Spring Has Arrived

Or more like Summer, because the weather is settling around the nice
mid 20 degrees Celsius, which compares to the warmer weather of my
hometown. Only a few weeks ago, it was still snowing. And now? No
trace of snow, but we do have occasional rain. It's rather funny,
because Russia celebrated the arrival of Spring in March, but the
weather did not match the time of year at all. Now, it's a mid-way
point between Spring and Summer. The weather is mostly sunny, while
the grass is turning green. I don't know how many times I can repeat
this, but the sudden weather change really amazes me. I can't get over
it.

It feels like not much has happened since the last blog post, but I'm
probably wrong. The memories have lumped into a giant mass of good
feelings, and also anxiety about returning to America. I strongly miss
home. Even as Spring beautifies the city, I'm very nervous about the
remaining two months. I want to make the most out of the short time,
but concurrently, I want time to fly by ever-so quickly so I can enjoy
the Summer back with friends and family in America.

I'm certain my Englich vocabulary and grammar has died over the last
ten months, but I simply cease to care. I'll return home with an
awkward speech pattern, odd lingo, but I'm sure I'll reassimulate and
regain my Bay Area dialect once more. As much as one wants to deny it,
Bay Areans have their own specialised form of English.....which
rapidly updates with every new advancement in technology and music.
Well yes, you'll see guys. We'll keep this a rather casual post today,
without the deeper analysis behind this theory. But I assure you, the
dialect is there!

We're making great progress in our school Russian lessons. We changed
teachers, which really improved the whole situation of pedagogy, but I
digress....I'm quite happy that school will soon end. May has yet to
arrive, but I hope it ends soon! The end of school would also signal
our trip to Saint Petersburg. I'm quite excited for the trip, because
I've purchased a few books about Peter the Great; I'm just waiting to
see the city myself now!

Some of the exchange students were allowed to visit the South for the
end of April, but most of us continue to stay in school. I had a
desire to visit Moscow on Victory Day, but I feel like that won't be
possible, because of finances and because of the difficulty of
obtaining program permission...so I just remind myself of that life
lesson: "You can't always have what you want". Oh well, life overall
is great. I'm missing America like crazy, and I have absolutely no
wi-fi access, so I don't go on the Internet usually.

Today is just an exception, so in the future....there won't be much
more blog posts. Sorry!!!

Running out of Time

There's only 3 months left in Russia, meaning I'm going to spend less time on the computer blogging and more time preparing for Russian exams. Exchange friends and I were considering joining a fitness club, but I'm not sure if we have time for all this. At least we've been having a decent time in town; we've even had a wonderful birthday celebration for Paige last Saturday. In the meantime, I can only leave you with this short slideshow/video montage of the last 7 months in Russia:

If you know the roots and prefixes,....

Then this should be easy to understand the gist of these verbs.

• переписать. To re-write, overwrite
• пописать. To pee* stress is different
• написать. To finish writing
• вписать. To write in, inscribe, fit
• выписать. To write off, prescribe
• отписать. To unsubscribe
• записать. To register, to record
• подписать.To sign
• списать. To copy, write off
• описать. To describe
• прописать. To register, prescribe
• приписать. To attribute, assign
• дописать. To finish writing

School on a Sunday

Relating back to a post where I said there were cars drifting on the frozen river, I can report that I've seen more. Meike and I spent Saturday checking out the art museums in town, and happened to see the race going on called the Volga Trek.

Participants paid a fee of 1000-3000 euros to race on the Volga river a la mode Tokyo Drift...if you understand what I mean. There was also a person hang-gliding around the bay, but I'm not really sure why. In all we spent a solid 4 hours walking around the galleries, and I found Pear her birthday present.

And sadly, that concluded the three day break we had off for Women's Day in Russia. Sunday we went to school, which means we have 7 straight days of school this week. But good news, next week starts Spring Vacation. I'm not sure if we'll have camp or anything special to do during break, but I'm hoping we do.

People watch TV and don't know their own neighbors!

Above is a line from a classic Russian film "Москва слезам не верит", or otherwise known as "Moscow does not believe in Tears". But in fact, I met my Russian neighbors today. It was an accident, because I came to the 10th floor, but no one was home to let me in the flat. My backpack was filled with groceries for pizza, but no where to leave it. My nice neighbors invited me to wait for my sister in their home, and initially I refused, but then I started talking with them, so all was well. I only stayed for maybe 10 minutes. And on the general note, for the last four months, I've been meeting new faces everyday, aka the residents of the 16 floored apartment. I'm sure I won't meet everyone, but it's been a nice experience so far.

And now, my pizza is finished, and it's so American compared to all these mayo-pizzas! There's champignon (white) mushrooms, sausage and cheese! Life feels great. And I forgot to write about yesterday's busy schedule, but I'll cheat with free prose: 5 lessons, school day without teacher, watched Russian movie, ice skate, shoes, watched people dance at the ball, "grape", McD and home!

Next to do?

We have four more months to go in Russia. Spring "started" March first according to the people in town, but it's snowing more nowadays than it was in the last 6 months. I still feel like I speak English too often, and should speak more in Russian. Recently, my friend Pasha and I advanced to the regional level of this academic conference contest. We placed first on the school level, then first on the city level.

The first time my partner really surprised me, because our project was done wonderfully in English. The second time, we had less than a week to translate everything into Russian. I feared that my Russian would really ruin the presentation, but in fact, we had done well. Our judges smiled often. During our question and answer portion, I was surprised that the audience was actually paying attention. Most of the time, it's really difficult to capture the interest of these young teenagers. So, what's next? I'm not really sure, but anyhow, the weather's lovely.

I went ice skating with my host sister and friends not too long ago, and I hope to go again soon.

And March 4th is election day in Russia, but everyone says it's simply a formality. We all believe Putin will return to his presidency without contest. On the interesting note, Russia has an interesting way to combat polling irregularities. The country has 600k volunteers to watch over the polling stations via Internet and cameras. And I'm watching the elections online too...

My Russian Lessons

Things are normal at school. I don't hate it, but it's not terribly exciting. I realized that I'll be okay in the next 4 months. I'll just continue to self-teach. In the mean while, I'll make it more fun by finding awesome little humorous pieces to read. It's also not so bad when I'm reading Russian food magazines too; it's a great way to pick up new vocabulary.

Source:http://www.belomors.ru/russian/uncultured_people.gif