(Monday 19th September 2011, written up same day)
Well that turned out to be more exciting than I expected. No pictures I'm afraid. There was nothing very visual anyway.
It's Monday, so it's back to work, not that I ever really stopped. Lessons started with me being asked about what I did at the weekend? In my case that meant: the walking tour of Novosibirsk on Saturday morning/afternoon, the trip to the Opera in the evening, Sunday morning trip to view the River Ob and afternoon trip to see Dali. I'd expected this to happen, so I'd prepared notes. I'm glad I did, but I was subjected to a gentle interrogation, which was directed not at finding out what I did (I'm sure the teachers don't care that much), but at how I could express what I did. The questioning soon guided be into uncharted territory, but I managed. By-the-way, there is a theatre in Novosibirsk called "Clockwork Orange", after the Book/Film by Anthony Burgess!
After "What did you do at the weekend" seesion, we moved onto my translation of the text "Granny's Birthday". This required my to summarise the decendants on Granny's family tree. This was followed by my answers to simple questions with yes/no answers, and then questions which required longer answers. This was all about developing my understanding of the "genitive case". Another way of putting this is "X is the _son of_ Y", "Q is the _wife of_ R" etc. We identified the imperfections in my understanding and moved on.
Then some exercises about negatives, "not having". This led to a tragic story of a begger who has lost everything. My homework (apart from doing the translation) is to provide an (imaginary) explanation as to how he lost everything. I did the homework at school, and that is a very good thing.
One of the things which worries me a little in Novosibirsk is that they drive on the right. I'm worried that my reflexes will take me the wrong way. As a result I tend to follow Russians and stay "down stream of them" when crossing the road. Hence I sometimes shadow old ladies. They help me cross the road!
I left school at a little after 17:00. When I got home, there was nobody in. I went out and bought a bottle of mineral water and a bottle of beer (purely to practice my Russian in a shop, you understand). When I returned home, I put them both in the fridge and settled down to do some drills involving "Not having" in Present, Past and Future tenses. I also tucked into some watermelon I'd been told to eat.
When my landlady came in, she asked me if I wanted to go shopping? I said yes. After all, it sounded interesting. It was interesting alright! I thought she meant groceries. I was wrong! The first surprise was when I was asked to get into the landlady's boss's car, which already contained her sons. Next stop, the place where she is living while her flat is repaired. We off-load the sons. Next _IKEA_ where she has ordered a carpet for something at one son's school. My job is to help with the carpet. We have dinner in the IKEA restaurant, then it's off to the school, where two young fellows are waiting in the dark to take the carpet inside. I get to see a lot of Novosibirsk by night.
Eventful and better than my language drills!
And so to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment