Reviews: Movies: The Devil's Backbone

Okay so The Devil's Backbone is a Spanish movie that I saw on the Independant film channel today. It's one I never would've watched except dad had it marked. It was pretty good too. The plot is pretty basic and rather predictable, especially as you realize what is going on. But for the most part it was excellent and is definitely worth watching. It has some really neat effects and it's not really like those slasher movies that they make here in the good old US of A. Definitely recommend seeing it.

It's Official!

I got an e-mail last night from the rotary district who is sending me overseas. The e-mail told me which country I'll be spending ten months in and the country is *Drumroll* RUSSIA!! I was so excited because I didn't know if I'd actually get to go there are not and I'm going to get to! I was soooooo soooo excited! Hooray!

Adopting from Russia and Ukraine

So I found this article on the New York Times' website. I Usally scan for anything about Russia and/or the former Soviet Bloc countries and I happened upon this article, which actually wasn't in the international section. Anyway, it's really interesting and has good multimedia with it. I would recommend that anyone who is thinking about adopting from Russia or the Ukraine, check out this article.

A Taste of U.S. Family Life, but Adoption in Limbo

Мельница

Okay so I know this is my second post today but I have to tell you about this. It's a Russian music group called Мельница.(Melnitsa) They're a sort of medieval/folk style that sort of reminds me of Loreena Mckennitt. Dad had downloaded an album of theirs and put it in my itunes. I really like their sound and the album is really good. Incidentally, the album is called зов крови. I would definitely recommend checking it out. I actually found their website today which has lyrics to all their songs. Needless to say the hours following this discovery have been very interesting. I'll put their website in this post and in the sidebar as well.

Actually, speaking of the sidebar, you may have noticed that I've added and changed some features. While the basic color scheme is the same, I've added a picture, a list of foreign film with appropriate star ratings, alphabetization of links lists, and I've updated my profile. I'm actually thinking about changing around the colors i.e. Getting a new template but I haven't decided yet.

One more thing and then I'm done, I promise. Our first rotary overnighter is Saturday night. Hopefully everything goes well. I'm also hoping we get to find out our countries, or at least a good idea of where we're going. I guess I'll find out Saturday.

группа мелница

Can I get A Whoop Whoop?

So you may or may not remember that I was irritated in AP english last year because of the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison. You may also remember that to ease my frustration I wrote a guide to writing a literary novel and making money doing it. I was checking my stats today and realized that I get the most hits on this blog from people looking up the term "Literary Novel." Being the Curious person I am, I went and googled that term both with and without quotes. Guess what I found out? When you google the term literary novel, without the quotes that page on my blog is fourth on the list. When you google it with quotes, it's third. Needless to say I was very excited. YAY!

Cyrillic Keyboard Cheat Sheet

Thought I'd go ahead and post this for all of you who have trouble remembering where the keys are when your trying to type in cyrillic. What I did is copy, paste it on MacJournal and I pull it up for reference when I'm typing. The rows follow the qwerty keyboard system.


йцукенгшщзхъё
фывапролджэ
ячсмитьбю/


Feel free to copy and paste, hope it helps.

Dates and Times

I decided I have way too much time on my hands. Why? Because I went to google and found this nifty little website that will display the date and time for just about anywhere in the world. Naturally, being the geek I am. I typed in St. Petersburg, Russia and saw that they'd give me a spiffy little clock to put on my website. Not only that, but I could have them put it in Russian. I couldn't help myself and now the date and time for St. Petersburg will be on the right hand side along with all the other usless stuff I've collected. Why did I pick St. Petersburg? Because the rotary people said they were going to talk to their contact there. If I end up going somewhere else in Russia, I'll change the clock because I'm cool like that.

Like Amazon, But Different

So actually, this news is pretty old, but I hadn't had a chance to update what with the holidays and all sorts of senior year junk getting in the way. I was very proud of myself because I knew that there was a Russian website that was similar to Amazon but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was. All of a sudden I realized that I could search Google, only it didn't work very well when I tried it in English. Naturally. I realized then that I had the means to search it in Russian. I pulled up my Cyrillic cheat sheet, pressed command spacebar on my little key board and twenty minutes later I had managed to type интернет магазин into the happy little google bar. I clicked search and like magic the first hit was Ozon.ru. I then proceeded to look up what they had to say about my father (I wanted to read reviews of what the Russians had thought of his books.) I was so proud of myself! But anyway, the upshot is that Ozon.ru is a pretty spiffy site. It's so spiffy that I'll even give you the link for it.

Ozon.ru, Like Amazon only in Russian