Ani’s 2020 log

[Ani]

Hi everyone

I’ve come back to the forum after a gap. I’m not sure if I’m talk about that gap & my life from the interim. I’ve missed a lot of you.. I’m disappointed to see many of my favorites have left, but I still see a lot of familiar names are active.

I’ve decided if 2020 is going to be a complete disaster, I might as well learn Russian so I can’t consider it an unmitigated disaster. It seems like this may be one of the very very few things in my power to control at this point.

I have very little time now that I’m trying to work from home and run a household, and educate the kids, with no nanny or cleaning help at all. It’s kind of depressing some days (yay aren’t you glad I’m back! So much fun ) but I’m using duolingo (which I kind of hate) and FluentU (which I totally love) right now to load as many Russian words as I can.

I tried multiple methods to learn Russian before but never tried the same method I used to learn French, which is silly because I have seen that it works for me. Language is language and I’m not convinced Russian is different enough to throw the baby out with the bath water & force myself into another method. I’ll pick up the missing pieces as I go.

My goal is to learn Russian by the end of the year. By “learn”, I mean complete my A1 textbook, learn a bunch if words, and feel comfortable learning from TV series with subtitles, which right now are too far advanced to be very useful. I’d like to try a half super challenge in Russian for 2021 so I’m trying to set myself up for that.

In 2021 I also plan to go on a refresher binge for French as my grammar is getting sloppy and my reading speed & comfort are reduced from what they were. I haven’t use a lot of French since covid.

[Xenops]

I'm glad to see you back Ani. I can't imagine the workload you have.

2020 has been...interesting, shall we say. My department does the Covid testing now, and sometimes we have testing kits, sometimes we don't, sometimes we have the supplies we need, sometimes they are backordered...If anything, we are learning to be very conservative.

[eido]

Welcome back, Ani! I always thought your posts were insightful and well thought out, and with your experience in French and learning, they were always a pleasure to read. Glad to have you around again Russian is a cool language, indeed. I can't wait to follow your progress!

[Ani]

I'm glad to see you back Ani. I can't imagine the workload you have.

2020 has been...interesting, shall we say. My department does the Covid testing now, and sometimes we have testing kits, sometimes we don't, sometimes we have the supplies we need, sometimes they are backordered...If anything, we are learning to be very conservative.

2020 has been interesting... I think people are behaving in ways they think are authentic to themselves but really are reflective of our shared trauma from all this — that’s on all sides, all around.. so I’m trying really hard to breathe and roll with everything.

Sorry I’m horrible at texting I got a new phone in the middle of the last time we talked. Could you text me again some time so I can save your number? :-/

[Ani]

Welcome back, Ani! I always thought your posts were insightful and well thought out, and with your experience in French and learning, they were always a pleasure to read. Glad to have you around again Russian is a cool language, indeed. I can't wait to follow your progress!

Good to see you again! I’m looking forward to catching up on what you’re up to.

[PfifltriggPi]

Welcome back Ani. I always enjoyed reading your log posts. I do hope all the craziness chez vous reduces itself a bit soon. I see you've started exploring the wonderful hardship of East Slavic languages. Russian is certainly the more practical choice and probably the easier given the quantity of resources. Hopefully someday, however, you'll see the light and come to the beautiful tongue of Тарас Шевченко. Either way, though, you're in for quite the experience. Enjoy and welcome back!

[iguanamon]

Welcome back, Ani! With all you have got going on, adding Russian into the mix will be quite a challenge. They say if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. I'll look forward to your posts.

[Ani]

Welcome back Ani. I always enjoyed reading your log posts. I do hope all the craziness chez vous reduces itself a bit soon. I see you've started exploring the wonderful hardship of East Slavic languages. Russian is certainly the more practical choice and probably the easier given the quantity of resources. Hopefully someday, however, you'll see the light and come to the beautiful tongue of Тарас Шевченко. Either way, though, you're in for quite the experience. Enjoy and welcome back!

So good to see you I’m not sure I’ll ever make my way to another Slavic language, but never say never. I did choose Russian initially because it is a good gateway but if I ever want to suffer some more after this, I’d probably go to Icelandic again. I really did love that language. And when I want to suffer less, I’ll be going to Spanish.
Hope you’re doing well, thanks for the welcome!

[Ani]

Welcome back, Ani! With all you have got going on, adding Russian into the mix will be quite a challenge. They say if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. I'll look forward to your posts.

Iguanamon! So good to know you’re still here. I spent a lot of quarantine down in Florida and wondered if you were ever back over on the main land, but then I remembered it was covid and we probably couldn’t meet up for a cup of coffee anyway :-/ Someday maybe.

Hope you’re really well and staying safe through hurricane season. I’m looking forward to catching up on your log and seeing how your languages are going.

[Ani]

So I had a couple language adventures since I’ve been around.
The first was a trip to Peru in January.

That was my first time traveling to a Spanish speaking country. Given the crazy-in-my-life-that-shall-not-be-named, I did not prep and study Spanish in advance. I had been studying a bit at some point before I left Alaska but... I can barely remember how much and when I left that off.

The only thing I did do was download Paul Noble to listen to on the plane. I imagined I would emerge from the flight speaking flawed but fully functional Spanish like some of our fabled polyglots, but... then I fell asleep.
I ended up walking off the plane with about 30 Spanish words, a cramp in my back, and severe motion sickness
Thankfully we chose a hotel walking distance from the airport because the roads/traffic in Lima are unreal. We stayed one very short night before heading right back to the airport for the flight to Cusco.
The whole experience felt like part of a dream .. much of that is oweing to the extreme altitude I felt like I was going to float away while at the same time as if my entire body was made of lead.

I wont detail every bit of the trip, at least, not in this post, but we spent a day in Cusco, took a train to Machu Picchu, the third day climbed Machu Picchu Montana and explored the ruins a bit, on the 4th day, hired a car to take us sight seeing to a bunch of the other tourists stops like Moray. We spent 2 more days touring Cusco, then about 36 hours back in Lima before heading home (not before eating at Central.. chefs table season 3 Virgilio Martinez— you HAVE to watch it).

It was such a great experience.. the people were amazingly kind and from a language perspective, made me so excited to learn Spanish. I used every one of those 30 words I knew and they were useful! People were so happy I knew even a little bit. I never had that kind of experience with French and it really makes me much more keen to teach my kids Spanish than French.

I’m completely in love with the country. I really could consider moving there. It’s realistically on the table I loved it so much.

And the food oh my gosh. I really really need to figure out how to get that granola they eat for breakfast & strawberry yogurt. I need a drooling emoji please.. and we can’t forget the coca tea. I was afraid to bring any coca products though customs because I read mixed things in the Internet and I’m always a good girl, but I kinda regret it because no one looked twice and it seems like it’s a solidly grey area.

So that’s the summary version. Spanish is now definitely on my learning list although I can’t say when I’ll get to it. After Russian. But it’s a *for sure* now, not a maybe.