To all who replied to my last post, which was inspired by emergency - thank you. Lena was thrilled to get real native-speaker feedback from two other Americans (because obviously I also made comments.)
So, since I never really have time to update this anymore (:(!!! ) I'm leaving the link to my other blog. Before I left, Dr. Dyer and the hc suggested I start a sort of 'intellectual blog' detailing my adventures in teaching English with a fulbright grant and Russian life in general that they could link from the hc website. Though I don't ever really have time to update this thing, I update the other blog reasonably often, because, well, it's for the hc, and I would do just about anything for the hc. It can get kind of boring, since it's mostly details of my life here, but there's tons of fantasticheski pictures of Irkutsk, Korea, China, and all the places I went on the Trans-Siberian after that. Anyway, if anyone's interested, here's the link.
http://masha-katja.spaces.live.com/default.aspx Holla!