Meddysong wrote:I think it ended up with me throwing away some of my clothing but I managed to get all 3000+ pages in!
Haha yes, all your toiletries and some of your clothes
I think it was a weight problem as much as a space problem, because we were flying back from Podgorica with Ryanair and only had 15kg.
15 JuneI didn't update yesterday because we went away for the weekend, but I did keep my streak
RussianI spent 33 minutes reading TY Russian Grammar, which got me through a pretty heavy chapter about tenses. I think the book is really well written, because when it introduces a new grammar point it starts by giving you examples in English, and often there is then an exercise to identify that particular point of grammar in an English paragraph before it moves on to Russian examples. But with this chapter, I was struggling to understand even the English examples and exercises
Although I had had quite a bit of wine by the time I was doing this, so I may not have been at my best!
Total time = 33 minutes. Streak = 166 days16 JuneI've had a very relaxing weekend, which is what I wanted after Russia. Russia was many things, but relaxing wasn't one of them
RussianI finally finished reading TY Russian Grammar! I got through a third chapter on verbs, which dealt with verbs of motion and also the conditional. Neither are my favourite topics, although I don't think the conditional is actually that hard. I may have skimmed a little bit through the final chapter, which was about prepositions, because prepositions are just so boooooring!
Anyway, it's exciting to finish the book because now I can finally take it off my "currently reading" list on Goodreads and also because I'd told myself that I had to finish it before I started Colloquial Russian. Or, more accurately, re-started Colloquial Russian because I've definitely used it before but my Russian-learning is all such a blur that I can't remember whether it was earlier this year or some point last year when I had a fit of virtue and did some proper studying. I remember really liking the book and finding it useful, then getting to a point where it became too difficult and giving up. I'm hoping that this time, since I've already got to the end of TY Russian, I'll find Colloquial less challenging and that it will be good revision/consolidation of grammar for me. Also, if I can finish it, I can then start Colloquial Russian 2, which has been sitting and gathering dust on my bookshelf since my last birthday.
Total time = 65 minutes. Streak = 167 daysCroatianI watched another episode of my series. I've just done episode 139 and it looks like there are only 169 episodes, so I'm getting close to the end. I'm struggling to see how the series is going to finish because there doesn't feel like there's any coherent storyline that's working towards a conclusion. The main plot point at the moment is about one of the characters who is in love with a priest so it's possible the series will end with him ceasing to be a priest. Do we have a verb for when someone stops being a priest in English? If we do, I can't remember it right now
Croatian has the verb "raspopiti se" which seems to express this concept, if I'm understanding correctly.
GermanI'm reading a novel called 'Der Seelenbrecher' by Sebastian Fitzek for the new Tadoku test round. I'm 178 pages in and I'm still not really sure what it's about. Well, on the face of it, it's about a guy with amnesia who is confined in a private hospital over Christmas. There's a massive snowstorm and the hospital is infiltrated by a dangerous criminal who specialises in traumatising female victims and leaving them in a comatose state. The electricity is down and no one can escape because of the snowstorm, so the action at the moment is mainly various characters creeping around the hospital in the dark and trying to avoid the psychopath, who has stuck a knife in his own throat (really!) and so can now be heard coming by the strange wheezing noises he makes. Yes, a little surreal! But the novel is written as a series of patient case notes (though it's not clear who the patient is), as well as being interspersed with flashbacks from the guy who has amnesia (and who possibly seems to have known the psychopath in his former life). This is further complicated by the fact that every so often there is a scene where the case notes are being read by a group of students participating in a psychological experiment, although it's not clear what the experiment is. So I have no idea where it's going at the moment... and I'm going on a residential training course tomorrow, so I have to decide whether to pack this or Colloquial Russian to read on the train