So, other than the typical apologies for not posting, because I never get around to writing the blog, let’s get this show on the road.
Monday, May 21, we went to class for the first time. We had three hours worth of Граматика and one of Видео with Владимир Алексеевич, our grammar instructor. Yes, his name is Vladimir. No, no one makes any comments about Dracula. It’s not exactly an uncommon name around here. Back to the point.
Граматика is, while grueling at times, usually fairly comprehensible. It’s taught primarily in Russian, with the occasional insertion of an English word or phrase, because although Владимир Алексеевич’s English is decent, it’s far from sufficient to explain things like the use of certain pronouns in Russian speech. Thus, it’s mostly in Russian. I can usually follow enough to stumble along. That doesn’t mean that I understand everything, mind you, but most of my lack of comprehension can be traced back to one truly evil grammatical form called the verb. Russian verb structures are tricky, and we have just barely scratched the surface in my Russian class at Ole Miss. Unfortunately, when one is trying to figure out which preposition to use, or which verb form to use in relation to a preposition, not really getting verb structures at all can be fairly problematic. Oh well. Perhaps I will understand them better by the end of this month. I rather doubt it, but it’s worth a hope.
Видео is basically the study of Russian film. We watch short films with fairly basic vocabulary, and go over a transcript of the dialogue. This way, we improve our vocabulary, and get to hear people speaking Russian. As an added bonus, we get a bit of Russian culture. On Monday, we watched the first of the Чебурагшка short films. Чебурагшка (that’s Chiburashka for those of you who can’t be bothered to learn Cyrillic) is a Russian cultural icon. He’s a.... well, he’s a Chiburashka. No one, not even he himself, knows what he is. Most accurately, he’s probably the Soviet answer to Mickey Mouse, and is a sort of bear-mouse hybrid thing. All the same, he’s fuzzy, and rather adorable, so we forgive him for being of no determinate species.
After classes, We went with Sean, Isaac, and Valentina Borisovna to the Красная Плошадь, better known to English speakers as the Red Square. It was certainly very impressive. St. Basil’s Cathedral is stunning, and the Kremlin is nothing if not impressive. We just did a look around, not so much a tour of anything. Still, there was plenty to look at. St. Basil’s Cathedral is after all, incredibly colorful and pretty. I can almost see why Ivan the Terrible wanted to keep the architects responsible for it from creating anything else equally wonderful. Still, I am more than happy to acknowledge that putting their eyes out for doing their jobs was more than a little extreme.
On our way back to the metro, we went to Гум, a seriously famous Russian mall. Now, for those of you who aren’t exactly sure on what Гум is, think the Champs-Elysées. Put it under a glass roof, and give it very pretty architecture. Then take out any store that was actually in the price range of most middle class citizens. That is Гум. We got something to drink in one of the cafés (my bottle of water was nearly twice as expensive as usual), and sat at a table on a walkway over looking the three floors of designer stores below us. I was traumatized. Sitting that close to an edge overlooking a two story drop with a snowed glass looking floor? No. No thank you. That’s even worse than the escalator to get to the metro!
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