Language Learning, Part 3

There are advantages and disadvantages to speaking a foreign language with someone who is also not a native speaker.  One advantage is that, no matter how many grammatical faults you make, the other person will understand what you say anyway.

Cocedka dans la chambre

Lea with Laundry

For the first two weeks I lived at this university I was all alone in room 106 on the ninth floor of building 4 of the Russian State University for the Humanities, but now I have a partner in both rooming and crime.

 

This is Lea.  She is 20 years old, and from Marseilles.  I speak French and she speaks English better than we both speak Russian, but because of our immersion in Russian on n’arrive pas!, we are completely unable, to speak our second languages.  So Russian it is, for better or worse, grammatical mistakes included. 

Katya Moya!!

Taylor and Katya with St. Basils

Katya and Taylor on Red Square

This is a better picture of her, along with her funny little American friend, on Red Square on a beautiful fall evening.

 

 

Russian Ark

Kuda?

. . . idyem.

“Where are we going?”

 

This question is the last line of the Sokhurov’s 2003 film “Russian Ark”.  The scene depicts hundreds of characters from Russia’s storied history flowing through the halls of the Hermitage, moving en masse to the Revolution of the country and their previous way of life. 

 

Where are we going?  No one knows, but nor can anyone stop the movement and the flow. 

 

Being in the Moscow metro during chast’ pik, rush hour, reminds me of this scene.  Millions of people cram into the underground tunnels of this city at the same time.  The oppressive heat and mass of humanity make it difficult to move, difficult to breathe, difficult to do anything but flow along with the general direction of energy.  Getting off this train, exiting the station, or moving in any direction against this flow requires a concentration of strength and determination.  Only if you summon all of the strength in your being to change direction, or change train lines, will you be successful in doing so.  And oftentimes, you will not.

 

Where are we going?  If the flow of people through the Hermitage was a metaphor for the end of history of the 20^th century, then that of the Moscow Metro is that of the 21^st.  Grey-faced, tired, their eyes focusing on no one and nothing, man after woman after desperate babushka shuffle ahead to an uncertain tomorrow.

 

A Moscow Autumn

Golden streets

Evening by the pond

A truly Western City

Church of Christ the Savior at sunset

Russian History Museum on a fall evening

Evening by the Kremlin Walls on the Moscow River

 

When the weather is nice, it’s a pleasant thing to experience.

 

The fourth floor of the university administrative building

Internet cafe . . .

Here you see pictured representatives from approximately seven different countries, all huddled over laptops in one of two places on this campus where you can get wireless internet.  The other place is the fifth floor.

 

The only places to sit are on hard metal chairs, and for the approximately 7000 students at this university there are exactly three plugs.

 

Now you see why I don’t like to spend a lot of time here.

The View from the Ninth Floor

It’s not that bad on a fall day.

It

My Room

It’s becoming more and more my own every day.

La chambre de Tay