orientation

After two days of pre-departure orientation, I am thoroughly flummoxed. Am I excited or just scared? And remind me how normal people interact in social context again? And what if everyone here is better at Russian than me? What if I fly into St. Petersburg and no one can understand me?

But it’s okay. I’ve met the other people in my group, if only briefly. They’re all east-coast-ers, which is cool, because it means they’ll eat sushi with me (apparently sushi is big in St. Petersburg?). Two of the girls are swing dancers, which is cool, because they’ll go out dancing with me (yay!). One of them grew up Russian Orthodox, which is extra cool, because she knows all of the etiquette and the prayers, and of course which services are too beautiful to miss (Vespers twice/week? yes please).

The most helpful session all weekend was the one on Thursday morning, on language acquisition. It’s a thing that scares me, as you know, but the man who presented gave very concrete examples of how to maximize gain over these four months. And then he showed us all of these growth charts, like “hey, you could make it from a 1- to a 2- in a semester if you do these things!”

So of course, now I am All. Determined. And. Ready! to run at my brick wall as fast as I can, and hope to make it through without too many bruises. (If only I had Mrs. Who glasses…)

One product of the last few days is a set of new goals. Because of course they wanted some very specific, and perhaps more ambitious, goals for our time. Here's my semi-updated list:

• learn 12 words/day,* and use them again
• keep a journal, minimum 150 words/day*
• read 3 news articles/week
• read at least 1 “for fun” book while there

Our goals were supposed to be specific, measurable, and attainable. Seeing as all of mine have numbers involved, I think they count. I’ve proven I can do the first by all of the times I crammed vocabulary lists for quizzes, although the “use them again” part might mean I actually remember the words. 150 words is about the length of the first two paragraphs of this post, which I can totally do. And reading should be no problem, and it will expose me to more words, which I can then add to my to-learn list.

Remember that part about planning making me sort of jazzed? I feel a lot better now that I have something to go in with, and some way to keep track of my progress. Because I don’t want to be there a month, look back, and go “ugh, what have I been doing here, I haven’t gotten any better.” At the very least, I should have a vocabulary 288 richer, be 12 news articles better-read, and have a nice little record of my daily activities. And I think that’s good.


PS I'm in Paris now. Post regarding the WONDERFULNESS of Air France coming soon.



*operating on a 6 day/week system, because rest is important