Finally, an update

After about a month in Russia, things are finally starting to become normal. In the first month, way too much seemed to be going on. My Rotary Guarantee Forms had the wrong address, wrong names, phone number, and everything for my host family. The person who was supposed to be my Counselor turned out to be a random Russian woman who had no idea who I was, I was having problems with my host brother, and I was stuck in an apartment with just him, and the kitchen had no food or water so some days I had to buy all my own food and drink which started to be too pricy. I was given the wrong directions from my university trying to get home and got taken to a bus station in a place I had never been, had to get off the bus, ran out of credits on my cell phone, and then was unable to receive calls on my cell phone because my SIM card was acting up. I was almost chased by dogs, found out I had much less money than I expected, and then had someone buy a ticket for me to Irkutsk that costs about $400 even though I told her I didn't think I could afford it. So, to put it simply, I had a very rough month. With all of that plus troubles back home, I really am suprised I was able to stay somewhat positive through all of it. Things are finally working themselves out and I am still with my host family and my host brother and I get along pretty well now.

Even though I end up using lots of English each day because of the fact that I am surrounded by students and people eager to practice with a native speaker, I have been picking the language up much sooner than I expected. The Russian language seemed very complex when I first began studying, but soon I realized that is just another language. It is a language that expresses itself differently and because of that it forces you to have to think differently as well, which is something I was really excited about because I've always wanted to learn a language that would force me to think differently when I express myself, if that makes any sense. What I mean is, Romance languages like Portuguese, French, Spanish, etc., are very easy to learn for an English speaker because all you have to learn is conjugations, a few pronouns, and from there just plug in nouns and you are almost done. But with Russian, you have to learn about all of that but also declensions, aspect, and even after that it is another thing to speak it and sound naturally because Russian speakers tend to use their words in a variety of different orders instead of the simple Subject-Verb-Object. I won't get too nerdy on the language, but I am really enjoying this more than anything else.

When it comes to Russian culture and just living in a Russian city, the one world I can use to describe it all is "wow." My city is more diverse then probably most Russian cities, but the diversity is still small. The city is obviously mainly white, with a small Oriental population and, I am not joking at all when I say this, 3 black people. I make the fourth. So, you can imagine that every single day I come out, I get crazy looks from people and get asked for my photo every single day. After about a week or so I adjusted and now I just have fun with it. The people here do not smile at all when they walk the streets, and at first I felt very uncomfortable and didn't know whether I would be safe here, but I realized that it's just the way people carry themselves here. The people are very friendly, and actually treat me very nicely. When people see me they usually get really excited and act very funny. I also must add that the Russian girls have bad Jungle Fever...

So, that is a quick summary of my first month here. I leave for Irkutsk Monday night and I will be putting on photos on my Facebook soon. So keep reading and stay posted. If you haven't added me on Facebook yet, just search for Torrey Payne from Charlottesville, VA and you should find me!

After a long break...I post again. In Russia!

I last posted on my blog, it was January and I was preparing to embark on a new journey- to Russia. Now that it is Sept. 15th(the day after my birthday!), I am one week into my year-long stay in Russia. Currently, I am in Vladivostok, in the Far East of Russia. I am about a boatride from Japan, Korea, or China. I am currently staying with a roughly middle-class family, and I stay in an apartment about 20 ft. from the main apartment where the family stays, and my host brother will be moving in with me this week. My first week was spent at a school camp for 3 days, then a 4-day stay in a town called Nakhodka, 4 hours away by car from Vladivostok. There, I and 3 other exchange students had a meeting with the local Rotary club and got a chance to meet some Rotary people from the Far East. While there, we also got to try out a lot of authentic Chinese cuisine, Russian cuisine, and cuisine from the Caucasus region, all extremely good. Now that I am back, have to start class tomorrow, and will be going to one of the universities in the area. Hopefully things will go well and I will have time to get into more detail and put up photos. Until then, stay tuned haha!

Quick Update

Decided to make a quick update:

I have been on the internet looking over various resources I could use to help with Russian. I started off my learning by learning the alphabet through a fun little game. After mastering that, I have begun learning a little bit of vocabulary here and there, reading up on cases, and learning basic sentences. At the rate I'm going(which is actually pretty slow), I think I will be getting the hang of the cases by the end of the month. I am setting myself up so that I can understand the base of the language(grammar, cases, pronunciation, etc.) so that I can quickly start doing reading with a dictionary and possibly start chatting a little bit with Russians online. I think once I get to a very basic conversational level, enough so to just conversate a little bit, my Russian will take off. I'll come back soon and re-update.

December 4th, 2008

It has been 7 months since I made my last post on this blog. In these 7 months, I have done a lot. I fulfilled my dream of studying abroad, going to Brazil for 2 months(Mid-June to Mid-August) and I loved it. The country had great people, good food, and I was basically in bliss for my whole time there, only amplified by speaking in Portuguese as well(made it that much better). I have kept in touch with my host family, and I actually need to get in touch with them again soon, but I hope to go there again sometime soon. But I am already making plans to study abroad again next year. After realizing that high school in America sucks, and that I am tired of it, I decided it would be best if I took a year off and went to another country to study for a year as well as learn an additional foreign language. My top choices right now? #1. Russia. #2. Turkey. #3. France Even though I am not exactly final on that list, I definitely want to go to Russia. So, in preparation of going there, I have decided to start studying the language. I officially plan to start Monday, after deciding on a good "program" to use, which will probably involve some type of text to follow with English translation, a good dictionary(online probably), and tapes to use and get a basic grasp of the language with. I have already learned the alphabet so I just need to dig in and get some self-motivation that I always can find in myself.

Post-RTK1 Era

It's been a while since I finished Remembering The Kanji I, and I have moved on to the other 2 writing systems, the Hiragana and Katakana. I am tackling the Hiragana first, just because its the order the book I'm using goes in(Remembering the Kana, also by James Heisig), and the Hiragana are also a little more important. I've only done about 23 of the 46 characters, but I should be done by the end of the week and on to the Katakana if I can find some 30 minute pockets of time to fit Japanese in during the week. I've also made significant improvement in my Portuguese listening skills, much due to playing some type of Brazilian music everyday or listening to the radio(I download UOL podcasts everyday on iTunes). Now it's only about a month and a half before I get the whole summer to have fun with all the books around the house and resources online. Até Próximo.

Banned Commercials - Learn English

A funny video by a German company that teaches English.

I FINISHED REMEMBERING THE KANJI!!

Today marks the happiest I have been with my language learning in a while. I unbelievably finished RTK last night. It was hardest thing I have had to consistently do for a long period of time ever(even though I'm sure I'll find something else to complain about later in life). I have gone through 2042 Japanese Kanji characters. I started in late July, and finished March 23, so that spans about 7 months. I believe I could have finished sooner if the burden of school and junior year hadn't come and complicated things. But regardless, I worked and worked and worked, and I am sure some of the few readers of this article may think I am really bragging and pumping myself up right now, but I feel like if there was ever an excuse, it would be this. Kanji was a HUGE stepping stone for me, and now that I've finished, I can finally move on to actually reading, writing, and listening to Japanese and work on language skills, with a the other 2 writing systems(Katakana and Hiragana) a very small stepping stone to get over(each writing system is only 50 characters or so). This will also free up time to work on my Portuguese and maybe start with another language I have been dying to work on.