Darn language...

Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! I still can't believe I'm 22, somehow it seems so much older than 21, its kind of scary! I had a great birthday; my delightful European friends showered me with presents (my advice: make friends with Belgians as you're sure to get tons of Belgian chocolate on your birthday) and took me out for dinner at a very tasty Indonesian restaurant. Somehow I never expected to ever be celebrating my birthday at an Indonesian restaurant in snowy Russia, but hey it was alot of fun!

I just realized that I've almost been in Saint Petersburg two months now. I really havent said much here about how my classes and how the struggle to learn Russian (the official reason for me being here after all!) has been going. Well.. basically its been alot more difficult than I had expected. Before I came I thought that just by living in Russia and being immersed in the language, I would somehow just pick it up by osmosis or something! Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work like that for me, its a lot of hard work!

Although I've learned alot since I've been here, I've made a lot less progress then I expected to in this amount of time! The more I learn, the more I realize how much more there is to know. It's such a fiendishly difficult language, not because of the crazy-looking alphabet (thats easy, and so much fun to write!) but rather because of all sorts of positively horrific grammar treats like 6 cases, perfective and imperfective verbs, and declineable numbers; doesn't sound like much if you've been lucky enough to never have dealt with such things, but if you have, you'll know what a perfect nightmare they can be! Even if Russian didnt have such complex grammar, it would be difficult enough to learn simply because there is so little in common with English - its not like French or German where a lot of words are the same or similar to English or where you have a good chance at guessing at their meaning. Oh no, this is afterall the language where something as simple as the verb "to travel" turns into the rambling monster "pyutyushestvovat." Help! Why didnt I decide to take German instead??

Mabye if I was actually immersed in Russian all the time I would be much better by now, but the problem is I'm not; my friends here are from all over Europe - the UK, Belgium, France, Norway, and Germany - and we always speak in English, not Russian because none of us are very good at Russian and our conversations would be pretty stunted if we tried! I speak a little Russian everyday with my host mom, but we're pretty limited by my micro vocabulary so we do ALOT of talking about the weather and how university is going.

My classes are great for practicing speaking in Russian and building confidence, as the teachers really concentrate on developing our speaking skills and the class is small enough (usually 5-10 students) for lots of personal interaction. I have two teachers, Nadezhda and Ina, who both insist on speaking only Russian in the classroom, which is good, though at first it was totally terrifying! Sitting in my first class, not comprehending a word of what was being said, I quickly realized I had forgotten the tiny bit of Russian I'd learned back in first and second year at UBC! Class is only 3 hours a day, but that's enough as I dont think it would be possible to do much more because I'm usually just exhausted after three hours of intense concentration. You cant slack off for a moment or you'll be completely lost!

I really get the feeling that Russian is something that you just can't hope master in 6 months alone, I dont even know if 6 years would be enough! Luckily I dont think I have to master Russian to be a Russian history grad student and mabye later on a prof, but everything I learn will help. I'll keep plugging away at it.. it is rewarding when you learn something new and can read a sign you couldnt before or actually start to understand what people say to you!