Part of a New Year's resolution achieved - That's satisfying!

The last year has been very disrupted for me. I changed (or lost) as job and have moved house (country). As a result of "the move" I still have lots of possessions (mostly books and papers) in storage boxes. This in itself is not really a bad thing, but it has created an opportunity for me to put-off some administrative work that I really should have done.


At the same time, I've taken up improving my Russian. I already had a number of textbooks, and I found (or rather didn't find) that the Russian-English dicitionary I wanted was in one of the boxes I had not unpacked. In a funny indirect way, that was the trigger for me to start sorting out the accumulated admin work.

Once I had started I found the task, that I had probably been avoiding, went more quickly and more easilly than I had been expecting. The apparent volume of the papers shrunk when I removed the envelopes and unfolded the papers. The actual sorting took relatively little time.

It was at this point that a little serendipity crept in. I went to the computer to print out the manifest which lists the contents of all the boxes (in a basic sort of way) and noticed that one of the three boxes standing next to it said "Russian" on the label. Sure enough, the Russian dictionary was in there! I printed the manifest anyway, I expect I'll need it in the next few days.

None of this was a "New Year's Resolution", but it was all on my "List of things to do". All in all quite satisfactory!

Learning a new language - Russian

Part of my New Year's resolutions - write something in the diary every day. This is a start.

For the past week I've been warming up my Russian. It's years since I used it at all, and I was expecting to get nowhere. Actually I've been pleasantly surprised. Bits are coming back to me, and not just the numbers and standard phrases that everyone seems to remember. I'm remembering the patterns for the regular verbs.

The thing I find most difficult, is listening to people speaking Russian. I have some software which has a good number of examples. I expect (hope) that the producers used native speakers. Anyway, that's the bit I find hardest. I seem to be making progress. It's as sort of "tuning in" process. My hearing or understanding is becoming more attuned to listening to Russian.

And for the rest of the day, I have some ECDL (European Computer Driving License) scripts to mark. This has been delayed a little because there was a mix-up with the exam papers and the CD containing what the students had done. I was given the wrong CD, and so had nothing to mark. Still, no harm done and it shouldn't take me too long to work through them.

Outside the sun is shining, and reflecting off the frost on the grass. A bright, pleasant day. I may take some of it off to go for a walk.