Chita

So I just got back from another amazing Overnighter. Since I've described in a lovely essay in a previous post what is great about Rotary Youth Exchange Overnighters (see 16 Hours) I'm not going to talk about that. Instead, I'd just like to say one thing.


Siberia

Yup, you guessed it. That's where I'm heading. And you know what? I'M STINKIN' EXCITED! I mean think about it. How many tourists to Russia actually go to Sibera? It's awesome! The city that my District people are hoping to send me to is called Chita (Чита). From what I've read so far, it sounds like a neat city. I'm hoping I'll end up there.

I also believe that the district I'll be in in Russia, is the only Rotary district that covers three countries. It covers Russia east of the Ural mountains, Canada's Yukon, and Alaska. Pretty sweet eh? I think I need to change that little clock up there in the left hand corner. While I'm at it, I think that I will also change the language of the blog so it displays the date and stuff in Russian. I cannot wait to go!

EDIT: For now I'm just going to leave the clock as it is. I did change the dates for the posts, but I have to work on the clock thing later.

Transliteration

The other day, Dad and I went to Borders after a lovely little college thingy I had to go to. Naturally, I ended up in the section I usually live in when I go to Borders--The Language Reference, the Russian section in particular. It was there that I discovered something really interesting.

It was in a copy of (and I'm not joking) Russian for Dummies. I thought I'd take a look and so I opened up the book and to my dismay, I realized after about five seconds that the book did not teach cyrillic, rather, it used transliteration to teach words.

Now, normally, I'd have nothing against transliteration, but I've come to realize since beginning my study of Russian that in short, transliteration stinks. It's much easier to pronounce Russian when you actually see the cyrillic letters and furthur more, the alphabet, in all honesty isn't all that hard to learn. But I digress.

It was about ten seconds after I realized that the words in the book had been transliterated, that I had the most shocking of revelations. I couldn't read it! And I'm only slightly exaggerating. I was looking at the English letters. I even knew what the English letters were supposed to sound like. But for the life of me I had the worst time trying to figure out what the words were supposed to be in Russian. It was actually more effort to sit there in Borders and squint at the words, trying to figure out what they were supposed to be, than to sit there with the cyrillic and figure that out. It was a real interesting, eye opening experience. One that I personally, found rather funny. My parents did as well.

A Slight Change

For those of you who may or may not be observant, you will notice that I changed the little subtag under the title of the blog. I kept the title becaues in all honesty, I've spent a good amount of time building up the name of the blog and so on and so forth, and I'd have to start all over if I changed the name. Anyway the point of this post is not to talk about blog titles, but to explain why I've changed the sub tag from "A record of my Experiences with Language" to "The Russian Odyssey..."

The main reason, well if you haven't figured it out by now, I'm going to be spending ten months with Rotary Youth Exchange in Russia, beginning in August. When that happens, This blog will switch to mostly talking about the experiences I'm having there. The reason I've changed it now, in February is because I've noticed that a lot of my posts lately have more to do with Russian, than with French, or any other language. Why? Probably because Russian has become my dominant language

No, this does not mean that I'm fluent in it, or that I speak it more than English. Let me explain. See, when I first started taking French, it became my "dominant" second language. This means that when I was thinking of phrases in foreign languages, and I couldn't think of a word in that language, my mind would automatically substitue a french word. And example of this might be "The dog runs in the park." If I were saying it in spanish "el perro corre en..." And I couldn't remember the word for park in spanish, then my mind would want me to say the word "le parque" in French instead.

For some reason though, the past few weeks Russian has steadily become more and more persistant. It's even begun to invade my french lately. I'll be driving to High school and trying to gear myself up for French by thinking of lovely french phrases. I'll be driving along and be thinking "the Weather is very cold" Only in french so it's "Le temps est..." And then out of the blue I'll mentally finish the sentance in Russian "очень холодная" and then I'm thinking "wait that's not right." It happens with more and more frequency in French class too. It's really frustrating when I know a French word, but all I can remember is the Russian word for it. I try not to encourage myself to make these half and half sentences because I'm worried if I do, I'll start speaking that way and the last thing I need is to be sitting there speaking 'fruchian.'

16 Hours Or: Why I Love Rotary Youth Exchange

Volleyball involves more soccor moves than volleyball moves, You learn how to say the most interesting things in Foreign Languages (i.e. That is your Mom, in Chineese) You spend two hours trying to remember what it was you were supposed to remember, and for 16 hours you are thrown into a chaotic smorgasbord of language, culture, late night chats, passing around community bottles of mountain dew, and being starkly reminded by water cascading over your head that you've made a pact to stay awake. What is it? Why the latest Rotary overnighter of course! I've decided that Overnighters are one of the best things in the world, and I am amazed at the fact that I waited so long to experience one. Having chalked two of them up to my building character talley, I have found myself a different person.

They say going with Rotary on a year long youth exchange changes you. What they don't tell you is that the changing starts before you even set foot on foreign soil. When I went to our first mandatory overnighter, I didn't really know what to expect. It didn't take me long to figure out the way things work and by the end of that evening I was a changed person. I didn't realize it until I got home. All I knew was that when I woke up from my eight hour nap after being up all night, I felt different. It was difficult to describe but the Abigail who came home from that meeting was not the same Abigail who left. It took me a while but I finally realized why. In 16 hours, 16 short hours that considering the amount of time we live, isn't really that long, I had experienced more of the world than some people do in their entire lives. I learned what hand sympols not to show in the Czech Republic, I heard the Indian national anthem, and I learned a smattering of foreign phrases you wouldn't be able to learn anywhere else. It was a shocking revelation, but after I understood why I felt the way I did, it was a revelation that I came to terms with. I realized that I was ready to make this change, come what may.

Flash forward a month. Overnighter number two. It was even better than the first. Why? Because the ice had been broken. So what if it had been X amount of weeks since you'd last seen these people. There is a common bond between us that allowed us to just pick right up where we'd left off. Strengthening friendships made. Amazing what 16 hours can do for you. This month, what did learn? Well for starters I learned that if you're going to Russia, don't tell the guy from the Czech Republic, but the guy from Slovakia has some really good information. I practiced the Rotary "Smile and Nod", I learned about the similarities between Slavic languages, and discovered the differences in relationships in several countries. I was reminded that laughter is the same in any language.

I came home tired, but happy. Pumped up for the next time I'll get to see my friends. Friends who I spend 16 short hours with once a month, but who, in some ways, I am closer to than friends I've known for a lifetime. God Bless the Youth Exchange Bond!

Russian Poetry

So in Russian class we're doing a unit on books and Authors. Wednesday we were sitting in class talking about various authors and poets and Marina goes "Your home assignment is to pick a Russian poet and look up one of their poems" I'm sitting there thinking that it'll be neat because we're going to read a russian poem. " And memorize it." Suddenly my little dream world comes crashing down around me. Memorize a Russian poem? Are you kidding me? Then she says something like "It's okay, it can be short poem' A sigh of relief can be heard throughout the room "But it must be 10-12 lines long." What? Oh come on Marina! We have until Wednesday to memorize it. AHHHH! I picked a poem by Sergei Esenin. It's sixteen lines long, but the lines are short so hopefull it won't be too bad. I'll probably be posting it on here because It'll help me memorize it as well as help me practice my Russian typing.

We have a Rotary Overnighter tomorrow. I should really due my Rotary homework. We have to memorize phrases in other languages and I'd do mine in Russian except none of the Current inbounds are from Russia so I'll probably just do it in French and have my friend check it. I'll let you know how it goes probably Monday because I'm going to be fried all day sunday.

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

Rotary Interview #2 (District)

Okay so the District Rotary interviews were today. It was a really interesting experience. It involved a lot of sitting, some more comfortable than others. lol. Seriously though the actual interview wasn't nearly as extensive as the first interview, which I'm very grateful for. What happened first?

When we (My parents and I) first got there, I had my application checked over. I had to fix and fill in some things, that sort of cleanup. After that, it was time for the informational meeting. That informational meeting was just that, informational. Though we did learn the money time line and the dates for the overnighters I have to go to.

After the info session, it was interview time. I did have a break in between because the interviewers had to read through my application because they hadn't seen it before. I was interviewed first and actually the questions weren't nearly as tough as at the first interview. They asked me things like. "What is the biggest challenge you've faced in the past couple of years and how did you handle it?" and they asked me some questions that I'd been asked at the first interview. It was pretty straightforward. After they got done with me, they interviewed mom and dad seperately. Then they interviewed us together.

After the interview, we had to fill out more papers. That was irritating but I got over it. They were a neccesary evil. I had to have my top three country choices. I knew that number one was Russia, but I didn't really have two others. Mom said "Go with your gut" and so I randomly wrote down the Czech Republic second and Norway third. Don't ask me why I picked the Czech Republic because it was a pretty random choice. The ironic thing about it is that after we filled out the paperwork, we met some inbound rotary students, one of whom, Ondrej, was from the Czech Republic. He was kind enough to sit down with us and tell us all about his country. We talked for like an hour. That was fun.

The main thing I came away with, whether I get to go overseas or not, was how nice everyone was. Most of the people I met were extremely friendly and just great people in general. I get the impression that they will try to help me go to my first choice country if they can. Before the interviews or the information session, we met the man in charge of outbound training. He found out I wanted to go to Russia. While I was waiting to join mom and dad with the interviewers, he came by where I was sitting and told me that he had already spoken to someone and they were going to try to get ahold of contacts in Saint Petersbourg. That really impressed me. If nothing else I came away richer for having gotten to go through the experience. I'm hoping I'll get to go on. Rotary will tell the canidates the first week of December.

The Six Russian Cases, Easy Chart

The moment you've been waiting for has finally arrived. I decided to get my rear in gear and do something productive. So here it is. Note that this is a chart to aide those who already know how the cases work. It is designed as a quick and easy reference for the case endings (Note that at this time I only have the noun endings. Adjectives will be coming soon.) ****NOTE***DUE TO TECHNICAL PROBLEMS WITH BLOGGER AND TABLES, THIS POST IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION. PLEASE CHECK BACK SOON!

Prepositional Case(Gender, Hard ending, Soft Ending)

Masc.	Fem.	Neuter	Plural(M)	Plural(F)
-е	-е	-е	-ах	-ах
-и	-и	-и	-ях	-ях

An Odd Occurence

So the other day I was sitting in Spanish class. We were doing speaking activities, and were filling in sentence blanks with question words (Don't ask me why we were doing this in a spanish 3/4 class.) anyway I looked at one of the sentences and it said "_ esta la bicicleta" Or something like that. (It means _ is the bicycle) So I looked at it and the first word that popped into my head was где. Which is the Russian word for "Where" Right after I thought of that word I thought Ou which is the French word for where. Then I thought "so what's the Spanish word?" Anyway it was bizarre because I didn't think of it in english first, or even French, I thought Russian first and I don't know why. Okay, that's my weird story of the day, or week, or whatever.

I failed a Russian test wednesday. It was really depressing because I knew pretty much all of the answers and was hoping I could get my grade up, but I'm pretty sure I failed because I didn't correctly do the genative feminine endings. The endings I put on are actually the endings for adjectives in the genitive case, but on nouns they are the endings for the instrumental case, which means that I probably failed. I'll know for sure tomorrow. Expect a little case chart to pop up here soon because I really need to make one to keep it straight. I'll tell you one thing, I'll never forget what the ending of feminine singular nouns in the genitive case are!

Rotary Interview #1

Okay, so I would've posted this sooner but for some reason Blogger didn't like me the other night and wouldn't let me in. For those of you who care, or happened to read the entry where I talked about Applying for Rotary Youth Exchange, I have some updates on that.

I had gotten a call last Monday from the man in charge of our district's exchange program he had called to set up an appointment for my first Rotary interview. So Thursday, I arrived with my parents and went through one of the scariest things I've done in my entire life. Which is sit across the table from three older gentlemen while they drill me with really nasty questions. Especially at the beginning...

Examples:

What would you do if you go overseas and people start saying that amiericans just take and take and never give, how would you handle that?

What are three things you would take abroad to represent the American Culture?


And so on and so forth. It did get a little easier after a while. The questions ranged from really silly stuff such as "Have you ever flown in a plane before" Which actually I can see the reason they ask, to really hard stuff as mentioned above. Some other questions were:

-How strict are your parents?

-Do you realize that you won't be able to drive overseas?

-What if your host family pressures you to have your parents send more money so they can buy your host brother new jeans?

-Do you have a serous boyfriend?

-Do you smoke or drink?

-How would you handle the opportunity to go to a different type of church or religious service?

-What do you know about Rotary.

-What do you think is the scariest part of going overseas?

-What are you most excited about?


So as you can see it was a long tough interview. Hopefully if there's anyone out there going to a rotary interview, these questions will help get you ready. I really had no idea what to expect when I went in. After I got interviewed by myself, I had to get my parents who were waiting, and then they got interviewed as well (I was there too but that part of the interview was mostly them.) The upshot of all this is that I was the last interview and so yesterday I got a call that said I had passed the first interview with flying colors and so this means that I get to go on to the district interview where I basically get to do the same thing again! I'm a little nervous but at least I know what sort of questions they're going to ask, unless of course they ask me different ones. I hope not.

A Sort of Language Week

So I've unofficially decided this is a language week. Here's why. Number one, we've started Russian movie night monday nights so I just got back from tha. It was an experience because we were watching a TV version of The Three Musketeers,in Russian. Not only that but it was a musical and the music was really...interesting. Tomorrow I've got more language stuff on my plate. There's a place nearby that's having a Something Russian Festival and so mom is going to go to it with me tomorrow after world politics. Then, tomorrow evening is Spanish club at a local tex-mex place. Yummy! As if that weren't enough, Friday we are having a French field trip. We are going to hear a guy sing and then get a wine tour. The reason I don't know who's singing is because I originally wasn't able to go to that part of it because of Russian Class, however, Marina cancelled Russian class on friday so now I can go! yay!

Rotary Application Part one

well, I just got done filling out the first part of an application to go with Rotary youth exchange. It's a neat program for those of you who don't know. They send you abroad for a year and you go to school and learn about the culture and language. I'm hoping they accept me. If they do I'm planning on going to Russia or Belarus. I'm going to turn it in tomorrow. Let's all hope I get an interview call...

J'étais Malade

That was my problem for the last week. (I was sick for those of you who don't know french) Anywho I'm back on my feet or at least more on them than I was all of last week. I still feel pretty crummy at points. Though I did lose ten pounds. Isn't the stomach flu diet amazing?

We're going to be watching La Belle et la Bête (Disney) in French class. We're going to start reading a version of it tomorrow. I'm excited though at the moment I'm just tired.

If you haven't noticed, I rearranged the layout of the links and whatnot. I decided that no one was able to see the cool links and stuff I had posted so I just tweaked the sidebar, moved the archives and stuff nobody wants to see to the bottom of the page.

Okay. That's all I've got for now, I'll try to keep you all updated but right now I have to shop for my textbook for Russian class and go appease my angry mother.