Category: 2011

(Monday 26th September 2011 written same day)

I don’t know when this is going to reach the blog. The internet at home isn’t working at present. I’ve tried restarting the router, and I don’t want to mess with anything more than that. The network diagnostics show that the router says it is connected to the internet, but every website I try to connect to times out. I will probably copy the text files of the blog entries onto a flashdrive and load them at the school. Pictures will have to wait.

Today started with mist. I wore an anorak for the walk to school. It was just a little chilly. I didn’t think to look at what any of the buildings said the temperature was. I still feel a little groggy with the cold. The leaves are falling from the trees and everywhere you can see people sweeping them up and stuffing them into sacks and other containers.

The work at school today started with conversation. A review of what I did at the weekend. Unfortunately, the “cold” meant that wasn’t as much as I had wanted, but there were still some things to talk about, like going to the shop and buying food. Apparently my choice of provisions counts as “healthy”. I think there was rather too much dairy, but I think that just shows differences in attitude in different countries. I definitely think the Russian diet contains less meat than I am used to, and that is probably a good thing.

After the conversation, we moved on to the homework. My insight with the “cases” was pretty much correct. I am beginning to understand how to use the crib-sheet I’ve been given to work out what ending to use when a noun should be in a particular case. I’m making lots of mistakes but I’ve moved beyond randomly changing the ending of the word and hoping it is appropriate.

The new work today is more about variations on a theme of cleaning. I suppose when teaching a language it is easiest to have themes for different sections, and there are probably deeper objectives to choosing particular words which are not obvious to me, but sometimes it seems like the text-book authors have an obsession with something, in this case – cleaning. Today I had verbs for “washing” (the laundry), “washing” (vegetables, or the car) and finally “cleaning” (with a brush). This last one includes the sense of cleaning your shoes (with a brush), cleaning your teeth (also with a brush) but also (to my mind strangely), peeling or removing the skin from fruit or vegetables. Seems odd, but there you go.

More homework to do, most of which I did in the afternoon.

I had thought about taking a weekend trip to Tomsk. I think I’ve abandoned that idea. I like the idea of Tomsk, but the trip involves 3+ hours on a bus each way, it requires a night in a hotel and it will take up the whole weekend. It also works out a little expensive. I think I would rather save the money and save the effort. On the plus side, the school have suggested a trip on the river on Saturday. That is a nice alternative. If the weather is reasonable (and the forecast says it should be), then that will be something to look forward to.

I’ve tried running some diagnostics on the internet connection. Just tried “ping”. As I thought, I’ve got a good connection to the router, but the router isn’t talking to the internet, even though it says that is is. It seems highly unlikely that all the sites I’ve tried are equally broken.

It’s 21:00 and my landlady has just arrived with the shopping. Goodness me she has a long day. And this is after the (looked like it was unplanned) trip to Tomsk which took up all of the weekend.

It’s after 23:00 and supper was excellent! Sasiski (Frankfurter sausages) with rice, and sour cream and tovorak and the inevetable black tea plus… I’ve just drunk something and I’m not at all sure what it was. My landlady said it will be good for my cough. It consisted of milk which had been boiled with nuts in it. The “nuts” are about the size and shape of maize kernels but dark red-brown. I looked at the pot were it was prepared, and there’s a cedar pine cone as well. The whole concoction tasted a little bitter. I’m feeling sleepy, but the internet’s back, so I’m going to do the posting and then go to sleep.

(Sunday 25th September 2011, written same day)

I woke up at about 07:30 feeling much better. Not perfect, but much better. Shortly afterwards, I found that Boosa (the dog) knows how to open the door to my room. Sniff, sniff. Face being licked by dog. “Good morning Boosa!” The dog then left and a little while later, my landlady’s son closed my door. I think the dog wanted to “be taken for a walk”. We all went back to bed. By the time I got up an hour and a bit later, the son had gone out.

I made myself breakfast from the remains of supper. Then I settled down to working through the homework. After I had completed most of it, I went out for a walk and had lunch. This time I tried a burger place called “Carl’s” I’m going to check whether it is Russian or from somewhere else. I messed up my order, and got an extra portion of fries. These are the things you have to expect.

On my return, I got on with the rest of the homework, a fairly large piece of translation. I managed ok, but it takes me ages as my vocabulary needs to be bigger.

Once I had finished with this I started looking at a “graded reader” I have borrowed from the school. Once again, it’s a pretty substantial translation job.

My landlady’s son came back and asked me if I wanted him to make supper. Naturally I said yes. It turned out to be very good: pelmyeni (sort-of ravioli stuffed with potato and mushroom). While he was preparing the meal I had a look at my notes. I think I may have developed a slightly clearer understanding of how to use one of the aids I’ve been given. I’m not going to bother with it now, but I’m going to look at something again tomorrow. If I’m right, one of the “rules” (to do with the “Accusative case”) may have become a bit clearer.

I would like to find a way of remembering stuff more easilly (“pomnooyou”), but until that happens there is no alternative to repetition, and making up little rhymes and strange associations. I’m trying all sorts of tricks, but still struggling with recall. It it was easy everyone would be doing it!

Time to settle down for the evening.

(Saturday 24th September 2011, written 25th September)

I woke up this morning, not with a hang-over, but knowing that I had a cold. I’ve suspected this for about a day, but it has caught up with me. I had planned to do a bit more exploring today, but I didn’t feel much like it. I took some asprin, had a bit of a lie in and then went out for lunch.

I had a look at some of the Interra displays. It looked interesting, but my heart wasn’t in it. I came home and went to bed. I dozed for most of the afternoon.

I woke up feeling much better and decided to go to a local supermarket and buy “the makings” of supper and breakfast. It all went to plan. I had one unsettling moment when I wondered if they had sold out of bread, but then I found what I was looking for. Supper was cream cheese (Tovarok), black bread and tinned spratts with black tea, followed by one bottle of beer. It may sound a bit strange, but it’s very similar to what I’ve been served for supper once while I’ve been here, and I’ve already been served spratts for breakfast. After all, sardines on toast used to be a popular “tea” dish.

I didn’t do any homework. My head isn’t in the right state for that. It feels kind of muzzy.

Off to bed early.

(Friday 23rd September 2011 written Sunday 25th September)

The homework last night was in two parts. I struggled with it a bit. I’m still trying to understand the “cases” situation. I feel I’m making progress but there is so much to remember. So often the thing I want to remember seems to be “just out of touch”. It’s frustrating but I suppose the answer is to keep on trying. Things do stick, and then there is one less thing to struggle with, so I can give more attention to something else.

Then I had a test. It was a comprehension piece about a Russian celebrity. Naturally I hadn’t heard of her and the only bits which I remember now are that she is a singer and she has red hair. I don’t know how well I did yet. I found it a struggle, but I think it was intended to be a challenge.

There have been three students at the school: Charles, a French skiing instructor who lives in Switzerland, Jardina, a Spanish IT manager from Barcelona, and me. Today was Jardina’s last day. She leaves for Spain at 07:00 tomorrow and has an early taxi booked. The school gave use a small “tea” (buns and biscuits and tea). The school awarded Jardina with her certificate, giving the level she has achieved. Actually, they gave her two certificates, one in English and one in Russian. I’m pleased about that. I don’t expect to achieve the same level as Jardina (she has been doing this for years), but it would be good to have some semi-official recognition of accomplishment. I keep on thinking of the Scarecrow and his diploma from “The Wizard of Oz”.

After the tea, and sending a few eMails, Charles, Jardina and I went to the pub. The one we chose was “St Patrick’s Corner”. It’s an Irish pub. Novosibirsk has several. It’s quite a reasonable place (but it is not on a corner!). It’s strange how close you can feel to people after only two weeks. The three of us have really only shared lunches and trips, but we feel we have shared the experience of being here in Novosibirsk. I hope Jardina had a good trip home.

One very funny thing happened. For the past two weeks, naturally, one of the topics of conversation between the three of us had been “language”. The other two had asked me about the Irish Language. I had confessed to knowing very little and said that it was quite different to English and that they would probably find the spelling a challenge. I did say that one of the things I had been warned about was the labels on toilet doors: in Irish M (for “Mna” means Lady) and F (for “Fir” means Man). I didn’t think about it any more. During the evening, Charles went to the toilet and said with a laugh that he had remembered what I had said and gone through the right door! The toilets in “St Patrick’s Corner” are labeled in Irish! Russian toilets are usually labeled M for “Man” and a different cyrillic character for “Woman”. You can probably see where this is leading. We wondered how the Russians would cope with this. The answer is, it confused them. It would probably confuse most English speakers as well. During the evening, we (the three of us, two men and a woman) encountered a number of confused Russians: men exiting from the Ladies’, and a Woman coming into the Men’s. So, the international pictorial lavatory signs do serve a useful purpose.

When I got home, I met my landlady, who announced that she had to make an unexpected business trip to Tomsk, and that she was leaving NOW! That was alright. I know now that I coped!

(Thursday 22nd September 2011, written same day)

There are no pictures today, and I’m afraid the weather feels like it is changing.

To my surprise, I did pretty well with yesterday’s homework. I was all about the differences between “Seeing, Watching, Hearing and Listening”, with a bit of the present and the past thrown in. It’s reasonably reassuring. I’m making progress. I can ready stuff (from the text book) reasonably well now. I still feel awkward when speaking and naturally listening can be a bit of a challenge. If it’s a recording, often I can work things out after a couple of hearings, but of course the real world doesn’t work like that.

Today’s lessons were a review of what happens to a word when it is the “object” of the sentence. The rules are complicated: it all depends on whether it is singular or plural, masculine, feminine or neuter and whether it is animate or inanimate. Some really strange things happen, not the least of which is that a corpse is animate! How I hate grammar! Then I listened to a recording of some drippy teenage go on about her crush on a rock-star. At least, thank goodness, the rock-star and the band are fictitious. At least, I hope they are.

Then came something, which although awkward, does make a kind of sense. If said “I read ‘War and Peace’ last night”, could you be sure what I meant? If I said “I stopped reading ‘War and Peace’ last night”, would you know if I had finished the book? Russian has a simple way round this ambiguity. The language technicians call it “Perfective” and “Imperfective”. It’s a pain, but useful.

After lunch I did some of did some of my homework, and then it was off to “The museum of the USSR”. This was housed in what would have been a shared flat. It was very interesting and for me emphasised how things have changed. I bought my first souvenirs. Anybody want a fridge magnet of Lenin? I resisted the temptation to buy Stalin!

After that it was back to the school to watch a Soviet comedy titled “The diamond arm”. It was about diamond smugglers, and actually really funny. I can smell dinner cooking, then I have to finish my homework.

Since writing this, I’ve learned that at the time the film was produced (in Soviet times), it was actually legal for Russians to import diamonds and gold INTO Russia (though I doubt they would have had the money). This adds a further layer of irony to the film.