My god Russian is hard...

No matter how much I learn, I still can't understand everything! I'm starting to worship our American teachers, who somehow managed to become fluent. HOW???

That said, however, my understanding is getting much, much better every day, and my speech is really picking up. I managed, with a little stumbling, to use a grammatically complicated phrase in an actual conversation with Lyuba the other day, and she raised her eyebrow and smiled as she turned back to the stove, and muttered that I had improved greatly. I've been having moments like that a lot- and now I'm at a point where I can actually start expressing complete thoughts without leaping for a dictionary every three words, which is a relief. My grammar in speech is still limping, but is better than before by lightyears. (The trouble in Russian is less about knowing how the grammar works than about managing to DO it all in the time between thinking a thought and saying it. There are about 20 conjugational options per verb, and about 12... 13? different declensional options for every noun. My numbers are probably wrong, but that's what it feels like.)

Lessee... yesterday's afternoon lecture was a psychologist, who was great but wanted a little more audience participation that we could offer him, and tried to use poetry to illustrate points, forcing our two bilingual teachers to translate for him, which was a little awkward, especially since one of the poems made them blush.

Then I little a little net surfing and left for the theater, entirely looking over the fact that it was five, not six. Thus I arrived at the theater not a half hour early, but an hour and a half early. Waaaayyyy too far to go home or to any of my usual wandering places, no open cafes. I fed the pigeons in the park for half an hour (I keep some of the awful cafeteria bread in my purse for just such an emergency), and then took a walk along the canal and looked at all the parks and people.

Two strange incidents on that walk. One was just a bastard being a bastard- here, if you want to get across a busy street with no lights, you have to go lane by lane. I was waiting on the center line for the way to be clear, and some creep in a white SUV decided to have some fun and swerved at me and honked. I think I managed to keep from visibly leaping out of my skin, but my heart might still be in one of the upper branches of a tree near there.

Then as I was walking along the canal, I looked down on the embankment to see a man watching a little Pekingese paddle to shore and then get out and shake off. The man regarded the dog, the dog regarded the man. I assumed that the dog liked to swim after ducks, and the man was letting it do so. Then, as I rounded the corner of the canal, I looked down to see that the guy had that dog up by the scruff and was sort of staring at it at arm's length. The dog seemed to be pretty nonchalant, so I thought maybe this was some sort of drip-dry routine they had. Then, as I walked on, I heard a huge SPLASH and looked down to see the pekingese paddling back to the embankment. The dude threw it back in the canal! Then it got out, shook off, looked up at the guy, and peed on the railing. The man just stared at it, with no sort of expression on his face. Then they just sort of ambled off together. I have no idea what happened after that, except that I then passed someone I'm pretty sure was the guy, walking the opposite direction he had been, sans dog. I checked, and it wasn't hopelessly paddling in the canal anywhere I could see, so I have NO explanation for this.


Then I found a fellow classmate eating bread in a park, and we chatted for a little while, then went to the theater. I had seat one in row one, which was great for music and seeing the stage, and hell for reading the supertitles- my neck is still a little sore. The supertitles sucked anyway, unfortunately- a little summary about every ten lines. I know that there's a lot of repetition in some of the scenes, but I understood enough Italian to know that more was going on.

It was funny anyway, and I had a great time. It didn't have the same amazing spark that La Traveatta did, but was fantastic nonetheless.

Then I went home, ate a massive dinner, and tried hopelessly to stay awake for homework purposes. Then I went to bed.

Comments

Nurmi, the statues are actually modern, I believe. They're in a more modern style, and besides, the courtyard is only three years old- apparently most of it used to be a really ugly garage.

I wonder what Martha Stewart thought of the bathrooms here. I never thought that a bathroom where I could sit down, or where there was soap, would be such an utter luxury.

Lara, I hope that you realize that I will sing with you till the ends of the earth when I get back. Also, I want to resume our Keitsul collection- pleeeeaaaase?

Mom, dad,my cough is almost gone, I am well fed, and feeling fine. Looking forward to your call on Saturday!