Spring Break (Day 1): ‘Trevoga’ redeemed in U.U.

Russians have a word (“trevoga”) for the spiritual qualms that you experience before traveling until you’re safely seated on your train/plane seat. I call it stress. Whatever it is, I feel it. The day of our departure, I went straight from classes to my internship, and then straight to choir rehearsal, leaving early around 8 [...]

Week 8: Mongolia, Home-stay 2

Day 5-6 (Wed.-Thurs., Oct. 28-29): Wandering and wondering Last place. On our horse-ride from ger one to two, my horse turned out to be the stubborn one. I’m blaming it on the fact that the father (who was leading Romany’s horse next to his the whole way) and son both had leather whips and the [...]

Week 8: Mongolia, Day 4

Day 4 (Tues., Oct. 27): But. . . there was no lady with a cap. . . I consider myself someone who’s ok just “going with it,” “easygoing” as it were. But, when in a country, of which you don’t speak the language, when you find yourself half-stranded at a bus stop in a town [...]

Week 3: Settling in, and other observations

 I’d had two weeks of classes to figure out the work ethic, attention, layout of the building, teachers’ names and patronymics, and so on, here at the university; two weeks to make some friends; two weeks to start missing home and to get a steady Internet connection to stay on top of the news, social [...]

Doing Moscow: ASAP (As Short As Possible)

I think that I understand why Russian literature tends to be so lengthy: if I were to try to enumerate and explain everything that’s happened to me from moment one on the ground in Moscow to moment 3498523049857 sitting here in “my” room at “my” apartment here in Irkutsk typing a blog to post the [...]

…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 [...]