Второй Семестр начинает

Привет мои друзья!

I am back in Moscow for part II of my adventures (ok, "adventures" might be more accurate). I arrived last Saturday and mostly I've just been settling in and fighting jetlag (and losing, by the way). Monday was the first day of school. Last semester, I had requested to have Ludmila again since she is such an amazing teacher. However, she is still teaching Level II (the higher the number the lower the level, so she teaches one level below the highest). She's a challenging teacher, but I was afraid I wouldn't be learning enough. I thought about this kind of belatedly, so I've been kind of stressed, since the last thing I want to do while in Russia is waste my time where language-learning is concerned since this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. The first day we did go over some new material, but there was so much vocab that the new people didn't know (and that I didn't know upon arriving either) that class was a bit slow. I talked to Natasha, the head of GRINT, and she said wait out the week so we'll see.

We took the same placement test that we took at the beginning of last semester. Last time I missed 26 and this time I only missed 5! And they were stupid mistakes, so I guess that goes to show I've learned a lot, which makes me happy, since I've really been trying.

Last night we went to a traditional Russian choir concert at the theater near Mayakovskaya metro station. It was really a great performance. They also had traditional Russian dancing, which I wasn't expecting, but loved. Traditional Russian dancing is SO cool. It's very lively and they always do these crazy things that I couldn't imagine doing with my body, let alone that quickly.

God, I hate jet lag. I am sitting here after drinking coffee (albeit watered-down instant), yawning like crazy and it's only 5:24pm. Bah. I will leave you with this quote from my Russian Today lecturer:

"If you manage to study hard every semester until you graduate, you will be as hard as a nut!"