Another week done and out of the way. Every day I'm here I feel more and more comfortable with living in Moscow. I still don't feel completely set in my routine yet, but it's getting much easier to go about my daily activities.
My grammer class is a little slow paced for my liking, but it's a good refresher on case endings for me. The professor for my reading and comprehension class doesn't seem to like the way I speak Russian very much and stops me any time I read out loud to correct my pronunciation. It's a little frustrating, but I have a feeling that in the long run it will make my Russian much better. The professor for my conversational practice class has been sick the last two weeks so I still don't know if that class will be any good, but I have high hopes based on the quality of my other classes. The two classes I'm taking in English, Russian Legal Structures and Russian Political History, are both extremely interesting. The professor for the legal structures class in particular is fun to listen to. He tends to run class about 30 minutes later than it's scheduled, but it has been worth it to stick around to hear what he has to say. He's Georgian, worked high up in the government for awhile and now teaches at MSU. I don't agree with some of the things he says, but he has a perspective on the subject that I think is very unique and I think I'm very lucky to have the opportunity to listen to him lecture.
It feels like my Russian is already improving and I seem to be able to follow the direction of most conversations at this point. I still don't understand a lot of the words being said, but I'm able to keep track of the topic and the basic idea of what people are saying most of the time. My speaking skills still need a lot of improvement, but I'm starting to meet Russians and I'm hoping that spending time with them will help me on that end.
Last night I met my friend Anton and a few people from his class who all speak fluently and managed to keep up with the conversation almost the whole night. There wasn't much I could add to what was being said, but it's still very gratifying to sit down with people who really know the language and have a clue, even if it's not much of one, about what's going on.
My grammer class is a little slow paced for my liking, but it's a good refresher on case endings for me. The professor for my reading and comprehension class doesn't seem to like the way I speak Russian very much and stops me any time I read out loud to correct my pronunciation. It's a little frustrating, but I have a feeling that in the long run it will make my Russian much better. The professor for my conversational practice class has been sick the last two weeks so I still don't know if that class will be any good, but I have high hopes based on the quality of my other classes. The two classes I'm taking in English, Russian Legal Structures and Russian Political History, are both extremely interesting. The professor for the legal structures class in particular is fun to listen to. He tends to run class about 30 minutes later than it's scheduled, but it has been worth it to stick around to hear what he has to say. He's Georgian, worked high up in the government for awhile and now teaches at MSU. I don't agree with some of the things he says, but he has a perspective on the subject that I think is very unique and I think I'm very lucky to have the opportunity to listen to him lecture.
It feels like my Russian is already improving and I seem to be able to follow the direction of most conversations at this point. I still don't understand a lot of the words being said, but I'm able to keep track of the topic and the basic idea of what people are saying most of the time. My speaking skills still need a lot of improvement, but I'm starting to meet Russians and I'm hoping that spending time with them will help me on that end.
Last night I met my friend Anton and a few people from his class who all speak fluently and managed to keep up with the conversation almost the whole night. There wasn't much I could add to what was being said, but it's still very gratifying to sit down with people who really know the language and have a clue, even if it's not much of one, about what's going on.
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