Merry Christmas

Joyeux Noel
Feliz Navidad
and all that good stuff.

I ended up getting a C+ in Russian class. Too bad I don't take the tests well because I can't spell. Yeah, so other than that nothing has really been going on in the language front. Honestly. We had French club today, we went caroling in French last Sunday night. That was pretty fun. I've got a packet with all the words in it. I've been singing them all week long. Spanish is pretty much boring as usual. Had a test today. I did kind of bad on it. I'm worried I'll forget all of my Russian over the month long break so I've been trying to speak it so I'll remember.

AP and the "Personal" Narrative

So since I didn't have Russian today, I hung out at school. This activity is becoming quite interesting because I realized that the people at school don't actually care what I do just so long as I'm not causing trouble. Take today for example. Period 8/9 I stood in the door of Madame's room and I said.

Me: Madame, Can I sit in on your AP class today?

Madame: Why haven't you done it all year?

Me: Because I would sit in the Library all day and I just now realized that they don't care what I do just so long as I'm not causing trouble.

Madame: Alright.


So I sat in on the AP class. Let me tell you, it's a lot more fun than french three. At the beginning of the class, they did this translation activity and then we spent the rest of the time reading this story about this haunted painting. It was really fun. In all honesty, if I don't have a car on friday (No college then this week) I'm going to be going to the AP class again. It was rather amusing and much better than sitting in the library.

I'm going to have to get off in a minute and go finish my english homework. In english, we're writing a rough draft of a personal narrative. My problem was that I had no idea what I wanted to write about. Then an opening line hit me. "As in all things, it began with water" In my opinion, that's a really good opening line. My problem was that's all I had. Now I had a choice. I could think up something else or I could start with that line and see where it takes me. So I went up to Mrs. Haynam's Desk and asked her.

Me: Mrs. Haynam, I have a problem. I don't have an idea and I don't have a purpose in telling a story. All I have is an opening line and I could start with that but I don't know where the rest of the story will take me.

Haynam: What's your opening line?

Me: As in all things, it began with water (Pause, I realize she's giving me a funny look and so I try to fix what I've said) I know we're supposed to be modeling these other essays so that's why I asked because I really have no idea where the story will take me...

Haynam: I'm interested to see where this takes you. Some people have talent and some need more structure. Go with it. (Or something to that effect)


Mrs. Haynam likes to give me funny looks. Anyway, I started and I'm not sure I like where the story has taken me. Especially when I realized it's not really a narrative. It's about a girl who gets caught in the ocean in a freak storm and I leave it that she may or may not be drowned. I was having a spaz because it almost turned out as more of a fictious story rather than a personal narrative. Then as I was writing, it hit me. It is personal. When I write random short stories or poems I've noticed that sometimes they reflect how I've been feeling lately. Only I don't realize it until after I've finished writing. Well I did that with this essay, but I realized it in the middle of creating it. I realized that the story is a personal narrative. In fact it's really personal because it symbolizes how I feel sometimes. So I'm going to write up a page that explains this and staple it to the front of the essay.

There is one other odd thing I did with this essay. I didn't write it from the first person point of view. Part of it is because I wanted to be different because I knew that everyone would be writing in the first person (it is after all a personal narrative) There was another reason too. Back when I thought the story was going to be something about me, I decided that I was going to write it in third person because I would write better. In third person, I could pretend that I wasn't the one who was doing whatever I was writing about and it would be easier to write description.

Okay, so now that I've yakked on forever, I've got to go finish the essay. Hopefully, when I get it done, I'll type it up on here. Maybe not though I'm not sure yet.

урок 4

Compared to the last chapter, Chapter four in Russian class is a piece of cake. We're probably going to have a test over it next week sometime. Basically, it's a bunch of vocab and the Accusative case which is uber easy comparted to the locative cases of adjectives. We've already been warned however, that the next unit, урок 5, is going to be really difficult. The good news is that all of a sudden, I'm picking the language up better. It kind of happened randomly, I'm not exactly sure when, but it's like my brain is finally figuring out the rhythm and sound of the language. I'm reading and pronouncing much better! Hooray!

Today in class we learned about conjunctions


где-Where
что-that
как-what, how
какой-what kind
потому что-because
почему-why



Each one of these has a ","(comma) in front of it (Sorry, I don't remember the Russian word for it.) I had examples of when to use the conjunctions but in all honesty I'm too tired to think of them right now.

The Spanish Test went all right. I didn't do that great, but I did do extra credit so that should boost my grade a few points.

Today at the end of French, Madame asked me and two other people who had done the National French Test practice after school last year, if we wanted to do it again. This surprised me because all of the Third and Fourth year French students take the national French test. Of course, we all said yes because it was really fun last year, it was like having French club every week. So I think I'm going to refer to it at "The National French Test Club" or NFTC for short. Madame said that she was going to invite some sophomores too. So that'll be interesting. I'm hoping that Aleta will be one of them, but I guess I'll have to wait and see...

Game Day

The Game day in Russian was pretty entertaining. It was better than sitting in class doing the usual torture. We played tic-tac-toe and every time we put an X or O on the board we had to do an assignment and then the team who won the game got extra points at the end. It was fun even though the team I was on lost and we only get three extra credit points. I think this is due to the fact that all the people who are really good in the class were all on the same team.

Other than that nothing new. We're still learning subjunctive in French. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. In Spanish we're having a test on Friday. I"m excited because in that class we're going to the computer lab tomorrow. I love days when we go to the lab in Spanish because even though we have to go to Spanish websites, it's more entertaining then sitting in class. This means I get to sit and yak at my friend Patricia for forty minutes (In spanish and english of course) Yay!

Aujourd hui, c'est vendredi!

Currently Reading:
Natasha's Dance: A cultural History of Russia
By: Orlando Figes


Today's Friday! Hooray for the end of the week! *dances a jig of happiness*

French club was fun except for one girl I sat next to who was being obnoxious. (That's another story though) We all ate "éclairs" (creamstick doughnuts) until we were ill. We also drank cider and ate those pirouette cookie stick thingies. Mmmm...Madame read a story and we all were sound effects in it. I got to be feet on the stairs. After the story, we all got more food, and then we watched slides from when Madam was in France over the Summer. France is so pretty, but eh-Icy cold Russia is calling me first.

I felt pretty good about the Russian test today. I think I did pretty well. I guess I'll find out on Monday... I'm glad that she didn't give us anymore homework for this weekend, other than reviewing what we already know for wednesday.

I'm not sure what we did in spanish. I know we took a quiz. I tend to drift off in that class because 1. it's so big it's easy to get overlooked and 2. because we are always going over the same things and it doesn't feel like we ever learn or do anything new. It's like forty minutes of torment.

Well that's about all from here. I probably won't be updating again until Monday because I'm planning on enjoying my Halloween weekend!

*sigh*

I'm not feeling real well. J'ai le rhume. I think is how you say it in french, but I can't remember. Test in русский tomorrow. I was really nervous about it because of the locative cases of adjectives (see earlier post with that title) anywhoo, when we went over it again in class today, I realized that it makes perfect sense, in an odd kind of Russian way. So I'll do some studying today and then hopefully I'll do pretty well tomorrow.

While I'm on the subject of Russian, I'm looking forward to Wednesday's class. We're doing a mass review of everything we've learned so far and so weds. is a Review game day. I know it sounds kind of insane to be doing that in a college class but hopefully it'll be better than the usual torture of knowing Svetlana is going to call on you the one time you don't know the answer! (or maybe it'll be worse than usual)

I'm also excited because in French class tomorrow, we're having Le cercle Français which is French club. This means that we get to sit around for a whole period eating, drinking, and playing silly games. Wheee!

Nothing new with Spanish. Wait, I take that back. We always go over something but we go over it again...and again...and again...I think you get the picture.

Ah! one last thing about russian. The department of Modern and Classical Language Studies (MCLS) Put out a русски газета (russian newspaper) it's a little newspaper mostly in russian and everyone in russian class got a copy. I can't understand most of it but it's fun to pick out a few words that I do know. I'm hoping when the next issue comes out, I'll get a copy!

Bored

No Russian today. In French we played a couple of games where we acted out the housework words that we've been learning. It was kind of stupid but it was better than just sitting there all period.

In Spanish we did partner activities all period. I sat there and said random stuff in Spanish. That's one good thing about languages, if you happen to be bored, then you can just chatter in another language. Okay, so maybe I'm a little...odd... but ah well aren't we all.

How to and Russian history

So while I'm bloggin today...

I'm seriously thinking about creating a help page but the only thing I could think to put on it would be how to get your mac to write in Cyrillic. So maybe I'll save it.

Anyway. The other day I realized I have a problem. I want to spend a year in a country I know like nothing about. Okay. I do know a little about Russia but mostly it's from what I've read outside of the classroom (which isn't much) so I've decided that I need to find a good, easy to understand (no textbooks) book that goes through Russian History. I'm going to start compiling a list of winter reading. At the moment, though I've got zero books on the list. Hmmm...I think I'll make it movies too. Just because I'm worried the only books I'll find would be boring and dry.

In all honesty, One of the main reasons I've done so much with Russian lately is because absolutly nothing is happening in my other language classes. I have a love/hate relationship with the speed of college classes. Anyway, in English we're builiding our vocabulary so that we'll be able to describe tone and diction (gag me with a pencil) In French, we're learning things like "run the sweeper", "mow the lawn", and "prune the shrubs" all of which are of course incredibly long because that's how the French do things (though the Russians aren't much better sometimes) In Spanish, we've just started a new unit I think part of it is on food but I'm not sure because I was half asleep in class today.

Locative Cases of Adjectives

In a way it's almost pointless to sit here and title my posts. I mean I title them but a lot of the time I end up talking about other stuff. Anyway. Russian is really hard right now. We have a test on Friday and I'm like not ready for it at all...

We are learning the Locative cases of adjectives. Now this may not sound like a big deal, but let me give you an example...


В чемодане


This means in the suitcase Easy enough right? Not really. Because Let's say that you want to talk about the big suitcase or the dark blue suitcase or the American suitcase. If you want to do any of these things, you have to figure out which ending you need to use. Here's another example.

новыи

This word is the masculine singular form of the word new. Okay, now that we've got our noun and our adjective, it's time to put them together. First you have to make sure that your noun and adj. are in agreement. In this case they are, they are both masculine and singular. Now, you add your preposition which is в then you figure out if the word новыи has any spelling rules. In this case, it doesn't. After that you have to drop two letters. This leaves you with.

нов

Then you have to figure out if the last letter is hard or soft. The в is hard and so you add the ending

-ом

Then you put it in the sentence (it goes before the noun)

В новом чемодане.

There you have it ladies and gentlemen. The way you put Russian adjectives in the locative case. Okay so maybe it doesn't look that hard but that's because I gave an easy example. You're brain would hurt as much as mine if you were sitting in class and had words that had spelling rules, were femanine, neuter, or plural, or if you were given like four adjectives with a noun and you had to put all of them in the locative case.

Russian can be a screwy language sometimes. Yet I'm enjoying it. I don't know why-I must be crazy. Mrs. Barber told us about a class I believe it was called Pronunciation and diction or something like that. It's a third year class but with permission it can be taken earlier. Anyway it basically teaches you to pronounce russian words. Mrs. Barber said that it's an easy class but by the end of it you can read anything in Russian even if you don't know what you're reading. I'd like to take it but don't know if I'm able because I already had to turn in the information for PSEO classes I'm taking next semester. Maybe I should go beg and plead with the PSEO people...Hmm...there's an idea...

I'm so Excited!

Okay so as my last post showed, I'm very proud of myself because I figured out how to make the computer keyboard type in Cyrillic. I had one of my friends on a PC come to the site and tell me if he could see the characters. He said he could and so I'm very excited. Not only because I figured out how to do it all by myself, but because now I can actually show you the words in Russian instead of just telling you about them! Never mind the fact that it takes me like twenty minutes to type a sentance because I have to figure out where all the letters are, I will learn where they are and then be able to type both in Russian and English. *glances around and then Whispers* Since I know how to do it now, I may fix the laptop I use in physics so that whenever I do blog entries from there, I can type in russian!!!

*dances around* Excited! Excited! Excited!

Русски!

actually, this post is a test to see if the way I set up the computer to write Russian characters works. I'm hoping that it does. If anyone who sees this would be so kind to let me know if they can see what's centered below in the cyrillic alphabet. Just leave a comment. Thanks.

Я говорю по-русски!

That says I speak russian. I just hope that other computers can see it.

Nifty Language Links

Okay, so this is really the last one for the day, I promise. I was looking for some cool clip art for this blog when I realized that I have no post for cool links. So... This post is now known as Nifty Language Links. There will be a link to just this post on the left side bar of the blog. I'll update it whenever I find another cool link...

Foreign Language News and Newspapers- This site has newspapers for like 8 different languages. Including Russian, French, Chinese and Italian.

Enchanted Learning- Okay so this is actually a resouce for teachers. However it offers printable coloring books in several languages including French, Swedish, and Dutch. *The link takes you to the french page. The links to other languages are at the bottom.

Language Guide- This probably has to be one of the coolest sites I've ever seen. You can click on one of several languages and the site will take you to a place where you can choose a category and then it uses quicktime to pronounce the words you click on. Languages include Russian, Japanese, French, Spanish, Hebrew and Arabic.

Oh yeah...The little Kids...

I forgot... So Last Thursday, five girls (including me) Went to teach some basic french to the gifted students at the middle school. They were so cute and little. It was really precious listening to them try and pronounce the words. There were three boys and one girl. All of the people I went with came back talking about how well the little girl did in pronunciation. Yet I have to disagree with them. She did eventually pronounce them correctly, but there was one little boy who like had everything right off. It made me wonder if he has the same type of gift I do? hmm... Anyway, we're going again tomorrow. I'm excited because not only do I get to skip half of french, but I get to play with cute little kids. :-)

Dad said that he'd look into putting a Russian font on the computer so I can share some of what I'm learning. However there is nothing yet. Maybe if I keep bothering him...

*Dad if you're reading this, please work on installing a Russian font. or a way that people can see the Cyrillic alphabet...*

Russian?

Everytime I think I know what I'm doing, something changes my mind. On Monday, my russian prof. Told me that I had a talent and I should major or minor in russian. So maybe I'll do something with Russian Translation and possibly work for the FBI.

I'm sorry I don't update this blog as often as I used to. See, Neat stuff happens in at least one language class a day but I've gotten in trouble and my parents changed the computer password. Again. So I can only get on every couple of days. By the time I do, all the cool stuff I had to say has been forgotten.

Okay, back to Russian. If I got a B.S. In russian translation, I could have more job opportunities than if I did french. Though I could actually get a double B.S. In two languages...Hmm... If you would like to see what Kent State has in the way of translation, here's the page:

Overview of the Bachelor of Science in Translation Major.

That's only if you care...

I'm thinking I should go to Russia though the thought of going there scares me to death. Going to France doesn't. I think it's because Russia is farther away, and in a way I think it's more foreign because of the Cyrillic alphabet. I'd be worried I wouldn't be able to figure out what was going on.

I do have to admit that I do like Russian. It's a pretty language, both written and spoken. I don't know what I'm going to do...

What I Love...

I think that my absolute favorite thing to do right now is wait for Russian to start. I know that sounds really odd but give me a moment to explain. Even with the long drive, the bus ride and the walk to Satterfield hall, I still arrive at my classroom about half an hour before class starts. There's a Spanish class that uses the room before we do and so the only thing to do is sit myself outside the door in a chair and work on homework. Homework isn't the only thing I acconplish however.

My classroom is on the third floor of SFH. Also on that floor are two labs for graduate students who are majoring in Modern and Classical Languages and Translation. I love to listen. I've heard Spanish, French, Russian. Maybe it sounds a little odd, but it's fun to sit there and listen. If no one walks past speaking something, I always have the spanish class. I think it's a Spanish I or II class because sometimes I can kind of understand what the teacher is saying. So I listen to that, I listen to the people who walk past, or sometimes who stop and have a conversation right in front of me and I think. Someday that'll be me. I can only hope that it'll be soon.

I found out something kind of depressing. I was going to work extra hard on my Spanish this year because our youth group was going to go work with orphans in Mexico next summer. However, I found out that we probably won't be going now. Which is really depressing because now I have to wait until I go to France before using my language skills.

Speaking of Spanish, we're going to start learning a past tense. In french, Tomorrow is our first day teaching the gifted students. Bell's going to ring, gotta go.

Cool Opportunity

Okay so in French class I've got this cool opportunity. Madame had five of the people in my class who would be interested in maybe teaching or doing something with French in the future talk to her. She told us that the gifted education program in our school distrect is doing a unit on french and we get to go to the middle school and teach French once a week. Tomorrow is our first day. I'm very excited!

Books

So since today is tuesday, I don't have Russian. I had to hang out at High School all day because I don't have a car on Tuesdays. (usually) Tenth Period I went to Madame's room and helped put change in those little paper sleeves for a fundraiser we're doing for the hurricane victims. Then I asked her if she had anything for me to read. She told me yes. She'd gotten some new stuff over the summer when she went to France.
11th period I paid a visit to Señora. She had a ton of stuff for me to look through. She even had Peanuts and Garfield cartoons in Spanish. I'm going to be reading the Garfield book when I learn more spanish.

In French we've been learning the tense 'Le Futur.' It involves the letter "R" as Madame keeps telling us. Anyway basically you take the infinitive and add an ending. Here's an example:

Rester
Je resterai
Tu resteras
Il restera
Nous resterons
Vous resterez
Ils resteront


Le futur translates as "will" The first sentence above, Je resterai means I will stay. So yeah. That's basically French in a nutshell today.

In Spanish, we're still talking about the same old same old. Reviewing what we've learned before. The only difference is that now we're going over telling time again. whoopee *rolls eyes* It'd be nice in a way if all my language classes went as fast as Russian.

Speaking of Russian, I'm behind in that class because I'm supposed to be learning five new words a day. I haven't been. BAD BAD BAD! I'm supposed to have mom help me set up these note cards so that I'll be able to learn the words more quickly. Part of my problem though is that I'm in a play and I've got practice like every evening so I haven't had time to make the cards.

By the way, I'm working on downloading a Russian font as I type...

Ah. Mom just asked me when we are going to do cards. I guess now would be the time.

The Final Step

The title needs a little explanation...

A few days after creating my "11-step plan" for writing a Literary Novel, I was sitting in english class. I can't remember how it came about, but I mentioned to Mrs. Haynam that I was going to write a literary novel since "anyone can do it." she gave me a really odd look and then said "can I see a copy of it when you're done?" I took this as a challenge and so I've begun the writing (actually I'd already started. -prologue complete)

I've decided that as I write this novel, I'm going to use my list on how to write a literary novel, and various techniques I pick up as we dig through Beloved more.

Okay. Now that you've got the background, here's the reason for the title...

I was on my way home from Kent and Russian class (more on that later) and I was trying to think of a good idea for my story. I've got a prologue and that's about it. So I'm driving along, sipping a milkshake when an idea comes to me. Suddenly I'm thinking... "step number 12, the book must contain some sort of magic (see number 6)" So that's it. It really should be somewhere higher on the list, but that's okay.So now I'm calling it my "12 step plan to writing a literary novel..." I'm thinking about putting it in a booklet and selling it for a ton of money on infomercials. *evil laugh*

Okay. Enough about that, now onto Russian class
Right after Prof. Barber started teaching today, I got really sleepy. I kept telling myself I had to keep awake. It was hard though because my eyes kept crossing and I was just having the worst time. So I'm sitting in my chair, not letting my eyes close for a second 'cause I didn't want to fall asleep in class. I'm reapeating the words that prof. Barber is saying and then the next thing I know, She's saying "your home assignment is..." I don't think I was actually asleep, it was just like my brain turned itself off... it was weird because there's like this blank so I have absolutely no idea what the lesson was about though it might've been about locative words because I seem to remember her saying something about them. In fact...Now that I think about it it was almost like an out of body experience though it was in body.

I remember her saying something and I remember myself repeating it, but I was watching myself reapeat it from the inside of my body...weird.

Since this post has turned out to be uber long...for those of you who wish to skip all the little important details, here's the language summary of the day:

French- Not as boring as usual, we talked about being an exchange student
English- got in groups to work on a project
Russian- I have to learn five words a day, and do some listening activities this weekend
Spanish-BOOOOORRRRIIINNNGGGG we spent the last week reviewing the same thing everyday! I know it can't be helped with 28 people in the class, maybe I'll say something to Señora anyway though.

Russian Revelation

I'm in physics at the moment, got done with my lab early and so I'm killing time. I had a revalation in Russian Class yesterday. We learned how to conjugate our first verb. Zhets which means to live. Anywhoo. I realized that it's exactly like french or spanish it just uses a different alphabet. So I'm thinking that that takes away the reason that Russian would be so hard. That's about all I've got at the moment. Oh I absolutely hate french but I can't figure out why. It's like I'm finally taking all the languages I want, but I'm not enjoying it.

Teen Angst and odd languages

Things aren’t always black or white,
They’re sometimes shades of gray
It’s times like these I have to wish,
Those things would go away

It never seemed to matter
‘Cause you were always there
But now that it is finished,
I’m trying not to care

The words you spoke so dearly
Will never leave my head
The burning images I see
Are all in shades of red.

It never seemed to matter,
‘Cause you were always there
But now that it is finished,
I’m trying not to care

Simple things remind me
Of relationships now lost,
I think about all that we shared,
Was it really worth the cost?

It never seemed to matter,
‘Cause you were always there
But now that it is finished,
I’m trying not to care.


Personally, I'm proud of this. It's the first poem I've written that has decent rhyme. Usually, I can't rhyme to save my life. Please let me know what you think as I'm trying to get a variety of opinions on it. I wrote this...I think it was thursday actually. I've only just now posted it. I've decided I write teen angst really well for someone who's never had any. I suppose that poems I post really have nothing to do with the theme of the rest of the blog, but in a way they do. They're in english aren't they? so there you go! HA HA HA! I WIN! Okay. I'm done now. I'm just tired and behind on my homework already...

Tomorrow is my first quiz in Russian. It's not a big deal, we just get a printed word and have to write it in Russian. Hopefully I'll have no trouble with it. Though sometimes I connect the letters funny.

Russian is a funny language. No offense to all of you Russian speakers out there...but in my opinion the whole voiced/unvoiced consonant thing is kind of weird. I mean...Think about it. If the consonant at the end of the word is voiced then you have to make it unvoiced and therefore it's not pronounced the way it looks...

I suppose that I shouldn't complain. Especially since it's not like english makes sense...or even french for that matter I mean come on! The french for everything is so long! Like instead of saying please they say "If it pleases you" While I'm on it, Let me talk about Spanish. Half the time they don't even use pronouns!

Okay, So I didn't mean for that entire paragraph to come out...so I'm gonna sign off for now, get my shower, work on Beloved *urgh* And then get to bed. I've got another long day tomorrow...