and cleaner. They also sound like something from the original Star Wars when they accelerate.

            When we arrived at our destination, Katya called her friend who was teaching Forro that evening for more directions. We walked down one street to a backstreet, then along the side of an abandoned-looking building, which just so happened to be the building into which we were going. Apparently the last time they had Forro, it was at a different place, so Katya hadn't been here before. There was a sign on the door that the Libertad studio, where we were to go, was on the fourth floor. There were no lights on on the first through third floors, and it seems a little like something from either a horror movie or a mental ward. I joked with Katya that hanging out with her is always an adventure. The fourth floor, however, was very friendly, and the studio was very nice.

            To begin with there were about four guys and eight girls, but we gained a few more during the evening. For some reason it took me until the time I got there to realize that I would be learning this dance in Russian, not in English. The fact that things in Russia happen in Russian should be obvious, but as all of the dancing I've done has been conducted in English, for some reason dancing just happens in English in my head. It was good to see how things are explained in Russian, though, as I'm leading a dancing masterclass on Thursday. We were at dancing from 6-9 or so, and I had a great time. Dancing always makes me happy, and it's fun to learn new styles.

            Sunday was the “Day of Open Doors” at LUNN, which is a day when prospective students come to learn about the programs and ask questions. I had be asked to come and hang out in the American Center in case any students came by. Katya, Yuliya (Katya's classmate), Yuliya (who works in the American Center), Nadia and I were all there, but basically no one came. Katya, Yuliya, and I had a fun time talking and joking around, despite the fact that we were all very tired. I also learned that Yuliya tends to go to Argentine tango on Sunday nights...so that is on the prospective horizon for the next weekend.

            I left around 1:30 or 2, and went home to do some homework. However, I was not feeling very motivated, so I called Jackie, and we ended up hanging out and watching “Я шагаю по Москве” (I am strolling around Moscow) which is a great movie from the 1950s. I find it very hard to do homework here on the weekends. I feel like it's wasting time. After all, how often do you come to Russia? Thus I think I've finally resigned myself to the idea that I'll do homework in my downtime at LUNN during the week, and leave the weekends for adventuring and doing active, self-assigned, language practice.

            I wasn't feeling too good when I got home, and I woke up with a really sore throat during the night. All of Monday I felt a bit feverish and queasy. I usually just skip lunch, but I ended up going home and making some mashed potatoes to try to quiet my stomach. I wasn't feeling bad enough to stay home, but I wasn't feeling good enough to be happy or comfortable.

            I worked on my lecture on American Values that I had planned to be giving on Tuesday. However, instead of giving the lecture today, it will be on next Tuesday. I'm using the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and quotes from the founding fathers as a basis of where our value system began. I'm going to talk about the root of our governmental system in Protestant Christianity and how that foundation is clashing with movements within our country today such as historical revisionism. I'm also going to talk about how Americans value honestly, loyalty, and liberty, and what we think about ambition. In a discussion I had had with one class at the elementary school last week on Tuesday, the American Dream had come up. The teacher had asked the children what they thought every Russian wanted, and they all insisted that every Russian wanted money and power and refused to budge from such an assertion even after the teacher brought up topics like family and good friends. When I was sitting in the American Center on Sunday making a list of what I thought were important American values, one third year student asked me if ambition was something we valued. I've been thinking about the word “ambition” a lot. To me, it's not a bad thing to have an ambition, but to be ambitious seems to have a bit of a negative connotation to me. Any thoughts?

            The teacher's meeting began around 3pm, but Ludmila and I weren't called up until after the first speaker, so we arrived a little after four. I gave a short talk on Alaska with the help of some of my mother's pictures, courtesy of facebook. I talked a little about our history, our population, the remaining Russian influence, our wildlife, common outdoor activities, and ended with the following little bit of Robert Service:

The Spell of the Yukon

I wanted the gold, and I sought it,

I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy — I fought it;

I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it —

Came out with a fortune last fall, —

Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,

And somehow the gold isn't all.

No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)

It’s the cussedest land that I know,

From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it

To the deep, deathlike valleys below.

Some say God was tired when He made it;

Some say it’s a fine land to shun;

Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it

For no land on earth — and I'm one.

            After my short presentation, we went to the back of the room to have tea. I did get a cup of tea, which I held in one hand, and I had a cookie in the other, but I didn't really get to eat or drink, because I was answering questions about myself, Alaska, my Russian study, and my perception of Nizhny Novgorod. Then I taught them a short game, but by that time, people were needing to leave, so we ended up not playing for very long. When I got home, I knew I really need to go to the store and do some laundry, but after a long day and not feeling 100% my will to do what I needed to do was pretty week, and I watched My Fair Lady while curled up in a quilt instead. I haven't seen the film since I was about eight years old, and it's like linguistic candy. Despite the rather rude manner of Professor Higgins, he does have some very creative methods and ideas for teaching. Thus, despite the fact that my body wasn't feeling very good, my mind was happy when I went to bed.

            Speaking of phonetic instruction, Olga, the professor I've been doing the recordings for, asked me if she could assign some of her students to come and work with me to improve their phonetics. I was quite flattered when she told me that it was obvious that I understood what I was doing and that she felt she could trust me to work with her students.

            My life here is getting very busy, which I am glad for, but often tired as a result. It took a couple of weeks to get to know the instructors and for them to be able to see what I could contribute. Now I'm basically teaching my own class once a week (idioms club), being a guest lecturer at least once a week, planning on teaching a dance masterclass, and working as a linguist with a few students. I've been thinking a lot with what I want to do with myself when I graduate in December. Originally I thought I'd just try to work as a translator for a few years to earn some money to go get my Ph.D., but now I don't really know. I also like to teach, and I think that I have somewhat of a talent for it. However, I don't know what I would teach. I'd love to teach linguistics, but I can't do that yet as I'll only have a bachelors. I don't have a TESOL for teaching English, and I don't really feel competent enough to teach Russian. Oh life, you are complicated.

            That's all for now. My masterclass is going to occur on Thursday evening after the idioms club, so I'm currently trying to decide which dances to teach and am figuring out how to teach them in Russian as well as English. The next update will hopefully be full of merriment and not disaster. :)

Muffins, Munchkin, and Matching

Entry 17: September 14, 2011

            Yes, I know. The alliteration is back. I'm sorry, but I'm currently out of creative titles. The wonderful internet connection which I finally obtained on Monday has decided to stop working today. However it was raining earlier this morning, so I don't know if it's a weather issue or an issue of pure spite towards me. Hopefully, it will change it's mind and begin to work again for me later today.

            After LUNN on Wednesday, I had been invited over to Olya's house to make muffins with her and Anya. Olya and Anya are third year tourism students, and they were the MCs for last week's Freshman Party. They're a bundle of fun. Olya lives pretty close to the elementary school, but luckily she's on a slightly different bus line so we could breathe during the ride there. Her family has a very nice apartment. We had tea and did some youtubing before the muffin making began. I was very curious to find out what muffins are like in Russia. The word for muffin is “кекс” (pronounced like “keeks”). Anya looked up disney songs to listen to while Olya worked on the muffins. They were cherry muffins, with small cherries grown by Olya's family...and they were delicious. The muffin tin was different than our muffin tins. The muffin sections were taller and thinner. The shape reminded me of pudding cups that are connected together. When the muffins were baking, Olya made lattes. I was very happy.

            When the muffins were done we migrated to the living room to play a game of Munchkin Quest. If you've never heard of or played Munchkin before, I'm not going to try to explain it because it's ridiculously complicated. All you need to know is that each card tends to have about a paragraph of information. In Munchkin Quest, you also create a game board, where each piece has another paragraph on it. The result it a whole lot of Russian very quickly, using unfamiliar vocabulary. Despite this, I still had fun, and I somehow ended up winning. After that, it was nearly nine so I took a bus home.

            Confession: I started writing this sometime last week, but I was tired of writing and busy so I put it off. Therefore, I'm going to give you a quick run down of the last few days and will attempt to not go into much detail.

            While I was working on some homework during the day on Thursday, Olya and Anya showed up with a few other people and a simpler, but still complicated, version of Munchkin to play. We played for a while, but then they had to go to class so we didn't finish. Olya and Anya said they'd come back on Friday so we could play.

            The idioms for last week were as follows:

_ 1. To have a cow

__ 2. To be out of the loop

__ 3. Like trying to nail jell-o to the wall

__ 4. A Catch-22 (situation)

__  5. To get cracking

__ 6. To get the ball rolling

__ 7. (To be caught) between a rock and a hard place

__ 8. Great minds (think alike)

__ 9. Something is like pulling teeth

__ 10. Fly off the handle

__ 11. Birds of a feather (flock together)

__ 12. Be home free

__ 13. To be kept / left in the dark

__ 14. Something is no mean feat

__ 15. Be downhill from here

__ 16. Be on the same page/wavelength

            If in reading these you thought to yourself, “Self, it seems that many of these have the same general meaning!” You and yourself would be absolutely correct. The task for this week was to match each of the 16 idioms to 7 different general definitions. Once we had done that, I explained some of the minute differences between them. For example, with “to be home free” and “to be downhill from here” we talked about how a person or a group can be home free, but you can't be downhill from here. “It” is really the only thing that can be downhill, but you have to have a definite person or group of people to be home free.

            The fun history for the week that I learned from these idioms was in regards to “keep the ball rolling.” As it turns out, in the 1840 election when President Martin Van Buren ran for reelection against General William Henry Harrison, Harrison had ten-foot high “victory balls” created with his name on them which were rolled from city to city, as far as 300 miles. The slogan associated with these balls was “let's keep the ball rolling.” This seems fitting as usually we tend to employ this particular idiom in a business meeting-type setting.

            Three people ended up getting 12 of the 16 correct, and Anya was one of those three, so they all got Alaska postcards. Anya had me write a birthday message to her on hers.

            On Friday, Ludmila and I finally figured out a topic for me to speak on at the teacher's meeting on Monday. October 18^th is Alaska Day, the day that we purchased Alaska from Russia. The teacher's meeting was on the 17^th. Due to the time difference, you could basically argue that either day is Alaska Day, so that's what we did. I planned to prepare a short slideshow with pictures to say a few things about my wonderful state. :)

            Olya and Anya showed up sometime in the early afternoon and we played two games of Munchkin. I won one, and Olya won the other. Olya invited me to a Festival of Lights with Japanese lanterns on Saturday evening, but I had also made some plans with Katya, so I said I didn't quite know what I was going to do yet.

            When I talked to Katya later that day we decided to go to a museum she had mentioned before and were debating between going to the theatre or the festival in the evening. We decided it would depend on the weather.

            Alright, I lied. The next part of the weekend was eventful enough to warrant it's own entry. I tried the quick run down, and failed.

            5 weeks down, 5 more to go. I've past the half way point now, and I expect the next few weeks are going to fly by.

Elementary, my dear Watson

Entry 16: September 13, 2011

On Monday I had to leave LUNN early to go home and tepidly await the arrival of my current favorite person in Russia. I don't know what his name is, but he enabled me with an internet connection, and that makes him an automatic favorite. Here's what I have learned about my internet problem: 1) The problem, as my father and I had suspected, was upstream from me. There was nothing wrong with my computer or cables. 2) The reason the connection wasn't working for me is that I didn't have an account with LinkTelecom, my resident ISP. 3) The reason I didn't have an account was that I hadn't followed the instructions in the packet explaining the internet. 4) The reason I had not done this is that I had neither received such a packet nor had any idea that such a packet existed.

However, now I have a power adapter, thanks to the lovely Katya Romanova, so my computer charges, and I have decent connection in my room. The internet guy showed me a lot of bandwidth numbers and costs and asked me which one I wanted. After taking a millisecond to realize I had no idea what those numbers equated to in terms of happiness or added technical frustration, I just told him I wanted to Skype. He was obviously a kind, honest man, because I can now video Skype. Thus people on two opposites sides of the world had a happy surprise on Monday.

All the Korean girls next door and I knew was that he was coming sometime after one. I'm not sure quite when he showed up, because I wasn't the first account he set up, but it was about 4:30 by the time he got to my room. Aliza and I were both very happy to have internet connections.

Before I left LUNN, Ludmila Mikhailovna, who is a professor at LUNN, but a different Ludmila than the professor that has her office in the American Center, luckily came in and found me. I had agreed a few weeks ago to go to an elementary school for at least part of the day on Tuesday, but hadn't heard anything more. Ludmila Mikhailovna called the teacher and had me speak with her. I figured she'd tell me what she wanted me to talk about, but we just spoke about the time I would arrive. I suppose I should have asked, but for some reason I didn't. I decided to just bring my photo album with me as, regardless of the topics I've been asked to speak about, the conversation usually just winds down to me talking about myself. Thank you Russian Olympiada in making me fully versed in the subject of “о себe” or “about myself.” Ludmila Mikhailovna wrote out the bus stops for me, and her daughter Alina would be meeting me at the final stop. Luckily, it was the same bus I had taken on Friday to go to the park, and it was just two stops further than I had gone with Veronika, so it was familiar ground. I was hoping that on Tuesday morning at 8am there would not be many people going away from the city center...but my wish was not fulfilled for the bus was even more packed than on Friday. I couldn't even get all the way up the stairs when I first got in, and it took me about 15 minutes to get to the window. Once there, I latched on and didn't move until my final stop. If you can get to a wall, then you can only be pushed about on three sides. Much more pleasant than all four.

I had been a little confused by what I had been told of Alina. Ludmila Mikhailovna told me her daughter went to the school, but that “went” was a past tense attended and has also done some teaching at the school. She was not in the school. That wasn't really clarified for me before I met her. I had a really good time talking to Alina throughout the day. She's probably in her late twenties or early thirties. Both she and the teacher, Galina Alexandrovna, asked me if I preferred them to speak English or Russian with me, and I opted for Russian, thinking I would be speaking in English most of the day and would want for practice. Assumption number two = wrong.

The oldest group I worked with were 9^th graders. The youngest were second graders. With the 7-9^th graders I spoke nearly completely in English. I would explain something, and then pause, and they'd have to summarize what I had just said in Russian. If they hadn't understood something completely or they'd understood wrong, I would repeat what I had said. There were usually one or two students per class who were more engaged and would ask me questions throughout, but after I had basically exhausted my topics, then they would ask whatever questions they had or came to mind. One of the first was always how old I was. I think it was the one question that I was asked in every class. In the second class, which was with 8^th graders, they asked me what my hobbies were. I mentioned dancing and singing. I was then promptly asked to sing something, and the first thing that came to my mind was Danny Boy. So I explained a little about the history of the song, and then I sang the first part. In every class after Galina Alexandrovna asked me to sing it again.

After the first class, we went to get tea. Every class has a break in the morning for tea and a roll. WHY DO WE NOT DO THIS IN AMERICA!? (The “!?” punctuation in Russian indicates a rhetorical question. I have decided to use it in my English. Please join me in my endeavor. If we can bring in rhetorical punctuation maybe tea breaks will follow). The cafeteria had tea and kompot (a fruit drink). I opted for kompot this time around, and turned down a roll as I had just eaten breakfast and didn't feel like eating something covered in chocolate just yet.

With one of the classes, they came in and sat down, and one boy asked Galina Alexandrovna in Russian if I was Russian. Her response was to tell him to ask me. He proceeded to do so, and, in Russian, I asked him if he thought I was Russian. After thinking for a moment he answered that yes, I must be Russian. We talked back and forth for a bit, and then I switched into English, to his surprise, and told them I was from America. There was one other class where one boy asked me how good my Russian was, and when I said a few things to him in Russian, he exclaimed to the teacher that he didn't know that American's could sound like Russians. Self-confidence boost.

I had two meetings with the 7^th grade (I think) class. I was temporarily at a loss of what to do as we had already gone through my pictures. I remember they had been interested in what I had mentioned about camping, sitting around a campfire, and making foil dinners. Thus my first thought was, “Hey, what about a campfire song?” The first one that popped into my head was “The other day, I saw a bear.” I thought it would be easy to teach because it's a repeat-after-me song, and the language is pretty easy. We decided the best course of action would be to write out the song on the board stanza by stanza. After I wrote it out, we would go through and translate it into Russian to make sure all was understood, and then we'd sing through it. If you are not familiar with this song, here's the words:

The other day

I saw a bear

A great big bear

A way up there

He said to me,

“Why don't you run?”

I see you ain't

got any gun.

And so I ran,

Away from there,

but right behind

me came that bear.

Ahead of me

I saw a tree,

a great big tree.

Oh glory be!

The nearest branch,

was ten feet up.

I'd have to jump

And trust my luck.

And so I jumped

into the air

but I missed that branch

A way up there.

Now don't you fret

and don't you frown,

For I caught that branch

On the way back down.

That's all there is.

There ain't no more,

Unless I meet

That bear once more.

In addition to this being a good song due to the way it's sung, it uses pretty simple vocabulary, and it also demonstrates a few uses of colloquialism and idioms. Once we wrote the whole thing down, we sang it all the way through. I ended up teaching the same song to another class later. So there are now two classes of Russian school children well equipped for an evening of American campfire.

After the song, we still had some time, and Galina Alexandrovna asked me if I knew any good games. They knew Heads Up Seven Up, and I never really liked that game in school, so we didn't play that one. The next thing I thought of was concentration. Concentration is played as follows: Every helps to keep the rhythm. Sitting down, you slap you legs, clap your hands, then snap each hand one at a time. Everyone is assigned a number. Number one begins. On the first snap you say your number, and then on the second you say someone else's. Then he or she, in turn, says his/her number and then a different person's, and so on and so forth. If someone messes up, they are sent down to the bottom of the number chain, and everyone who was below them moves up. This adds complication because people's numbers keep changing so you have to remember what number you are. They caught on pretty quickly, and realized that the best way to try to get someone out is to keep shooting the game back to them. We had a really good time, and lots of laughing ensued.

After the older classes, it was lunch time, and Galina Alexandrovna and I went back to the cafeteria. I had a good lunch of a carrot and beet salad, rice and Beef Stroganov (which is Russia is just the meat and sauce, no noodles), a potato-filled roll (pirog) and more kompot. Galina Alexandrovna said she doesn't really like the menu much on Tuesdays, but I didn't mind. When were done eating, we went back to the class, and Galina Alexandrovna and I spoke about differences in our cultures that lead to funny situations. For example, in Russia, if someone has you over and asks you if you want tea, it is often polite to refuse a few times before finally excepting. However, in America, if someone asks you if you want tea, and you say no.....you're probably not getting another offer. We shared experiences back and forth and had a few good laughs.

After lunch, I got to work with the elementary school children. Before the class started, I was just sitting at the teacher's desk, and they all came up and surrounded me. My pictures were sitting on the table in front of me, and they kept trying to look at them. I told them they had to wait so I could explain them to everyone at once. Most of them have only had a few years of English, and therefore, Alina and Galina Alexandrovna asked me to speak in Russian. I couldn't be as in-depth and detailed in Russian, but they understood what I told them and were able to ask me questions, so I'm calling it an accomplishment. The evening before I left Alaska, I sat down at the table with Mom, Lynnea, and James and was explaining all of my pictures to them in Russian. They were trying to guess what I was saying. Even though it had mostly been in jest, I'm glad we had done that, because I already knew that I could say something about all of my pictures. All the classes were equally shocked when I showed them the picture of my entire extended family on my mother's side. The children's eyes would literally become very large and there were exclamations of incredulity all around. Most of the children did not have even 4 cousins in their family...so the 14 cousins which comprise my family was shocking indeed.

The younger classes were very eager to talk to me, ask questions, and want to show me something. Galina Alexandrovna asked them if they wanted to do their dictations for me, and they said they did. They had had a paragraph of a text to memorize about a boy who walks up a hill, and his apple falls out of his pocket, rolls down the hill, and lands in a pond where the fish and a frog observe it. They had a little bit of time to review before reciting it. After the first boy had recited his, Galina Alexandrovna asked me what grade I would give him. This was the only time during the entire day when I felt uncomfortable. I know that in the Russian school system grades are said aloud and students are either openly praised or reprimanded, but, first of all, I had no standard by which to know what was “A-material,” and, secondly, the kids wanted to please me so much and were trying so hard, it just about broke my heart when I couldn't fairly give out a top grade. Instead of using letters, the Russian school system uses numbers 1-5 (although 1's aren't actually really given out), where 5 is the A equivalent. Half of the class was not actually prepared to give their dictations, and, luckily, Galina Alexandrovna, took over when the child wasn't prepared and told him or her that they were receiving a two and reprimanded them for not having prepared over the weekend.

All Russian school children have their own personal grade/assignment book. Their classes for each day of the week are written into this, and the teachers write grades and comments to their parents in this book. After the dictations, one of the girls asked if I could write her grade in her book. This was promptly followed by all the other children who had done well asking the same thing, and Galina Alexandrovna agreed. They all showed me where to write the grade and my initials, and then wanted pictures with me.

Galina Alexandrovna went and got me two glasses of tea and a roll, which I was glad for because my voice was getting a little sore. Even though I had told her she didn't need to bring me a dessert roll, she brought me one anyway, and I was glad for it because the sugar helped me. I had arrived at the school at little before 9am, and I left around 5pm. When the final class left, I was thoroughly exhausted, but had had a really good day. Alina and Galina commented that most teachers don't even teach as many classes as I had had that day. Throughout the day they kept asking me if I was tired and wanted to leave, but, although I got more tired throughout the day, I was enjoying it, so I stayed. I will probably go back to the school a few more times before I go home. I'm going to have to figure out some activities. I'm thinking tongue twisters would be fun to play with, and I may have to think up a few more games to play. If you have any ideas or suggestions, let me know.

I really did not feel like standing on an overcrowded bus for 40 minutes, and I knew that Jackie's dorm was on the way, so I figured I could just have a nice walk and meet up with her to see if she wanted a break from homework. I figured it would take me 15-20 minutes to get to her...but I was much farther away than I thought. It was more like 45-50 minutes. She walked with me to the city center, and then we parted ways. I left the school around 5pm, and didn't get home until around 7:30...and I had been in heels all day. Thus, my feet and I were very tired by the day's end. I slept very well that night.

I had hoped to get through Thursday in this post, but alas, apparently 'twas not to be. You'll have to wait a few more days for the exciting muffin making and munchkin mania of Wednesday and this week's idioms.  

The Freshman Party and the Wheels on the Bus

Entry 15: September 9, 2011

            Friday. The big day of the Freshman party. The festivities were to commence at 1:30. I had helped in writing at least two of the skits, but I didn't really know if I was helping or doing anything during the party, which could be better described as a welcome/concert/variety show...not that that is really any more specific. There had been talk of my singing a rewritten spoof of “Mama's Good to You” from Chicago retitled “Teachers are Good to You” (where the tag line is, of course, “When you're good to teachers, We'll be good to you”), but Anton, who is one of the professors, had mentioned the day before that he hadn't been successful in finding the accompaniment.

            However, I found out Friday morning around 10:30am that accompaniment had been found, and I was given the words. Although I had heard the song before, I didn't really know it, so I did some studying up on youtube (to which my mother, who I was facebook chatting with at the time, remarked that she didn't know that youtube could be used for studying, only for distracting. Youtube – a student's best friend and worst enemy). Naturally, as I needed my computer to be able to practice, I had left it at the dorm. Luckily it's just next door to the university, so I ran back to get it. On my way, I was stopped by a student I have spoken with some in the American Center. He joked that it was still early in the morning, and I was already leaving the school. He invited me to come to the Freshman Party, and I had to hold back a laugh as I said I would definitely be there as I'd be singing at it. When I got back, Yuliya gave me the key to a room on the third floor where I could go practice. Some of the stanzas, according to Anton, had been written hastily the night before and might now work rhythmically. Therefore, there were a few edits I did in the process.

            After I felt like I knew the material well enough, I returned to the American Center. There were no students there, so Anton shut the door and cranked the music. This is when I learned that I wouldn't be singing alone, which was comforting as I didn't know how well I was going to have it all memorized in the next hour and a half or so. The song is very jazzy, being from Chicago, and Anton was telling Yuliya she should be one of the back up dancers. The run-through that preceded that comment was inhibited Nadia, Yuliya, and I laughing hysterically at Anton's Fosse antics.

            Around noon thirty, one of the fifth year students, who is doing a practicum (meaning she's sort of like a graduate teaching assistant), arrived to draw and paint some of the props for the “12 Little Freshman” sketch. It was literally a race against the clock to get everything together. Pressure does wonders for results however. At one o'clock, our resident artist and I were called upstairs to practice. We walked into the room and Olga (the professor for whom I'm doing the recordings and who was the leader in writing the song and the poem) and Anton were practicing the song. Ludmila was one of the backup dancers. I noticed they had changed a few stanzas, and I thought to myself, What is it with me and last minute vocal performances in this country​? When I was in Moscow several years ago, our little American group found out we had about two days to get something together for the international talent show, involving 36 countries, so we didn't shame the USA. The only tool at our disposal for said task was the piano book of Disney songs Alisha had brought along. Therefore, she had to relearn it on the piano, and two days later I sang Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid in front of nearly 300 people from 36 different countries of the world. I figured that singing with two other people in front of the American English students, most of whom I had already met, was not nearly as daunting.

            Olga, Anton, and I sang, and Ludmila and the fifth year student just helped with the dance part, which consisted of walking in a circle between the stanzas. If you've heard the song, a jazzy circle is the perfect between-stanza choreography. The fancy part of our choreography was the part of the song where the break is twice as long. In that case we did two circles. One to the right, and then one to the left. Just to keep everyone on their toes...including ourselves as we had to remember it. The rest of the dancing we just improved as we went. It was a blast.

            Two of the third students, Olya and Anya, who have invited me to make muffins with them this coming Wednesday, were the MCs for the event. They began with an opening and introduced the first act from four fifth year students. They sang a song dedicated to the teachers, and it was comical. It started out with them not wanting to listen to anything the teachers said, and eventually they realized their error and righted their ways. Then a group of third year students reenacted Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss. Olga, the professor, is brilliant. She is using Dr. Seuss to teach American phonetics. Take note all of you ESL teachers and teachers-to-be! If you are not familiar with this particular Seuss book, I would encourage you to youtube it, and watch the one that has the Dr. Seuss pictures. It's crazy, and they recited it as fast as the recording does. Very comical, very clever...very articulatorally challenging.

            Then another group of third year students performed a dance that went through all five years of university, which was really good. I could tell there were a few girls who were the dancers/choreographers of the group, but the group as a whole was ten people or so, and I was impressed in how enthusiastic everyone was. As a whole, I just thought it was really cool at everyone was ok with performing something. I feel like to get something similar to occur in America you'd have to pull teeth.

            After that, the skit that I had helped write about the sorting of the languages by the “sorting hat” occurred. I learned that group was all second year students, and several of them came up to me just before the proceedings to check pronunciation with me. The freshman group then performed a sort dance they had come up with that morning. After they were done, they were asked to stay up at the front, and twelve chairs were set up...in front of them. Poor things, they were caged in and didn't know what was going on. After all the chairs were set up, Anton told them they could sit in them, and some moving had to ensue for this to occur. The teachers then did the “12 Little Freshman” skit. They had split up the stanzas so they all kept coming from the audience and walking up. It was very well done...especially as no practicing had occurred...at all. At the end of each stanza, one freshman was sent back to his or her seat. The final lines of the poem were “The teachers firmly told them, “There's one thing you must do. You be good to teachers, and we'll be good to you” (which was my contribution to the poem, by the way). Naturally, this lead into the song, and then that was pretty much the end of it.

            Nadia recorded the whole thing, and it may go on the American Center website. If it does, I'll post the link here so you can see it. It's all in English, so you'll be able to understand it. The whole event was really fun. I really enjoyed it. I was also really encouraged to see that I recognized the majority of the students in the room.

            Veronika came up to me when it was done, and we decided to go do something together. It was a nice day, so we decided to not do something indoors. She was hungry so we went to a store and two different cafeterias before we found something satisfactory. I wasn't too terribly hungry, and I hadn't seen anything that appealed to me, so I just decided to have a big dinner when I got back. Veronika took me to the city's Central Park. It was about a 40 minute bus ride to get there...and there were so many people on the bus. Russian buses are much smaller than the ones we have in America, and I think they usually hold twice the amount of people. It was so crowed you literally could hardly move. Veronika seemed a little embarrassed and commented that she bet nothing like that every happened in America, but I said I didn't really mind it. I know from experience that Russian buses can be quite crowded, and it didn't really bother me. In coming back to Russia I don't feel I've undergone culture shock. I sort of know what to expect this time, and sometimes, in retrospect, it strikes me as odd how easily I accept a lot of “only in Russia” scenarios. I think the trick to traveling in foreign countries is to look at every moment as a new adventure.

            The park was absolutely beautiful. I have some lovely pictures of  the Russian “Zolotaya Osen” or “Golden Autumn.” Tall, skinny white birch trees, with branches only at the very top were decked out in their fall colors, which contrasted the green of the grass below. We walked until we were tired. It's a big park. Then we took the bus back...and it was nearly as crowded as coming. I was thinking that I needed to go to the store, but I didn't really want to walk to it after I got home as I was pretty tired by that point. Luckily, the bus went right by the store. We hoped off there and parted ways. I grabbed the few things I needed, went home, ate, and went to bed thoroughly exhausted but quite satisfied.

            On Saturday, Jackie came over to make lunch. After eating our fill, we went back to my room, and Jackie helped me with some of the recordings for LUNN. There were several dialogues that I needed to record. I had already done several of them myself, but it feel a little silly having endless conversations with yourself. In addition to being thankful to having a dialogue partner, I was really glad Jackie helped me out because she does better fast speech reductions than I do. I think that because I'm aware of the phonetic processes that the exercise are going for, I have a tendency to want to over correct...which is bad. The dialogues gave us a lot of amusement as they tended to be really funny. I won't write any of them here as they are copyrighted, but usually the last line was snappy or just terribly amusing to us in some way. We would read through them once before recording, and at times it took several minutes of laughing and wiping tears away before we could record them. Needless to say, there were a few dialogues we had to try to record several times.

            When that was done, we decided to go back to Jackie's place. We took our time getting there, stopping to do some photography and to go into a second hand store. Originally we were going to watch Russian TV at her place, but earlier that morning I had discovered a really awesome film that I had on my computer and had not yet watched. It's called “Chyornaya Molniya” which means “Black Lightning” and, as best as I can describe it without giving too much away, it's like Batman meets Spiderman, Iron Man, and Herbie the Lovebug in Russia. Very good film. It was made in 2009, and the quality is really good. I had watched part of it earlier, but didn't watch til the end so that we could watch it together. We both really liked it. I was also proud of myself in that the whole thing is in Russian with no subtitles, and I understood everything. I found though that I don't remember details quite as well as when watching an English movie. You know how movies will sometimes voice over an earlier conversation to bring it to mind as if to say, “Remember when we told you this about a half hour ago? Well that was the foreshadowing for what's going to happen next. We're telling you again so that you get the symbolism.” Usually in an English movie, my thought to myself when they do that is, “Well, duh, I thought that was extremely obvious.” However, there was one point in this film when that happened, and Jackie and I both went, “Ooooooh” simultaneously, which naturally led to laughter. When you have to pay more attention every minute to understand what's happening, you appreciate the method better I suppose.

            I rewatched the film on Sunday, seeing if I could translate it as I went, as I'd like to show it to my family when I get back. I was pretty successful, so if you're intrigued, you can come and put up with my simultaneous translation from Russian to English. If you want the translation into any other language you have to bring your own translator.

            After the film, we were hungry and decided to go to Shokoladniza for some dinner. When we finished it was around 8:30 and we parted ways to go home. It's about a half hour walk from Minina square to our respective abodes. Later in the evening I started to not feel super great. I had been feeling a little weird for a few days, but hadn't thought anything of it until late Saturday night.

            Sunday I just laid low and tried to recoup. I wasn't feel too terrible, but I decided I'd rather kick something before it got bad. I did some reading and, as previously stated, rewatched the film to translate it. Although I had been getting fresh air from my open window, I decided to go get some things at a nearby produkty. They had some Activia drinkable yogurts, so I grab one, thinking that might be prudent. Some combination of my “get better” snacks and being outside seemed to do me good, as I felt fine come mid-afternoon.

            Aliza (my Korean neighbor) knocked on my door sometime after dinner. She had downloaded some games on her iTouch to play. I've never really played iPhone games before...but we got really into some of them and were laughing really hard and having an all out good time. Some of the games were in English, others were in Korean. Artyom (the other Korean I'd had curry with) knocked on my door after a while, and I invited him in. He wondered at few things I had with me. My room seemed very clean to him, which, I guess, is good. All I really brought with me was clothes, gifts, my Bibles (English and Russian), and my Russian grammar books. Thus I have a pretty sparse room. I showed him my pictures from home. He says my boyfriend is tall and my family is beautiful (which he says is a compliment to my parents. So parents, that's for you).

            It's interesting to have a conversation with Artyom and Aliza.  Artyom speaks Russian to me, as his English is very minimal. Aliza speaks mostly English to me, as her Russian is very minimal. So I can speak to either one of them, but not so where they will both understand me at the same time. They can then speak Korean to each other. So between the three of us, we end up doing a lot of translating back and forth. It's a interesting conversation triangle. We can each communicate with each other fairly well in one language, but that language is not shared by the third member. We'll probably do something together later this week. It's been interesting to me to learn about their worldview and perspective on Korea, Russian, China, and America. They seem to really like America, which is great for me, and I'm learning a lot about them and their culture.