Anekdoti

Since I don't know what to write about, I thought I'd think back over the last couple of weeks and just share some little stories with you, as I probably don't do that enough. I hope you enjoy them.

I'm one of those people who's like "I want to learn the way that real people speak," so naturally, I'm always interested in the slang and what the kids here say as much as they are interested in what the american kids say. So I make every effort to learn and to teach.

One day I was at a cafe with my friend Nina. we weren't really talking about anything, just random stuff and I was like 'ooh, let me tell you about this game my friends and I play. For those of you who've seen "whose line is it anyway," you will recognize this game. It's called "If you know what i mean" Basically the way we play the game, is after we say something, we add the phrase "if you know what i mean" after what we've said and it makes the sentence sound kind of bad, it can get pretty funny.

So I was telling Nina about this game and I was like "The phrase doesn't translate really well into Russian, but..." And so I explained how it worked and everything. And Nina thought it was pretty cool. In fact, she's started using it. Since the phrase doesn't translate well into Russian, she does it in English, but we speak russian, so we'll be talking and she'll say something in Russian and then in english go "If you know what I mean." The other day, she pulled a really good one and I laughed for a long time.

we were talking about how we sometimes just sit at home alone, and don't do anything. And Nina goes in Russian "I like it when I'm home alone because then I call up a friend and say 'hey, come on over to my place and have some tea' If you know what I mean." And I just laughed. It's not nearly as funny in translation because part of what made it awesome was the fact that we were speaking in russian and then she bursts out with "If you know what I mean" in English.

While I'm on the subject of colloquial speech, I was at a cafe once with some classmates. One got a couple of beers in him and started opening right up. ha ha. Anyway, he asked me whether in English we "read" rap or "sing" rap. It didn't take me long to think about it before answering "Neither, Rap is a verb. I rap, you rap and so on and so forth." He thought that was pretty cool and then I was like "And what is it in Russian." I was then told that in Russian they don't have the verb "to rap" so Russians "читать рап" or "read rap." So I found that to be very interesting.

Finally, My computer class teacher just came up to me and told me that you have to watch in the cold that your cell phone doesn't freeze and that even your cell phone should have a little шуба or fur coat. Ha ha ha. Sometimes the conversations I have with people here crack me up.

well, other than that I'm doing well. I had a slight slump the last couple of days where i was just generally irritated with just about everything, but I'm dealing with it so that's good. The other day I also realized that I'm halfway through my fourth month here and I was like "wow, already?"

This is our last full week of school before the holidays so that's awesome. Raisa's older daughter flies in on the 28th which I'm pretty excited about. I can't wait to meet her. Yay! Heard back home they're having a snowstorm. sounds to me like the weather there's been worse than it has here.