That's what my Russian professor told me earlier today. It literally means "the first blin (a Russian pancake) out of the oven is never the best." She told me this after I commented on how my paper I'm writing for her will be rife with spelling and grammatical errors. I'm genuinely surprised at how much Russian I've learned since I've been here. When I first got here my primary language was a bizarre mixture of Spanish and the Romanian that Silvia had jotted down on a piece of paper for me. About a month ago, however, as my Russian classes got more in depth and frequent, Russian took over as the main language I speak when I'm on my own. Now it's no way from good, but I can get around the city just fine with what I know, and I've even been able to carry on more than a few basic conversations over the past week or so. Pretty fun stuff actually.
In other news: I went to Odessa a week and a half ago. I was only there for a day but it was definitely the day to be there. April 1 is apparently one of the biggest annual festivals on this side of the world, and I must say it seemed that way. There were so many buses leaving Moldova for Odessa that I ended up being stuck on the Moldovan/Ukrainian border for over two and a half hours. Once I got there though it was a hell of a time. My tiredness from getting about three hours of sleep quickly vanished once I saw the Potemkin Steps.
The Potemkin Steps are best known as the setting for one of the most famous and influential scenes in the history of film. I'll save you the boring details of why they're such a big deal, but you should definitely look 'em up. I will tell you though that the most recent Star Wars movie and the movie The Untouchables feature scenes which are practically identical to the scene in question. The bottom line: I was pumped in a very nerdy way.
From there it just got better, free concerts, masses of people speaking every language imaginable (I think I even heard some Hindi and Chinese), and of course the unique architecture of the city. Quite the day trip from Chisinau. The trip also helped my grasp of Russian too.
Other than that there's not too much more to report on. I'll hopefully be able to get two weeks off for Easter and do a good bit of traveling in the Western part of the former Soviet Union (Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Baltics, etc.). I'll update you all when I get more info on that in the next post though.
Oh yeah, one more thing, I bought a world map labeled in Russian on the street while walking to the internet cafe today. I haven't opened it up yet but my buddies back home will definitely know what about it I'm gonna notice first.
That's all for today folks, thanks for reading.
By the by: watch Двенадцать (12), and listen to Rage Against the Machine
Also: In my last post I incorrectly used the word други (droogi). This term has no meaning in Russian. Друг has an irregular plural of другзья (droogzya), meaning "friends". Sorry
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)