Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

[Radioclare]

Half-year resolutions update
Eek, I just saw in another thread that we're halfway through the year. I couldn't even remember what my resolutions were until I went back to the start of the log to check

1. Read 10 novels in German. This is coincidentally the number of German novels I have in my to-read pile after Christmas. And it should be enough to stop my German becoming too rusty.

I just checked Goodreads and I've only read 3 German novels so far (plus a bit of a fourth). This is partly because I was deliberately trying not to read in other languages prior to my trip to Russia. I'm confident I can make it up to 10 before the end of the year

2. Read 6,510 pages in Croatian. If I can achieve it, this would be enough for me to finish the current Super Challenge with a double challenge in reading. I'm not sure whether this quantity is actually achievable, as it would mean reading approximately 1.5 novels in Croatian every month, but we will see!

I've read four novels in Croatian this year, which total 1,317 pages. That's only 20% of my target so I think it's fair to say I'm failing I don't think I'm realistically going to complete a double challenge this time around.

3. Watch 11,871 minutes of Croatian TV. This is the magic number that would bring me to a double challenge in the films part of the Super Challenge too. My first thought was that this number was definitely not achievable. But, when I did the calculations, I found it worked out as 3.8 hours per week which is roughly five 45-minute TV episodes. The series I'm currently watching broadcasts five episodes per week, so suddenly this doesn't feel too unrealistic.

If I've added up correctly, I've watched 3,795 minutes so far which is only 32% of my target, so I'm pretty behind on this too. Things weren't helped by my series unexpectedly going off air for a month's break in January, which left me scrabbling around for other things to watch, and also the fact that I watched zero Croatian TV in May to try and avoid a situation where I accidentally started speaking Croatian while in Russia.

I've only got 26 episodes left in my current series, so if I manage to finish that and then get completely hooked on something else, I feel like there's still potential for me to make this time up. However, I do have quite a few weeks of holiday coming up over the summer - and I don't watch TV when I'm on holiday - so that won't help. I should maybe get some audiobooks onto my iPod in preparation for any long bus journeys I find myself on.

4. Spend at least 30 minutes per day every day learning Russian as part of the 365-day challenge. This is the big one for me: either I make some significant progress with Russian this year, or I give up. I been half-heartedly claiming to learn this language for ages now and if I can't do better this year than I have for the previous two, I think it's time for me to accept that either a) It's just too hard for me or b) I don't have enough motivation to succeed. I don't know yet, but 2019 might just be the year I end up actually going to Russia and even if I don't, I am definitely going to Ukraine for a couple of days in May. If that isn't sufficient motivation, I don't know what is

Yay, a goal I've met So far so good; I have done at least 30 minutes of Russian every day in 2019 so far. And I've not only been to Ukraine for a weekend, I spent a whole week in Russia and survived

As I mentioned at the end of my 2018 log, 2019 may also involve a bit of Bulgarian if I plan a trip to Bulgaria over the summer. I did get some Bulgarian resources for Christmas

This wasn't a resolution as such but I do indeed have a week in Bulgaria booked for September, so over the summer I am still planning to dabble in Bulgarian

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Overall thoughts... hmm... I guess doing 30 minutes of Russian every day has been a success, because I was struggling with consistency before. The challenge has really helped me to think "When/how am I going to fit 30 minutes of Russian into today" as opposed to "Can I be bothered to do any Russian today". I'm lucky that nothing really bad has happened in the past six months which has genuinely made it impossible to allocate 30 minutes to Russian. The biggest challenges have been finding the motivation after long work hours, trying not to forget while I'm travelling and my normal routine is broken, and having to do 30 minutes while slightly inebriated on a number of occasions when I forgot to get my study in before I drank wine

On a lot of days I've actually spent significantly more than 30 minutes on Russian, spurred on by the thought of my trip to Russia which happened in the first week of June. That has definitely meant that my other languages have taken a back seat and I'm not doing too well on my German and Croatian goals. I'm hoping I can redress the balance in the second half of the year, especially with Croatian

[Radioclare]

1 July
Definitely didn't want to get up this morning!

Russian
I didn't have strong enough internet while camping to do Memrise, so my entire train journey to work this morning was filled with the reviews that had been building up since Friday morning.

I did lesson 7 of Pimsleur 3 this morning. This lesson felt comparatively easy, so I think I made the right decision to keep moving forward rather than going back and revising.

This evening I started lesson 6 of Colloquial Russian. I haven't got as far as the grammar yet (that comes in the second half of the chapter) but I think it's going to be about the dative. I'd like to say that I'm going to spend a bit of time on the chapter every evening this week and finish it before I go to Sicily on Saturday, but I'm not sure how realistic that is. I don't have a great track record when it comes to mid-week grammar study.

There was a new Russian Progress video posted today and it really knocked my confidence when I started watching without subtitles and couldn't understand anything that was being said for the first minute or so. Then I turned the subtitles on, and was confused that the sounds being made didn't match up to the words I was reading. Eventually I realised that the guy being interviewed had started speaking in Ukrainian, switching to Russian a few minutes in. I felt a bit better after that

Total time = 94 minutes. Streak = 182 days

[Radioclare]

2 July
Lots of problems on my train line today, which meant I didn't get home until very late

Russian
As a result, it hasn't been a very exciting day for Russian.I got through all my Memrise reviews on the train to work this morning, and then I did lesson 8 of Pimsleur on the way to/from work. That's all. I guess at least I kept my streak though.

Total time = 46 minutes. Streak = 183 days

[Radioclare]

3 July
Another fairly long day at work (11 hours) but my trains were fine so it beats yesterday I'm on holiday next week (Sicily - yay!!) so I'm in that typical pre-holiday phase of trying to get two weeks' worth of work done in one week and anticipate all the things which might go wrong while I'm not around.

Russian
I've been working in Birmingham for three days in a row this week and I'm getting a bit bored. I almost never go to the same place for three days in a row and I think the thing I like the most about my job is that variety, because today I felt a bit like a hamster

Anyway. I did my Memrise on the train and I even had time to learn some new words after my reviews. And then I did lesson 9 of Pimsleur while walking to the office. I'm struggling to pull out any concrete things I'm learning from these Pimsleur tracks at the moment because it's all so incremental - sometimes it's literally one new phrase or word per lesson - but overall I'm convinced it's super useful. The only thing which would be better is probably the "old" Glossika Russian tracks which I wish to goodness I had bought before Glossika changed, but sadly I didn't.

There was a new Russian Progress podcast released today, which I've listened to three times this evening. It was a fairly short one and it was about the phrase "раз на раз не приходится".

Total time = 61 minutes. Streak = 184 days

[Radioclare]

4 July
Today I went to visit one of my quirkier clients. They're based on a farm, so it was a nice place to be on a bright sunny day (except for the spiders!!!). And it was more interesting than yesterday: different people, different problems, different commute. I had more problems with trains being cancelled on the way home though, which was a bit frustrating.

Russian
I had two fairly short train rides this morning and I did Memrise on both, for a total of 30 minutes. That was enough to get through my reviews and learn some new vocab.

No walking today, so no Pimsleur. Instead I read a short Russian Progress text about how to read in a foreign language. It was a text with the stress marked, so that was really useful practice. I mean, I did it on the train so I was reading in my head rather than out loud, but it was still really useful to help me try and pronounce things correctly in my head.

This evening I also watched a new Russian Progress video about Moscow a couple of times. It was really cool to watch it and recognise places I've now been

Btw, you know how I said on Monday I'd like to get through chapter 6 of Colloquial Russian this week? Definitely not happening Mondays are definitely my most over-optimistic day of the week.

Total time = 48 minutes. Streak = 185 days

[Radioclare]

5 July
I was working from home today and I'm very excited because tomorrow I'm going to Sicily Less exciting is the fact that I've got a 06.20 flight from London Gatwick (this involves getting up at 1am).

Russian
Most of my day was taken up with getting through my pre-holiday to-do list at work. I didn't start doing any Russian until after I'd finished packing this evening. So all I've managed is:

- 12 minutes of Memrise, getting through my reviews and learning a handful of new words
- 19 minutes watching Russian Progress. I re-watched the video from yesterday about Moscow, because I'd originally watched it on a train so had to use subtitles because there was a bit of background noise. And I watched some short videos of polyglots speaking in Russian.

That just took me over 30 minutes - phew! I think I'll attempt to keep updating my log while in Sicily to remind myself that I need to keep the streak.

Total time = 31 minutes. Streak = 186 days

[Radioclare]

6 July
Getting up at 1am is painful; I don't recommend it. When my alarm went off, I seriously contemplated just going back to sleep and giving Sicily a miss But I did drag myself out of bed in the end and am now in Catania, which is sunny and very beautiful

Russian
I managed 11 minutes of Memrise before 6am, when I was sitting the airport waiting for the gate for my flight to appear on the departures board. I made up the remaining minutes required to bring my total for the day to 30 minutes on Memrise this evening, but given my serious lack of sleep, I haven't done any more than that.

Total time = 31 minutes. Streak = 187 days

[Radioclare]

7 July
Feeling a lot better today after 10 hours sleep We went to Taormina for the day, which is an absolutely stunning hilltop town, overlooking the sea.

Croatian
I travelled from Catania to Taormina and back by bus and reading on buses makes me feel sick, so I listened to an audiobook instead. I wasn't organised enough to download audiobooks to my iPod in advance, so I had to go with whatever was left on there from bus trips on previous holidays. In the end I started 'Razum i osjećaji' (a translation of Jane Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility'). It's quite a good quality audiobook and the bus I was on wasn't too noisy, so I was pleasantly surprised by how high my level of comprehension was. I remember 'Sense and Sensibility' as being quite a challenging book to read... BUT having thought about this, I think the last time I read it I was 12 (I read it a couple of times before the Emma Thompson film came out and Wikipedia informs me that that was in 1995), so that doesn't necessarily mean it is a difficult book to read as an adult. I listened to at least 90 minutes of the audiobook today anyway and really enjoyed it

Russian
I was determined to do better today than yesterday, so once I got back from Taormina I drank some coffee and spent half an hour studying 'Colloquial Russian'. I picked up in chapter 6, where I left off last Monday. This book is much better than TY Russian for giving you verb conjugations, which I'm finding useful to copy out and practise, especially to get the hang of where the stress falls. The part of the chapter I studied today also introduced reflexive verbs, which is an area of grammar that I'm still struggling with a bit. I mean, I'm not struggling with them conceptually, but it's confusing me having to add an ending onto the verb rather than just having a reflexive particle like in Croatian. So it was useful to have some exercises to practise those too The rest of the chapter looks like it's about the dative, but I'm saving that for tomorrow.

Total time = 32 minutes. Streak = 188 days

[Radioclare]

8 July
I went to Siracusa today, which is a really beautiful town. But it was so hot I thought I might melt.

German
I finished reading the novel I started while camping over a week ago: 'Das Vierte Protokoll' by Frederick Forsyth. That gave me 500 pages of German to log for my SC. I'm not technically doing a Super Challenge in German because I'm not watching any films, but I'll soon be at a double challenge for reading.

Croatian
I used my train journey from Catania to Siracusa today to listen to more of my audiobook. I realised I can't actually remember the plot of 'Sense and Sensibility' at all. I don't think I'll have any more opportunities to listen to it on this holiday, so I'll have to find a way of finishing it on my commutes at some point.

Russian
I was catching a late train today which meant I didn't need to go out until 10, so I had 20 minutes spare to spend on 'Colloquial Russian' in the morning. I started working through the section on the dative and making notes, but I ran out of time to start any exercises.

That didn't take me to 30 minutes, so this evening I logged into Memrise. I didn't do any Memrise yesterday and today I found 350 reviews waiting for me. Joy! I only got through them all by using the speed review feature where you don't have to do any typing.

Total time = 43 minutes. Streak = 189 days

[Radioclare]

9 July
We picked up a hire car today and drove to a town called Ragusa, which apparently is where some of the Montalbano TV series is filmed. I've only ever watched a handful of episodes; something which I feel I now need to rectify when I get home.

Russian
In the morning I read a new Russian Progress article about qualities to look for in a textbook when learning a foreign language. Again, this had the stress marked in the text which I found really useful. The text itself was a bit too hard for me though, so if I was really diligent I would go through it using LWT at some point once I'm home, but whether or not I do that remains to be seen.

Otherwise I just did some Memrise reviews in the evening. I had a headache so went to bed pretty early and didn't update my log.

Total time = 31 minutes. Streak = 190 days

10 July
I'm staying in a small town called Naro tonight, but the main highlight of the day was seeing some amazing Greek temples at a place called Agrigento. I guess I didn't know a lot about Sicily before I came here because I had no idea there was so much Greek history.

Russian
My headache had gone today, which was great, but I had a pretty full day of travelling so haven't had a lot of spare time. That means I've not done anything more exciting than half an hour of Memrise. For once I didn't actually have enough reviews to fill half an hour though - and I didn't have my earphones to hand to learn any new words with audio - so I was reduced to going through all the words which Memrise had highlighted as being "difficult" for me and practising them until it decided I had mastered them. On one level this was deathly dull, but on the other hand it was quite interesting to see what it had decided was "difficult". Some words really were difficult and I essentially didn't know them. Others were really basic words which I must just have mistyped a number of times. Американка is one example that stands out; I've done so much Pimsleur that this must actually be one of the words I know best

I narrowly avoided saying спасибо to a waitress today

Total time = 32 minutes. Streak = 191 days