Weeks 24-25: Taking responsibility, a lesson in grammar

In grammar class, we are learning about how using passive voice and impersonal expressions is a good thing. In the Russian language, you are supposed to put the blame on an invisible, mystical (neuter gendered) something. The Star Wars “Force,” if you will. (And no, it’s not God, for God is male in the Russian [...]

Week 24: Good to be busy again

Call me crazy, but I like it: this week every day, I’ve come home tired, slightly stressed by the evening’s to-do list, sometimes sore, and sometimes cold. But unfailingly ecstatic about it. Woohoo! I even got to reorganize my desk, which means moving the once hugely useless and in-the-way computer monitor to a closet, adding [...]

Week 12: Almost-the-end-of-the-semester blues

Finals, papers, exit testing. . . it follows us student folk anywhere and everywhere. I had this unfortunate revelation at the beginning of the week as I drew up a calendar for myself with the rest of the semester planned out in black and white (with some red exclamation points). Mild depression sets in. This [...]

Weeks 9-10: Reentry

Coming back to Irkutsk after the week in Mongolia was an amazing relief. I knew where to go, which bus to take, how to look on the street, how to ask for things in complete sentences. All of which had not been a part of our vacation. Although we’d had a rather high-activity week off, [...]

Week 7: Midterm rush

There’s not really a midterm season here. Or, there is, simply by the fact that it’s “midway through the term,” but that’s about its only defining characteristic. But for the sake of preserving traditions from the homeland, here’s my exam schedule and otherwise busy schedule. . . . Exam schedule (“exam” in the singular). I [...]

Week 6: Around town

No pictures of Irkutsk yet. My apologies. I’m still placing myself in the I-don’t-look-Russian-enough-to-pose-as-a-student-at-The-Photography-of-Architecture-Institute-which-doesn’t-exist category in order to take pictures of ugly Soviet apartment buildings. By the time I do categorize myself as such, I’ll probably have some weird new aesthetic for concrete, meaning I probably won’t apologize for sending lots of probably not-that-interesting pictures, [...]

Week 5: The class list

Since registration has officially taken place, my schedule for the rest of the semester has turned out as such: Economics For my mainstream course, I’ve chosen to do the first semester of a year long course in “Economic Theory” which covers the microeconomics side of things. However, when I use “chosen,” it was one of [...]

…Первая неделя трудна была бы.

И вот такая была… то есть, первая неделя моего года, в котором я буду сообщаться большенство по–русски. После выходных экзаменов и новых знакомств, я был очень готов начать летнюю школу. Честно говоря, когда нам пришлось наконец “дать свое слово говорить только по–русски до конца программы,” мы испугались. После шести дней, речь не так же тяжело [...]