The world of blogging can be a bit one sided at times. Most days there are on average 15 people who view my blog. But I rarely hear from most readers, so sometimes it is hard to keep up the one sided communication. I value your readership, thank you. The greatest reward for me though is to hear your comments and to feel like I am involved in two way communication.
Life has settled down into familiar patterns here now. This is a very good thing. 2007 has been full of so much travel. That makes for fascinating reading and pictures. I have certainly enjoyed sharing these experiences with you. Traveling can be exhausting though. When we arrived in Krasnoyarsk in October, we felt like we did not want to travel for 6 months. We still feel this way, although know that we need to visit people in Novosibirsk at some stage. We can not do so in December because we need to renew our visas and we can not travel with out our passports. We would like to go there in January as I will have no classes, but then the students we know there will not be around either. Just have to see how it works out.
University classes are keeping me very busy. My study load is a lot heavier now. On one hand this is good. But on the other hand I am suffering overload. I am trying to communicate this to my teachers, hopefully they will start to understand. The other day when reading a two page text there were 106 words I did not know. The truth is, the text was just too complicated for me. Learning too many words at once is not helpful as it is not possible to retain that much. Learning needs to build upon current knowledge. This has all led to me feeling exhausted and a little discouraged. Yesterday I hit a bit of a brick wall. I told myself that I had learned enough Russian and that I would just get by with what I have. This of course is not true. The path to fluency is a long and hard one.
We have recently started a student club. So far we have met Khakas, Evenki and Sakha. We are excited about this and have met many more on the streets from different peoples.
The other big reason that I have not posted is that I have not been carrying my camera around with me. I don't like to post without a photo, as too much text can be boring. But as life has become so regular now, it seems that there has been nothing new to take a photo of. Also, we seem to spend a lot of our life in Akademgorodok or going to the shopping centre. I have not actually been into the city centre for a few weeks now. So there has been less variation recently. Still the things that are familiar to me, can still be fascinating for you. So I will try to explore Akademgorodok, more deeply with the camera. Of course, you the reader can have an input and let me know what interests you and I will try to follow that up.
I would greatly appreciate hearing some comments from some of you, who have never commented before.
4 comments:
Pictures are nice but I liked to hear how the regular life is going that gives me insight into how to talk to the master about and for you Thanks. I can imagine your frustration about the language and will ask for a clear understanding for you and an ease of the ability to learn. My how many years a baby takes to become fluent in a language and you are takleing one at your age. BRAVO!! I am glad things have settled down for you and your little family so I ask protection for you all and the ability to make lasting friendships and to feel at home there.
Abigails blog is my homepage so I see it however briefly everytime I log on. If it changes I check your too. I expect you do them both around the same time. Is that a fair guess?
I thought Univercity classes were harder for you this year. But you are so capable that it will likely just be a stretching tome and soon you will love the challenge. You will enjoy the opportunity to go deeper in conversation because your training will make your desire poaaible. Is it a fair different culture there than in Novo? Nothing like the leap Dad and I are doing here?
Talk to you on the phone sometime rather than taking all the time with your daughter. Isnt it amazing how inthralling her conversation is to me?
Thanks for your understanding. The issue is that the teachers are not really taking the time to prepare the lessons. The pick a book and a text and then just teach from that. They really need to take the time to prepare for my understanding and level. The biggest difference is that my teacher in Novosibirsk took the time to prepare the lessons.
The culture is not vastly different. There are certainly more indigenous students here than there were in Novo. The Russian culture to me seems very similar. The biggest difference to me between the cities is that Novo has an underground Metro train system, and this changes peoples movements and cultural activities accordingly.
Thanks for taking the time to write here and in your newsletter. I really enjoy reading your news and seeing photos. I feel cold just looking at all that snow!
I ask that you will be sent teachers who want to really teach and who take the time to work out your needs first.
Love to M & A. :)
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