They Like Me, They Really, Really Like Me

Dear Readers,
My sincere apologies for not posting for two full weeks. Last week I was sick with "Moscow's Revenge". No further details are necessary and none will be provided. The prior week was simply quotidian (look it up, you have the entire internet at your disposal, for gosh sakes).
So here is the great, earthshaking news that drew me out of my Moscow funk, figuratively and literally, to do an update post. No, not the G-8 summit, we don't like them, they don't like us, tensions are rising, blah-blah-blah. Go out, push aside your morals, buy into the the Rosneft IPO and move on. Just be sure to dump the stock before the elections in 2008 :-). But, I digress.
The really important news is that the babushkas in the building stopped me today and initiated a full-fledged conversation with me. They even asked me my name and when I told them "Shura" , they immediately shortened (or elongated it, whatever) to Shurokha, which means little Shura and is very friendly. They also told me that I was beautiful. They truly are my new best friends. So now me, Tamara, Nina and Vanya are the very bestest of pals and I look forward to the day when I can understand more than 40% of what they are saying. I am dead sure that they cannot understand more than 10% of what I say in Russian.

This development is so ironic because I was just lamenting the supreme unfriendliness of the Russian people with an ex-pat friend of mine. She was in total agreement, and we griped about the situation for more than an hour. Then, like magic, the building welcoming crew invites me into the fold. So now, my faith in the Russian soul has been restored, at least partially. I will keep you posted when I finally fall back into love with Russia.

I am going to St. Petersburg, the place that caused me to fall in love with Russia in the first place. I am excited and nervous about going back. It will be so thrilling to the see the changes to "my Russia" and see all the things that have not changed (and will never change -- Kazansky Sobor, Alexanderplatz, The Admiralty, The Neva). On the other hand, St. Pete's is a dangerous city now. The local government rounded up all the skinheads this week, to prevent an incident from occuring during the G-8 summit. That means they will be nice and rested when I show up on Friday.

On to brighter topics, I met with the President of Alfa's Retail Bank and his deputy. The meeting went well and I believe that my intership there will be very interesting, challenging and meaningful, or at least I hope that. I will let you know if I start work sometime soon, as was suggested in the meeting.

Meantime, I am slugging away at school, trying (in vain for the most part) to learn this God-forsaken language. One of my friends from school said "Why don't Russians understand me? I speak Russian and they cannot even understand their own language!!". Obviously, he said this in jest. I am just so frustrated with my progress. I was so good at this in college (way back in the last millenium), I thought, well I will just dust off the cobwebs and let it rip. Well, I dusted off the cobwebs and there was nothing underneath. All of my Russian language mojo is gone. I am not sure where or when, but it is definitely gone. So that was a real setback. So I stewed for a week or so, but now I am back on track. I bought a childrens book called Sasha and Masha (Sasha is the boy) and I read that every night. I also study 10 verbs every night to try and catch up on vocabulary. Nouns are easier, you can use words to describe nouns or even show pictures or examples. I defy anyone to describe the verb "explain" or "suggest" or "reconsider" or just plain "think". And because Russian is a highly verbal language (verbs drive the language) getting them right or "owning" them as I describe it to myself, is critical.

I hope to have some awesome pix from St. Petes next week. Going forward, I will be updating my blog, just weekly (Sunday nights -- cause lord knows, I don't have any football to distract me). If there is something pressing or interesting, I will update it real time, but everyday is just too much. There isn't enough really interesting stuff to make a daily update feasible.

Please remember to post comments. I love getting feedback of all kinds. Also I am on Skype --shereeinrussia is my name.