Well, turns out we haven't formally been assigned partners yet; what actually happened was more like speed-dating, with the Russian students (eight of them; three guys, five girls) sitting at different tables and the American students (nine of us; three guys and six girls) rotating slowly around the room (this all took place in a small restaurant/bar, I should add). I spent approximately five minutes or so with each of the Russkiy students, attempting to converse in a mixture of English and horribly mangled Russian...it's sort of depressing to see how much better they are at English than I am at Russian. Oh, and we also had free drinks...the Nevsky beer was surprisingly good. At the end of the "speed-dating", we each had to fill out a card specifying which conversation partners we enjoyed talking with, and they'll match us up with one later this week. I'm personally hoping for either Yulia or Marina (not the same as my host-mother), since we seemed to have the most in common.
After all that was finished, I went and grabbed some quick dinner from one of the carts on the sidewalk....dinner was not provided at RCH, and the restaurant was a bit pricey for my budget. So I got a hamburger and a Coke from one of the street-meat vendors and went to eat it in the shadow of the Church on the Spilled Blood, listening to some nearby street musicians playing jazz for about thirty minutes or so.
Tuesday night was much less eventful. I did my homework and watched Russia's version of Sesame Street to help boost my vocabulary a little, (don't laugh, it actually helps!) then got bitten half to death in the night by mosquitos....man, I can't WAIT until it gets cold enough for the damn little things to die.
to upload photos, click on the icon that looks like a picture of a mountain, to the right of the spell check button. and then the upload images window comes up and you just upload! hope this helps.
ReplyDeleteThanks Helen, I owe you one!
ReplyDeleteThat's a really clever way to choose conversation partners. That way you can at least be reasonably sure you'll get someone you have more in common with. And the more in common you have with someone, the more you'll talk I guess.
ReplyDeleteIf it makes you feel any better, I have some children's books in Japanese.