Monday, April 15, 2013

can rabbits melt snow by learning languages?

So I will dedicate a whole post to just the events of Kiev, but other fascinating things in life include:

On Wednesday my company students invited me to eat lunch with them in the office. It was apparently not a special treatment, although I'll say rabbit seems like a delicacy to me. So I tried rabbit. I don't know if it was the sauce or the rabbit itself, but while it wasn't particularly bad, it wasn't fantastic either. I can clearly say that I will probably continue to order chicken over rabbit in restaurants, but if it was life or death I won't die.

The snow has pretty much completely melted and the land strips between the sidewalk and the street are dirt and shrubs. And dog poo. But mostly dirt and shrubs. Before leaving for Kiev there were city workers out cleaning the trash and poo that was frozen in the snow. They had rakes and brooms and dustpans and cleaned whatever they could access as the ice and snow thawed. Upon our return it was evident that it had.

The days are warming fast. It is midnight and +6C. My students all came in their spring coats today and I will probably venture out tomorrow in mine. Sans scarf. I've definitely been wearing my tam-o-shanter again and the wool knit cap is pretty much off.

The news tells me that North Korea is threatening South Korea, Japan, and the west coast of the US. My friends are commenting on facebook about whether or not they think the news is blowing this out of proportion or is it a real threat. I don't know exactly know my feelings, but I certainly feel removed. Don't really know what to make of it.

On the Piter side of things, Karma and Ella missed us greatly while we were gone and apparently Ella meowed for us the whole time and Karma was consoled by grandma telling her when we would return and she understood enough to move into the room by the door on the day we were to return. O how I love our animals.

I haven't had Russian lessons in almost two weeks because my teacher was sick and then I was gone. I'm supposed to have my lesson tomorrow, but I hope she is better. Ironically I was learning about illnesses in my lesson. However it was not funny as she seemed seriously ill leaving my lesson early two Tuesdays ago.

I'd also like to say I think the hardest part of learning Russian is learning to speak it. After my last post about the comprehension from the philharmonic I've decided that it really was just a harder text because I've definitely seen improvement. I had expected that with Greek and Latin I would pick up understanding declensions and conjugations quite easily. However, I also need to learn to construct in a way that I haven't before. My French in high-school I also was learning to speak, but it was slightly different. I understand written text so much better than what I construct in my head or what I hear. Well, I should probably go do a little more. At least overall it's fun.

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