My Russian stinks. I am trying but I’m a terrible language
learner and Russian is a hard language anyway.
What I need to do, people say, is watch Russian TV and videos to help
learning. There’s a tutor at work and I’m working with her, plus using both
Pimsleur and Mango. I also found some “learn Russian while you sleep” stuff on
YouTube and have tried that. Nothing really has stuck so far. It’s a very, very
slow process.
One of the options I might have for my next tour is in Kazakhstan,
and I’m eyeing it because it would give me six months of Russian language
studies. The position requires a certain level of language ability, and one of
my hopes for this tour is to give me a head start because I think I need a
two-year advance in order to get to that level. Seriously. I’m trying a lot of
methods. Gosh, I even went to YouTube and pulled up an episode of “The Simpsons”
in Russian, but it confused me because it seemed like it was people reading the
script over the original, no real voice inflection and the same voice doing
multiple characters. And by that, I mean the same voice from the same person,
not the same person doing multiple voices.
Last week, I went to see “The Gentlemen,” which was showing
in English. I successfully got my ticket and made my way to the theater. I had
thought I selected a seat in the middle, but I wound up being close to the wall.
Wall, empty seat, me, rest of row. I practiced trying to read Cyrillic during
the coming attractions. I get hugely excited when I recognize a word.
But when the feature started, I didn’t recognize a word. The
movie starts with a brief voiceover and then the screen opens up. As soon as I
heard the voiceover, I realized there had to be two showings of “The Gentlemen”
at the same time – one in Russian and one in English. The dubbed-in voices were
not English.
At that point, I just decided to stay there and consider it
a two-hour, $5 Russian lesson. Yes, I could have been more assertive and walked
out and found the right theater, but I was locked in by the wall and decided
the other people shouldn’t have to suffer with me packing up my coat and everything
and tripping over them. So I stayed and tried to follow.
I’d read a little of the plot of the movie, but, watching it
in Russian, it didn’t match what I’d read. I was thinking Hugh Grant had some
kind of movie plot. The Toddlers – no idea. And who works on cars dressed like
that? But I did catch “Balshoy Dave,” which is the translation of “Big Dave.” I
was so excited when I knew words, but the whole plot – no idea. I came home and
read the Wiki page (I donated to their fund-raiser, so I reference it
guilt-free) and – yeah, I didn’t get that out of my two-hour Russian lesson.
On Friday, I went again to see it, this time going into the
right theater and wow what a difference. It made so much more sense, although
The Toddlers were still a bit baffling, as was the dress for the auto shop. But
there’s no way I would have ever caught on to all the intricate plot details.
It was very dialogue-heavy and understanding one word every five minutes or so
didn’t do it.
Other than that, it’s been a fairly dull weekend. I’m trying
to talk myself out of getting a dog. I have a massive case of puppy love going
on right now for this little yellow thing that’s at a shelter, and the shelter
is closing down next month. Looking at her photo, the little blonde bombshell
might get up to about 40 pounds. Just having a dog is a bad idea for me right
now, no matter the size. I need to keep telling myself that.
My distraction for the weekend has been buying Shelby’s mom’s
TV. I’ve been having all kinds of laptop issues and in trying to rectify them,
I lost the Hulu password, but it was still on my Firestick. I caught up on “The
Conners” and “The Masked Singer,” the latter of which has sucked me in, not
that I have a clue who the judges are, much less their guesses.
Now I’m on “Where Did You Go, Bernadette?”, which is about a
family’s trip to Antarctica. It was recommended to me when I was on the cruise
but I missed the showing. I’ve got the book on hold but it’s still got a wait.
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