A new challenge

When I was 11 years old, I got to go to a summer camp for gifted & talented kids held at a University in northern Colorado. The program was designed for kids to take two weeks worth of various college courses just for fun. I took Russian, Astronomy, Greek Mythology and Creative Writing. It was a blast and my very favorite course was Russian. Ever since then I've wanted to learn the language and now that I'm Orthodox it seems like an even more fitting language to pick up (esp. since my Father Confessor is fond of saying things like: "if you could only read in Russian, I'd have the perfect book for you on this topic...")

Now that I'm done with my bachelor and masters degrees, I find myself with the opportunity to use the free tuition vouchers I get for working here on classes that are truly just for fun - today I started my first Russian class! I am really looking forward to it. It's going to be a lot of work, of course, and I wonder how quickly I'll pick up another language now that I'm in my thirties and have had two kids, but it will be fun, too. Even better, it will be a good exercise program. The class meets four days a week and the walk from my office across one of the most beautiful campuses in the country to the language building is 20 minutes one way. Plenty of time to think about possible blog topics and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Today we just learned about our professor and each other, what texts we'll need (which cost me over $100! - more than I spent on all the books I needed for grad school put together - oh well) and one letter - kind of a backward "R" which is apparently pronounced "ya" and means "yes, here"... something like that. By the end of this week I should be starting to write Cyrillic in cursive.