Les Miserables

So I went with the various french classes to see Les Mis up in Cleveland. It was pretty awesome! I think in a lot of ways I liked it better than Phantom of the Opera. Phantom relies a lot on special effects while in my opinion Les Mis was a lot more symbolic looking and interpretive. My favorite character was Eponine. I also liked Javert though I didn't like how he randomly cracked and killed himself, maybe he was a little unstable to begin with. Anyway, when I got home, I downloaded a few songs for my ipod. Since then, I've been singing what I know of "Do You Hear the People Sing" Rather loudly. Mom was trying to talk to me earlier today and she's like "Do you know what you have to do for me?" I started in with. "Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men" I thought it was funny but I don't think she got it. Actually, she's pretty smart so she probably did and was just choosing to ignore it. After the play, I asked Madame if she had Les Miserables in it's book form in French. She said she had the three volume abridged version. I let the subject drop.

Speaking of books, we started our 'novel' in French class. The quotes are because it's not really much of a novel it's actually a script. WHICH ABSOLUTELY DRIVES ME INSANE! GRRRR! Okay, I'm done. I'm not going to complain either because there's not much I can do about it and besides, it could be worse...we could be doing evil grammar!

The Coolest Job Ever!

Okay, so one more for the night. Have I ever told you what the coolest job ever would be? Check it out!

NCS Language Officer

So I Lied

Alright, My Language Exchange is not the site I thought it was. There is actually a site I like better, you get more responses and it's absolutely free! Your posting stays up for sixty days and your e-mail address isn't given out randomly.

Pen Friends

I'll be posting this link along with the other two this evening. I'm still trying to work on the Russian Cases PDF but unfortunetely I've been rather swamped with a physics catapult project and tech rehersals for a play I'm helping with. Like I've said, I'll get to it ASAP. We start chapter ten in Russian tomorrow. Last chapter of the book! Yay! I've got to figure out my college schedule for next semester.

The Irony

I think it's interesting that everytime I think I'm losing my languge thing, or even everytime I get spazzy or discouraged when I'm learning a language Something happens that makes everything all right again. So remember that lovely little quiz that I'd thought I'd missed like three on? Well, we got it back yesterday. Before Madame passed it out, she said that anyone who got a hundred percent on it would get bonus points. When I got mine back I was confused at first, it just said "bon" on it. It took me a second to realize that I HAD GOTTEN THEM ALL RIGHT! I was very happy because I kind of like bonus points. There is also the satisfaction that I can indeed do french grammar and do it correctly. Not to say I do it correctly all the time... so there you have it, my good news for the day!

We watched a movie in Spanish class today. We've been learning about Spain. You know something interesting? I've never been into Spanish much. Even the when we study the different countries and I LIKE culture. But when we've been talking about Spain, it's been really interesting for some reason. I'm not sure exactly why, but I've got this kind of thing for Spain and I've put it on my list of places to visit. Nifty eh?

I've got a few new links for you all. One is a Russian site (since I don't have that many links to Russian sites) and the other is pretty cool. Have you ever wanted to correspond with someone from another country but had no idea where to start? My Language Exchange can help. You can put your name up in a number of different languages and people can e-mail you and you can begin an e-mail exchange. Have fun with both of these. I'll be putting them up in the left hand column ASAP.

Master Russian
My Language Exchange

Also, I'm working on a sort of download thingy for Russian. it's going to hopefully have stuff about the six Russian cases.

Stupid Grammer...

So I'm definitely thinking I'm better at learning a language by immersion rather than in a classroom because honestly, I HATE GRAMMER! in French class we're all of a sudden learning all kinds of random tenses plus que parfait, conditionel passé, and one other one that has to do with the futur. Anyways, we had a quiz today where we had to match the French with the english translation and that's all good with me except that I have to actually sit and think about it which in a language, is not like me at all. So Madame gave us about five minutes to do this matching quiz. I had like three left and she's like "Okay you need to pass you papers in in ten seconds." Frantically I just mark some random stuff and I'm pretty positive that I got all three wrong.

As if French isn't bad enough, I've got a beef with Russian too. This just isn't a good time In my language learning life. Anyway, we're learning this lovely thing in Russian call Perfective and Imperfective. It's absolutely crazy! It's like if the sentence is imperfective, you use your verb and everything is happy, but if it's perfective, you have to use an entirely different verb! My problem is of course telling which sentences are perfective and which are imperfective. I can't even do it when we use english sentences as examples! Svetlana said that this is the point in our Russian careers where we can start hating her/the language/whatever.

We're going to have a Russian week. You can go to different workshop thingys. Which sounds interesting but I'm not sure how many I can go to because I'm helping with a play at community theater and next week is tech week. Anyway, there's going to be some interesting things and an essay contest which should be interesting and I'll probably do. I want to do it and go to some of Russian week because when you go, you get points towards your final exam. Anyways, that's about all I've got from here, oh wait. Svetlana said that an air force person was going to come to our Russian class and talk I think tomorrow. OOh the irony!

Air Force Linguist

So I sat in the library for an hour and listened to a linguist from the airforce talk about her job. It was interesting and made me kind of want to join the air force but at the same time, I don't want to. Hmm, I think I'll keep my options open. See what develops. The cool thing was that she knows Russian and Chechnian. Anyway, that's about it. I've just been thinking...

Casser

Okay, the moment you've been waiting for. My French poem. This poem is of course copywrited to me myself and moi.


Casser
By: Brigitte Faust

Mon coeur casse
Un mille morceaux sur le sol
Qu’est-ce que je vais faire
Sans coeur?
Je vive
Je ris
J’obéis
Mais quand je me cache
Parmi des ombres
Je pleure des larmes
Plein de peine.

At first, I didn't really like it 'cause it's all angsty, but it's kind of grown on me. Mom and dad both thought it had a nice rhythm, but they don't know french so I don't know how it actually holds up and what not. Feel free to let me know what you think.

Russian Test, Chapter 7 AND French Things

So I thought I did alright on my Russian test. But then after I turned it in, I looked at some stuff and realized that I messed a whole bunch up. We're going to be getting them back tomorrow, which always makes me nervous. By the way, I got an A on my professions quiz. Yay!

We have a French Project due Thrusday. This project consists of writing a poem or song in French. The good news is that we can write it however we want. Total creativity! YAY! I've been waiting for this forever! The only problem is I haven't had much time to sit down and write. I'm so busy all the time.

Yesterday, Mom and I went to a friend's house. Mom's friend is fluent in French and she's doing a doctral thingy on Medival French Romance stories. Mom helped me make arrangements to go and see her so she could tell me about it. It was very interesting. She also gave me some stuff to read and a couple of books to borrow. I'm looking forward to reading them when I have the chance.(Which is going to be a while)

Had to write an English paper, it's a process analysis essay. SO I wrote about the process of shopping at Wal-Mart quickly. Basically I talked about how it's impossible.

That's about it from here. Thought I'd let you all know that I'm going to be rearranging the side panel on the left so it's more organized and I'll probably move my nifty language links to there. Look for it.

Behind...

Yeah, Yeah. I know I'm behind. I can't help it though. Sorry to anyone who actually reads this blog (No one)

In all honesty, you're not missing much. Spanish is still the most boring class in the world, sorry but it's the truth. It's too bad because Spanish could be a language that could come in handy.

I've decided to bust mes fesses (See Guide to french Phrases) In Russian class this semester, so far my efforts have been paying off. I've gotten a B and two A's on my last three graded assignments, we've had three total. We took a quiz on Friday about Professions and workplaces I think I did okay but I'm a tad bit nervous about it. It's cool because as we're learning more, we can converse more. This semester the people in my class often have little mini Russian conversations.

In French class, We've been learning about Music and Poetry. My favorite part is of course, the poetry. We wrote a few poems in french but I didn't really care for them so I'm probably going to be trying my hand at free verse whenever I next have time. The cool thing about this unit is we got packets with a bunch of poems by Jacques Prevet. I'm probably going to be posting some so you can all read them.

English has been going downhill since Christmas Break. Mrs. Haynam has turned into a sort of Nazi. Not really sure why, but the whole AP class will tell you it's true. Speaking of English class, I just read A Clockwork Orange (Even though I did kind of have to twist her arm) for it. It's an amazing book. One of the main reasons I read it was actually for the slang, but the story itself was absolutely wonderful! I could hardly put it down. It's definitely a must read for everyone!

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.