Radioclare's 2020 log (Russian, Croatian)

[Radioclare]

The fact that my mortgage is paid off is still sinking in.

Wow, congrats! That is huge.

Also, thanks for talking about the Russian Progress site and Татьянин день--I struggle bit with finding accessible material online for Russian that isn't just grammar aids. I find these really helpful at my stage, whatever that is right now. Hopefully I can spend more time with them after this 6WC.

Thank you! And nice to see you back on the forum again Татьянин день is still quite a bit above my level and I do struggle with it sometimes, but I've found the Russian Progress videos incredibly helpful this year. They're just difficult enough to be challenging but not so difficult that they're completely incomprehensible

29 November
Today was my birthday! But when you commit to doing 30 minutes of Russian every day you have to do it even when it's your birthday.

Russian
I did cap it at literally just 30 minutes of grammar study today though. I tackled the section on prepositions with the instrumental in Schaum's Grammar, which actually wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be. And the good news is that I did indeed finish the chapter on prepositions. Definitely bored of prepositions now

Croatian
I watched an episode of 'Drugo ime ljubavi' as well. I have a goal of getting 70 000 steps per week (as opposed to 10 000 per day) and I was a bit under this week, so I needed to do cycle for 45 mins to hit my target.

Total - Russian: 30 mins, Croatian: 45 mins

[Radioclare]

30 November
Today was a good day. I got a notification that I'm finally being refunded by my insurance for some accommodation in Dubrovnik I was supposed to stay in back in September. I'd already given up hope of getting the money back, so it feels like an unexpected bonus to get it now

Russian
I didn't feel very energetic this evening so I didn't do any grammar. I re-listened to a Russian Progress video that I struggled to focus on a few weeks ago, reading the transcript this time. I did find I got more out of this way, but I still found it quite a boring video. That didn't take me up to 30 minutes, so I watched a couple of extra videos in Russian on YouTube. One of them was a Russian showing parts of London which are best avoided. Not parts of London I've ever been to but they looked a lot like Birmingham

Total - Russian: 58 mins

[Radioclare]

1 December
Hard to believe it's December already!

Russian
It's been a long day and I didn't feel like doing proper studying again. I watched a video about Birmingham by a Russian vlogger. I actually quite enjoyed it because I haven't been into the centre of Birmingham since March, so it was almost nostalgic to see it on the screen The video wasn't terribly complimentary about Birmingham, which I do get because it's not a very scenic city. I then watched a second video by a different vlogger, who was similarly unimpressed and also offended me by insulting the beautiful local accent

Total - Russian: 50 mins

[Radioclare]

2 December
Today wasn't a bad day as such but I had a training session from 19.00 to 20.00 and another from 21.00 to 22.00, so it's been a long one.

Russian
Guess what, by the time I finished work at 22.00 I didn't feel like doing any Russian grammar! So I watched an Антон Птушкин video which I haven't seen before. This one was about Chernobyl. Like all his videos it was really good and I found it interesting to watch something about Chernobyl which was made by someone from Ukraine. He also had some shots from Fukushima which were interesting to see.

Total - Russian: 40 mins

[cjareck]

I was in kindergarten during the Chernobyl disaster. I remember that all the group had to drink Lugol's iodine. The other thing I remember was that it tasted awfully but we were forced to drink a whole portion. A few years ago I watched a "seconds from disaster" episode about it which was extremely interesting to me.

[Radioclare]

3 December
I felt tired today after my 10pm finish last night. One of those days where even unlimited coffee fails at making you feel energetic

Russian
I'm running out of ways to say I didn't do any grammar study. This just hasn't been a grammar sort of week! I watched an episode of 'Татьянин день' instead. I need to watch this more consistently if I want to make progress with my Russian SC.

Croatian
I didn't do any Croatian today but YouTube recommended me a new music video,'Božić bez tebe' by Mia Dimšić. The title (Christmas without you) seems like quite an apt one for a 2020 Christmas.



Total - Russian: 48 mins

[Radioclare]

4 December
I had to get up earlier than normal to interview someone at 8am. The interview didn't go well and so I spent the day feeling annoyed at the sleep I'd sacrificed

Russian
Yeah, still no grammar. I'm not even sure I'm going to manage any tomorrow because I think I'm going to have to work most of the weekend if I want to stand a chance of not working over Christmas. I watched more YouTube. It's very educational; I even learned a new word "кладбище" (graveyard). I was watching a video of a Russian woman giving a tour around the small English town she lived in and she commented on the fact that English churches tend to have graveyards next to them.

Also, no Russian in this video, but there is a life hack for people who are struggling with UK taps



Total - Russian: 49 mins

[Radioclare]

5 December
I worked from just after 10 until around 5. Then I decided to stop and try again tomorrow because I was tired.

Russian
I did do some grammar this evening though! I started chapter 4 of Schaum, which is about pronouns. It gets off to a nice easy start talking about pronouns in the nominative. I got through that pretty quickly and completed the section on pronouns in the accusative too.

Croatian
Later in the evening I watched an episode of 'Drugo ime ljubavi' while cycling. I think that's the first episode I've watched this week

Total - Russian: 36 mins, Croatian: 48 mins

[Radioclare]

6 December
I don't normally work on Sundays, but today it was necessary. Only 3 or 4 hours though, so not as bad as yesterday.

Russian
I made some progress with pronouns, covering genitive and prepositional pronouns this afternoon. The genitive ones are easy. The prepositional pronouns are ones I often make mistakes with. I deliberately didn't start the section on dative pronouns today, although I did have time, because part of my problem is that I keep writing dative pronouns when I should use prepositional ones, so I want to try and separate them in my brain.

Croatian
I finished a book I've been reading in English after I finished work this afternoon, which meant that this evening I was able to go back to reading 'Bilješka o piscu', a Croatian book which I started a few weeks ago. It was a really sad story about a woman who wasted her life hoping the man she was having an affair with was going to leave his wife for her, but he was never quite decisive enough to actually do it. It was really well written, the sort of book which you could easily read a second time It was 283 pages, which takes me to 39 books for my Croatian Super Challenge.

Total - Russian: 43 mins, Croatian: 176 mins

[Radioclare]

7 December
Didn't feel terribly refreshed today. I guess that's what happens when you work half the weekend.

Russian
I'm trying to do better this week than last so I continued with Schaum's grammar this evening. I covered dative pronouns and did the exercises but that only took me around 15 minutes, so then I studied the instrumental pronouns as well.

Total - Russian: 30 mins