23 JanuaryI felt tired today, which may have had something to do with last night's wine. I didn't feel hungover, just like I could have had a nap at any given moment
RussianOnce I'd finished the housework I sat down and read a chapter of Agatha Christie. Later in the day, once I'd had more coffee and felt a bit more energetic, I continued with the adjectives chapter in Schaum's Grammar. The bits I studied today were mainly about the superlative and it seems like most of the rest of the chapter is about adverbs. I feel like there's a limit to how difficult adverbs can be, even in Russian, so I'm hopeful that I can finish this chapter by the end of the month, which would mean I was more or less on track to finish the textbook by the end of March.
Today was also my weekly attempt at writing in Russian. I only managed about 250 words today and Toggl tells me that it took 52 minutes
I already got one correction back on Lang-8 and actually there were fewer errors than I expected. I was very careful with commas today
It's nice to have seemingly not made lots of mistakes, but on the other hand it feels a bit fake. I mean, if I'd written something in Russian off the top of my head and only made a handful of mistakes, that would be impressive. But when I look at what I've written I know how many times I had to look words up and how many times I had to google a phrase to see whether this was the right way to say something and I kind of feel like a trained monkey could have used Google Translate to generate a text equivalent to mine, without undergoing several years of pain studying Russian grammar first
I suppose this is just a phase you just have to go through when you start trying to write in a language. My main problem is probably just that I don't like learning languages
Anyway. This evening I needed to go on the treadmill to make up some steps but I still didn't feel very energetic and I definitely didn't feel like I could face 45 minutes of Татьяна 1 and 2. So instead I watched a travel documentary by Антон Птушкин, which was shorter at only 36 minutes. It was called 'Как поймать северное сияние' and it was all about a trip to northern Sweden. I found it really interesting because he went to Kiruna and Abisko, both places which I visited between Christmas 2019 and New Year 2020. I even recognised the hostel he stayed in while he was in Abisko, because it was just round the corner from the one I stayed in
The most fascinating part of the video was on his final night in Abisko when he finally saw the northern lights. He's obviously got a very expensive camera and does some amazing photography, so he first of all he showed some really impressive shots of the northern lights he'd taken with that. They basically looked like every potentially photoshopped picture of the northern lights you've ever seen on a tourist brochure. And then he showed what it actually looked like to the naked eye, without the fancy camera; basically just a bit of a blurry cloud on the horizon. It made me realise that I've possibly seen weak northern lights several times and mistaken them for clouds
CroatianI started reading a novel called 'Cvijeće na vjetru' (Flowers in the wind) by Pavao Pavličić. It's a crime novel, featuring an amateur detective who works as a newspaper editor. His grandson gives him a pair of binoculars for his birthday, which he takes out onto the balcony of his flat in Zagreb to test out. Looking through the window of a flat a few streets away, he catches sight of what looks like the body of a murdered woman... I'm about 90 pages in so far and really enjoying it
Total - Russian: 142 mins, Croatian: 133 mins