schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (flying Rose)
Not being in the mood to study Russian is extremely annoying when you have only one month left until your six-month stay in Moscow, where you will be studying at the MSU, taking courses that are completely in Russian, and you lied about your proficiency level on the application form because you figured you'd have enough time to study during the summer.

It doesn't help to find out that the course content I've been trying to translate from Russian, mostly using Google Translate, most likely doesn't match up with the course I want it to be credited for. Oh well.

I also stumbled on Freerice.com again, where I found out they have levels. I got up to 48! I also tried Test Your Vocab, which estimates your (passive) English vocabulary. I got 14900. Not bad for a non-native speaker, I think. They only give the options "native speaker" and "first foreign language", but English was actually my second. (My first was Russian, but I can only dream about having that sort of vocabulary in Russian.)
And now I'm mixing up English and German words again. LB is not happy with me.

But! I was at the embassy to get my visa and even though I was extremely nervous I had no problems at all. Good thing I was there half an hour early, though. I even had a verification for my travel insurance, which was a last-minute effort. *is proud*

I got most of my grades for this semester. (Still have to write one paper.) They were, um, very good? I'm still a bit baffled by this. But that means I'll get a scholarship, which is good.

I don't even know how I manage to waste so much time every day. That's not true, I do: there's this thing called the internet... Which is why I'm sitting here writing this instead of completing the translation, or writing that paper, or finally organizing my debate notes.
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
The title is meant to read "Studying Russian with fun" or something like that, I´m not sure if I got that? I wanted to say "How to study Russian and have fun", but apparently Russian doesn´t have an expression for "to have fun". Figures.

Anyway, here´s what helped me:

- read Russian translations of Sherlock crack!fic.
- Russian wikipedia pages about Science Fiction. I now know the Russian word for "firefly".
- Remember that "Serenity" had a line in Russian. Hey, every little bit helps!
- do you know that there is fanfic where Rodney McKay learned Russian while stationed in Siberia? Rodney McKay. Trying to learn Russian. I´m still grinning.
(He knows "da", "nyet", "vodka", and the first word he learns is "ужасный". At least that´s the word from my limited vocabulary that fits best. And he´d pronounce it terribly.)
- Rilke learned Russian! He even tried to write Russian poetry. We read it in school, it´s hilarious. Not intentionally, though.

When I think of anything else I´ll add it to the list.

Now I feel better. I have an interview for the application at the Moscow State University on Thursday, which means I studied Russian for hours during the last few days. Okay, mainly today. Yay me! Wish me luck :-)

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