na kholodnoj zemle
It has been a long, LONG time since i last updated this. I don't have much interesting to say, but from what I can tell the vast majority of lj posts the world over are made up of nothing much interesting.
Here's what's going on.
1) I am going to Irkutsk, a reasonably-sized city in the middle of Siberia, for 10 months, to teach English. Because I'm a Fulbright scholar, and as a Fulbright scholar, I have won this prestigious Fulbright grant to teach English in Russia. Since this is the only time in my life I will probably ever be a Fulbright scholar, I have decided to mention that I am a Fulbright scholar as possible to everyone I know and even people I don't really know. I will be in Moscow for all of August learning how to teach. In Irkutsk I will do a project on the effects of Soviet language policy on the Buryat community (wikipedia it) by doing interviews by age groups and seeing when, where and to what extent they use their own language today. I'm excited! And scared. But mostly excited. This is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. I get to do it all - teach English, speak Russian, do a linguistic project. AND someone else is paying for it. I basically just won the linguistic lottery. My plan while there is to become fluent in Russian, which surprisingly takes a lot more effort to learn than other foreign languages due to the terrible, terrible morphosyntactic features and (maybe this is only wishful thinking) study Spanish enough that 1) I can speak it without throwing in Russian words and declining things and 2) that I could pass the OPI with a 3. Because this is my big chance, guys! I'm going to do everything I can with it. But seriously, I plan to have probably 1 whole suitcase packed with necessities like American shampoo (because
Russian shampoo=hella expensive and hella terrible), Fruity Pebbles, and my Spanish and Russian grammar books and dictionaries.
2) I got a job. A good job, that pays. My job is at FNC in Oxford. My job is to break software -software for collateral and apparaisals - any way I possibly can. This includes making up fake entries for fields, such as "i don't live anywhere" for an address, banging on the keyboard and clicking things 500 times in a row. I am good at my job. The hours are good, the pay is good. it's all good.
3) I got a haircut. I decided to be adventurous and try something new. I will never do this again, and by "this" I mean both cut my hair and trying new things. Depending on how it's styled, I either look like Paul McCartney in the height of his Wings success or Prince Valiant. My only consolation is that it will look fantastic in a month or two and probably stay that way for awhile, but it's a small one. A lasting haircut is very useful because I am going to a land where I do not fluently speak the language, a land where mullets are popular, even on girls, and no non-native Russian speaker seems to know the word for 'mullet,' so the stylist could so 'oh, you want this?' at any point in time and you could foolishly reply 'da' so she doesn't know that you don't know that word in russian, or russian in general.
ANYWAY, that's the news. Cheers, neudachniki.
Here's what's going on.
1) I am going to Irkutsk, a reasonably-sized city in the middle of Siberia, for 10 months, to teach English. Because I'm a Fulbright scholar, and as a Fulbright scholar, I have won this prestigious Fulbright grant to teach English in Russia. Since this is the only time in my life I will probably ever be a Fulbright scholar, I have decided to mention that I am a Fulbright scholar as possible to everyone I know and even people I don't really know. I will be in Moscow for all of August learning how to teach. In Irkutsk I will do a project on the effects of Soviet language policy on the Buryat community (wikipedia it) by doing interviews by age groups and seeing when, where and to what extent they use their own language today. I'm excited! And scared. But mostly excited. This is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. I get to do it all - teach English, speak Russian, do a linguistic project. AND someone else is paying for it. I basically just won the linguistic lottery. My plan while there is to become fluent in Russian, which surprisingly takes a lot more effort to learn than other foreign languages due to the terrible, terrible morphosyntactic features and (maybe this is only wishful thinking) study Spanish enough that 1) I can speak it without throwing in Russian words and declining things and 2) that I could pass the OPI with a 3. Because this is my big chance, guys! I'm going to do everything I can with it. But seriously, I plan to have probably 1 whole suitcase packed with necessities like American shampoo (because
Russian shampoo=hella expensive and hella terrible), Fruity Pebbles, and my Spanish and Russian grammar books and dictionaries.
2) I got a job. A good job, that pays. My job is at FNC in Oxford. My job is to break software -software for collateral and apparaisals - any way I possibly can. This includes making up fake entries for fields, such as "i don't live anywhere" for an address, banging on the keyboard and clicking things 500 times in a row. I am good at my job. The hours are good, the pay is good. it's all good.
3) I got a haircut. I decided to be adventurous and try something new. I will never do this again, and by "this" I mean both cut my hair and trying new things. Depending on how it's styled, I either look like Paul McCartney in the height of his Wings success or Prince Valiant. My only consolation is that it will look fantastic in a month or two and probably stay that way for awhile, but it's a small one. A lasting haircut is very useful because I am going to a land where I do not fluently speak the language, a land where mullets are popular, even on girls, and no non-native Russian speaker seems to know the word for 'mullet,' so the stylist could so 'oh, you want this?' at any point in time and you could foolishly reply 'da' so she doesn't know that you don't know that word in russian, or russian in general.
ANYWAY, that's the news. Cheers, neudachniki.