At the Language Institute

We met more interesting people around town. There are a few very fluent English speakers here, but you would never know it since they speak Russian more often than English. No worries, about that...This is a better chance to speak Russian. I'll be better off learning the language, rather than expecting people to accomodate me with English. Anyhow, I think many people speak English rather well, but they feel too self-conscious about their speaking abilities. Really, accent are totally cool in my opinion. Accents show that the person knows more than one language, which is always a positive thing in my opinion.  

Tuesday, we passed copies of our documents so our residency visas could be extended. This was an easy experience, because our volunteer is always well composed for this situations. We missed class for part of the day to go to the processing office near the Lenin statue. It lightly rained that day. Otherwise, the whole excursion was relaxing and absolutely a perfect break from the mundane of everyday school life. School is wonderful, but yes, the routine does become repetitious from day to day. It is always nice to have some variety to the schedule.  Later that night, there was a meeting at a foreign language insitute, where we were informed about an upcoming language festival in town. The concept was the present the diversity of languages around the world, and also promote Esparanto. As you might already know, Esparanto is a country-neutral language, which does belong to any nationality, but is a artificial language combining many Romance words and grammar structures. Its creator intended to promote peace by creating an easy to learn language for international communication. It is quite an interesting concept, so look it up if you're interested. It may be suprising about how you might understand a huge majority of Esparanto already.

And...my birthday is next week. People have asked, but I do not know how to celebrate it. Maybe bowling would be a good idea? Lately, I've been worried about speading too much money outside of school and food, but I suppose it is good to look up the costs and learn. There is also the concern about when reimbursements arrive, because we weren't told of the time, but I've been told to relax for a bit. I tend to be a worry-wort. I overthink, and earned the royal title of "Katherine the Resposible" by one of my favorite high school staffperson.