Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:21 pm

30 August
Another somewhat hectic day! But somehow I managed to just about get everything that I needed to done before my holiday.

Russian
I did a little bit of Memrise on the train to work, but I was fairly stressed so I couldn't really concentrate. And then while walking to and from the office I did the final lesson, lesson 32, of Pimsleur 3. So now I have officially finished Russian Pimsleur :) Given that between the start of 2011 and the end of 2018 I don't think I once managed to get further than lesson 10 of Pimsleur 1, this feels like quite an achievement for me. I've found that Pimsleur definitely gets better if you don't obsess over the first 10 lessons and just keep pushing on with it!

Total time = 40 minutes. Streak = 241 days


Tomorrow I'm flying to Burgas for two weeks of travelling around Bulgaria and Romania. It will be my first visit to both countries so I'm really looking forward to it, although I'm disappointed with myself that I haven't spent more time learning Bulgarian.
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby overscore » Sat Aug 31, 2019 7:17 am

Radioclare wrote:30 August
Another somewhat hectic day! But somehow I managed to just about get everything that I needed to done before my holiday.

Russian
I did a little bit of Memrise on the train to work, but I was fairly stressed so I couldn't really concentrate. And then while walking to and from the office I did the final lesson, lesson 32, of Pimsleur 3. So now I have officially finished Russian Pimsleur :) Given that between the start of 2011 and the end of 2018 I don't think I once managed to get further than lesson 10 of Pimsleur 1, this feels like quite an achievement for me. I've found that Pimsleur definitely gets better if you don't obsess over the first 10 lessons and just keep pushing on with it!

Total time = 40 minutes. Streak = 241 days


Tomorrow I'm flying to Burgas for two weeks of travelling around Bulgaria and Romania. It will be my first visit to both countries so I'm really looking forward to it, although I'm disappointed with myself that I haven't spent more time learning Bulgarian.


Are you going to learn Bulgarian and Slovenian now?? :lol: :D
How long have you been learning BCS by the way? Wondering if there is hope for me! You've proven it is possible.
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sat Aug 31, 2019 8:56 pm

overscore wrote:Are you going to learn Bulgarian and Slovenian now?? :lol: :D
How long have you been learning BCS by the way? Wondering if there is hope for me! You've proven it is possible.


I would love to learn both, but I need to finish learning Russian first :lol: I started learning BCS in 2012, ahead of my first trip to Croatia, but it wasn't until 2013 that I started studying seriously. So I've been learning for at least 6 years now and I think it probably took me 3 years to get to a useful level.

31 August
I set my alarm for 01.30 this morning because I had a flight from London at 07.15. Slightly painful, but I am now in Burgas on the Bulgarian coast. I've seen the Black Sea for the first time today, which was very exciting :)

Russian
After the early start this morning, there was no way I was studying Russian on the plane :lol: So all I have done is some Memrise before and after eating dinner in a restaurant this evening in order to keep my streak.

Total time = 31 minutes. Streak = 242 days


German
On the flight back from Madrid on Tuesday I started a German novel called 'Amokspiel' by Sebastien Fitzeck. It's about a woman trying to negotiate with a man who has taken a group of people hostage in a radio station and is threatening to kill them all unless he gets information about his girlfriend, who is allegedly dead, but whom he still believes to be alive. Very tense and exciting. I finished it on my flight this morning, which tipped me over 200 books for my German reading Super Challenge :)
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Sep 01, 2019 7:02 pm

Radioclare wrote:4 August...
Total time = 34 minutes. Streak = 216 days

Radioclare wrote:5 August...
Total time = 68 minutes. Streak = 216 days



No one told me that I miscounted again! It's a good job that I don't, like, count things for a living or anything... :lol:
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Sep 01, 2019 7:12 pm

1 September
I spent the morning walking by the sea in Burgas, and the afternoon travelling by bus to Plovdiv :)

Russian
Reading on buses makes me feel unwell, so I knew I wasn't going to be able to do any proper studying during the journey. Instead, I used the first 40 minutes of the trip to listen to Russian Progress podcasts. They were podcasts that I'd listened to before, but long enough ago that it wasn't boring to repeat them :)

Total time = 40 minutes. Streak = 244 days (244 days because I seem to have miscounted a day near the start of August!)

Croatian
The journey was around 4.5 hours in total and once I'd listened to two Russian podcasts, I switched to a Croatian audiobook instead. I'm continuing with 'Razum i osjećaji' (Sense and Sensibility) which I originally started listening to when I was on holiday in Sicily in July, but haven't picked up since then. It took me a while to get back into the storyline, but now that I have I'm enjoying it and it's not too difficult to understand.
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Mon Sep 02, 2019 6:10 pm

2 September
Plovdiv is amazing; a stunning old town, beautiful architecture, Roman remains... Would definitely stay here longer next time :)

Russian
I attacked chapter 13 of Colloquial Russian this afternoon. I read several dialogues, which were mostly about buying food at markets, and then moved on to the grammar points. The first grammar section in this chapter is teaching the dative, prepositional and instrumental plurals of adjectives and nouns. None of these plural endings are difficult - at least, not when you compare them to the genitive plural endings - so my main difficulty is remembering which one is which. I need to come up with some way of fixing it in my brain, because at the moment I can remember all the endings but not remember which ones belong to which case :lol: I deliberately didn't do the exercises in the book today, because I wanted to test how much I can recall tomorrow.

Total time = 44 minutes. Streak = 245 days

Croatian
I'm continuing to read 'Pakao u Madridu'. I was really enjoying this book during August and hoping to finish it before this trip, because the copy I've got is a huge hardback which was too bulky and heavy to pack. Too many late finishes at work, combined with trying to use my evenings to finish my Croatian series, meant that I completely failed to make it to the end. BUT, my boyfriend very kindly scanned and printed the remaining pages for me, so I've unexpectedly been able to bring those with me and make progress with the book after all :)
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Tue Sep 03, 2019 8:10 pm

3 September
Travelled from Plovdiv to Sofia today. So far Sofia seems like an interesting city :)

Russian
I travelled by train but the train wasn't spacious/comfortable enough to do any studying, so making progress with Colloquial Russian had to wait until this evening. I did the exercises on dative/prepositional/instrumental plurals, but didn't do outstandingly well on them. I think this is an area where I could do with more exercises to practise. The next part of the chapter was about the partitive genitive, so I made some notes on that and did the exercises. Some nouns have a different ending for the partitive genitive, as if the genitive wasn't already complicated enough!

Total time = 40 minutes. Streak = 246 days


Croatian
I finished reading 'Pakao u Madridu' on the train. I really enjoyed the book until a few pages before the end. I belatedly remembered that I didn't like the ending of the book last time I read it and I didn't really like it this time either. I don't want to spoil it for other people, but it felt kinda unsatisfactory. Finishing the book gave my Croatian Super Challenge a nice boost though :)
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby IronMike » Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:51 pm

Radioclare wrote:3 September
Travelled from Plovdiv to Sofia today. So far Sofia seems like an interesting city :)


Wish I could remember the name of the restaurant, but there was a really nice one up in the hills overlooking Sofia. Had great food. Dammit...granted, that was 6 years ago.
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Sep 04, 2019 8:18 pm

4 September
Sofia seems really lovely; it feels small and friendly for a capital city :)

Russian
This afternoon I finished chapter 13 of Colloquial Russian. The rest of the grammar points in the chapter were about how to say "to put" which, like everything else in Russian, seems to be fraught with difficulty.

Afterwards I spent some time on my Memrise reviews, because I'd neglected them for the past few days. Then I realised that I'd only just finished learning the vocabulary from chapter 12 and hadn't even input the vocabulary from chapter 13, so I spent some time adding that. There was quite a lot of vocabulary in this chapter, but luckily a lot of it was food-related vocabulary which I already knew, having brushed up on it before my trip to Russia earlier in the year, so there weren't actually too many new words for me to type up.

Total time = 85 minutes. Streak = 247 days
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby PfifltriggPi » Wed Sep 04, 2019 11:44 pm

I've heard Sofia, and Bulgaria in general, is one of the hidden treasures of Eastern Europe, a place which is quite rich with them. I'd like to learn South-Slavic after I get my Ukrainian to a good level, although hopping the pond is a bit rich for my blood. We'll see.
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