Sunday, June 08, 2014
Don’t you forget about me…
milk: it does a minion good.
My last Ukrainian class was yesterday. It feels weird to know I never have to get up ass early again. I’m kind of going to miss my teacher, too.
She considered the class a success because we were able to have a conversation with very little English yesterday. I still consider MYSELF a failure for not putting in the hours and struggling with the vocabulary.
But.
I have an excellent foundation and two more ‘teach yourself’ books in my collection. I should be able to work my way through them, but my teacher has said she’ll be available if I get really stuck.
I’ve also managed to find a couple of really good tools to use for flashcards and am reaching out on some social media sites to find people who are willing to tolerate my shitty Ukrainian in exchange for practice with English.
The learning must go on because…
It appears that I can claim Ukrainian citizenship simply because my grandfather was born there. But… I need to be at least conversational or fluent, though, and I’m not even close to conversational.
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Other than that, I purchased the Harry Potter series in Ukrainian. It’s my goal to read all seven books during the summer. It’s probably not feasible (I see a lot of quality time with Google Translate or a dictionary…), but I’m going to try. I’m also planning to buy the Hunger Games trilogy.
Hey, if I’m going to struggle through the books in Ukrainian, I might as well read a story I’m familiar with. It will help fill in the gaps. I’ve already mastered the first sentence in the first Harry Potter book. How many more to go? I don’t know, but I know it’s a metric shit ton and then some.
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Work is slow. And boring.
We’re doing some tiny projects around the house since I’m finally employed and can afford to do them.
I’m going to at least two Ukrainian festivals this summer and probably a few more, depending on timing… I’ll have business cards made up with my email, blog, and skype information, so I can give them to the people I meet while I’m out and about (if they’re open to conversing with me, that is).
My Ukrainian blog is up and running. It just needs some content. And some more tweaking… the site breaks on my iPhone and there’s a few features I need to add, but I’m satisfied with where it is. For now.
I’m still alive… just boring.
