Monday, January 22, 2007

Learning Russian... Finally

For years, it's been a goal of mine to learn Russian. I love Dostoevsky and thought it would be really cool to be able to read his works in their native language. Unfortunately, for the last several years I haven't been able to find any classes that were available at the local universities at a convenient time of day. The classes were always smack dab in the middle of the morning or the middle of the afternoon making it difficult to get away from work to get to class.

Spanish Fork has a community school program and I've always kept an eye out for a Russian class, but it just isn't a popular enough language. It's easy to find Spanish or French classes offered at night but not Russian.

To my surprise, Rosey was flipping through the Community School program for Spring '07 a couple of weeks ago and noticed that they actually have a Russian class being offered. So, I signed up immediately. I was a little worried that there wouldn't be enough interest in the class to keep it going because there were only two other people signed up at the time when I registered. Usually they need at least 8.

When I showed up for my first class last week and discovered that I was one of four people enrolled in the class, I was certain that the teacher was just going to send us home. But, she decided to teach the class anyway. So, now I have the next 10 weeks to learn enough Russian to read Dostoevsky :) OK, my expectations aren't really that high for a 10 week course. But at least it will get the ball rolling. If the teacher is decent I'm thinking of offering to hire her as a private tutor once the class is over.

4 comments:

Chris said...

Очень холодно

svoid said...

It took me a second to catch your meaning :) Your phrase translates literally (according to babelfish) as "It's very cold". I'm guessing that what you really mean is "very cool" :) Thanks!

Chris said...

Yes Very Cool. Of course babelfish translated "very cool" as the above. But I suppose right now in Russia it is very cold ;)

TK said...

So how's the Russian coming? Do you have to spend a lot of time to keep up? My guess is, it's not that hard for you. Right?