The all-consuming language

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted in a few weeks. That is because Russian has taken over my life. Quite literally. Not only do I spent 8 hours a day in class, attempting to speak only Russian, but since Shawn and I are both learning, we try to speak it as much as possible at home as well. And now we’ve found the one Russian television station that we get on digital cable. I’ve discovered that if you watch the 1984 Miss USSR pageant right before going to bed, you tend to dream in Russian. It’s unfortunate really.

So in our language program, I’ve now moved past the easy, 5 hours of class a day, and into a more intense portion. We start at 7:30 in the morning and have 3 hours of conversation in a small group (1 teacher, 4 students). Then the middle part of my day is an hour of multi-media lab time, an hour of self-study, and an hour of lunch. Although we are encouraged to extend our self-study time and shorten our lunch time. Then it’s back to my small group for two hours of reading, which is really being used more for grammar lessons at this point.

I had my first real assignment yesterday. (As long as you don’t count memorizing table after table of grammar rules an assignment.) I wrote a killer essay on Portland, Oregon. In case you wondered: “Portland is in Oregon. Portland is in the USA. Portland is a big city. Portland is a very beautiful city. The weather in Portland is sometimes good and sometimes bad.” Yup. That pretty much sums it up. In English, I have a Bachelor’s degree. In Russian, I’m in the First Grade. My teacher did complement me on my beautiful handwriting, though. I’m hoping for a check-plus in Penmanship.