Daily life for Russian in Russia students

Because a lot of people were studying Russian this summer, the schedules of the students were devided. One day classes started for half of the group at 9h, the other day classes started at 12.45h, for the other group the opposite. This led to either being up early and doing homework for the 9 o'clock course, because you had been in the city the night before, with or without having a sleepy apartment mate joining you for breakfast, or sleeping late / doing some sightseeing in the free morning. Especially the free noons were spent sightseeing or shopping, because it was the best opportunity, no curfews.

Russian alphabet in classroom

For dinner there were basically three options:
- to go to the 24 hour working super market and buy yourself a one person meal
- eating with whoever wants to join in the bigger apartment
- out.
Let me start by telling about the second option.
The "guys" occupied the bigger apartment which contained a large kitchen with enough room to cook and a table where we could gather with at least ten people.
A few good cooks made dinner for the entire group, while others cleaned the table and the dishes. My compliments to Giangio, Giovanni, Yoleen, Nicole, Marta and Christiaan for making such wonderful dinners and of course all the Russian blini students for the "last lunch" :).

Cooking...

...eating...

...

...and cleaning

The apartments were cleaned by ourselves. I must say, I had doubts about student apartments and cleaning going together, but I think everyone did a great job being as tidy as possible and I have to, once again, make my compliments for our two Belgian wonderwomen Yoleen and Nicole whose energies were endless and did a lot of cleaning. Because the streets are dirty everyone had to take off his shoes before entering the apartments and the same applied for the palaces in the city.
The third dinner option deserves a blog of its own, so I'll tell you something about the supposed main goal of our trip: the studying.
It seems a clear day planning that when lessons start at nine and finish at one you have the afternoon to do your exercises and that when class starts in the afternoon you spend the morning studying. HOWEVER it is Saint Petersburg we're talking about! Many of us had never been to this city and I am convinced that you cannot study a language (in its home country) without studying the culture. Every free minute was therefore filled with trips. Not in the last place to mention the excursions and practical lessons offered by the organisation. Because "networking" nowadays seems to be the key to a good professional carreer, and besides that, people are social beings, there has got to be some proper partying. I don't think I need to mention literally that I, personally, had problems planning time for homework. This led to either studying until 3 o'clock at night, or getting up at 6 in the morning to get the work done.
All in all I think my Russian has improved the last two weeks. During the lessons there are words that keep coming back, so in the end you know how to use them, so word knowledge has expanded and furthermore I think I am better able to understand Russian when it's spoken to me. Still, I find it very difficult and I think word knowledge will play a very important rule in improving communicating skills, because unlike Spanish and Italian, I cannot "make anything out of" Russian if I've never heard the words before.
I hope I am gonna find the time at home to order my notes and then I think I have really made a step forwards.
Let me see where I started this blog, yes, the daily foreign student life. I think I've covered the majority of that now, the surviving, the studying. Now I will finish this post by pointing out the next one, which will be on the topic of going out in a city that never sleeps!

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