TGIW. (Thank Goodness it’s Wednesday).

As I’ve mentioned before, Wednesdays are our day off from class (with the exception of an “optional” – aka: not optional – talking class at 4pm). I live for Wednesdays. Monday and Tuesday were disasters in school. On Monday the heaters were cranked up so high thanks to government kindness that I couldn’t concentrate on my first 2 hours of lessons. My teacher rewarded my lack of enthusiasm with an unprecedented amount of homework – 2 essays, a long grammar exercise (and it isn’t even grammar class!), and memorizing about 25 new words. My grammar class greeted me with superlative adjectives – which I neither understand nor really care to at this time. Honestly, when you start adding a prefix and a suffix to an adjective, plus “really” before it – I think you need some perspective on how great you think that something is. It probably isn’t.


And while I’m on adjectives (such an exciting topic) – the only one you really need to learn here is “clean”. They say it about absolutely everything – clean culture, clean food, clean city. It isn’t. Perhaps they are being ironic – I know we are when we say it. (They aren’t.)

I finished Monday with my new conversation teacher. My last one was horrible and I had to ask to change teachers one week before I was supposed to. She was fired. And before you go thinking I’m mean – she was new, a lot of teachers go through trial periods and are fired quickly here, and she taught me things incorrectly and would argue with me when I pointed out really large mistakes. Though I’m afraid teachers won’t want to teach me conversation – as technically I haven’t seen my first conversation teacher since I stopped having lessons with her (also a terrible teacher). Though now they’ve given me a veteran teacher and she’s great – however, she also gave me an essay to write! So Monday I had 3 essays, 4 grammar exercises, and new words to memorize.

And I managed to do all of it (very surprisingly). However, after going through all my homework with my morning teacher, she was quite perturbed that I did not memorize the reading on top of the other homework and kept bringing that up in class as if I somehow slacked off by only writing 2 essays plus her other homework. So I started the day in a bit of a bad mood. Plus she tore apart my essay on vacuuming (it was thrilling…I’m going for a Pulitzer) on the fact that apparently in Russian “I” cannot vacuum. Only “he or she” can vacuum. Honestly – which such a ridiculous rule, one would think you’d mention it before I do the essay on vacuuming.

When I mentioned the vacuuming debacle to another student he said that he had a whole page in a grammar book dedicated to the controversy over saying “I vacuum”. It is epic apparently, and I have reason to believe at least one major civil war was begun over the issue (it has now fizzled into low-intensity civil conflict). My teacher simply explained that “it sounds weird” to say I vacuum. So instead, I am supposed to say “I do vacuum cleaner”. She was right – much less weird to say that….

So after struggling through 2 days of class, it is finally Wednesday…thank goodness. My only major plan today is to trek up to the big grocery store in town and get another jar of peanut butter (why yes, it is worth 1.5 hours of walking). Then we have our talking class at 4pm and somehow the guys in the advanced talking class at 5:30 arranged for their class to be at the pub tonight. So we are all going to the pub for another round of class, but with the added benefit of beer.