Yesterday a group of American college students arrived in Vladimir. They'll be studying Russian at the American Home for a few weeks. It was really fun and interesting to meet these students because they are basically the only other Americans (besides my colleagues) who I have met in in almost a year. We went to a cafe after work and had a few drinks, and it was so refreshing to speak English freely and without having to monitor the complexity of my speech. Of course, it's not that I'm starved for conversations in English--my colleagues and I always speak regular, fast-paced English--but that's only seven other people. These new Americans have their own slang (including some phrases I had never heard before), and they are in touch with popular culture back in the US of A.

It's amazing what happens to your language after a long period abroad. While my Russian has gotten stronger, I feel like my English has gotten rusty. A lot of words have fallen out of my active vocabulary, and I even catch myself making stupid mistakes in my speech. Our TEFL course noted that you may find yourself making your students' errors after a while, and I sometimes screw up subject-verb agreement just like my students do. I make it a point to listen to NPR and read news articles, and now I get a thrill out of listening to native speakers of English. When listening to them, I don't have to subconsciously wince at butchered articles   and strange vocabulary choices or try to decipher what they are attempting to say. I often find myself translating my students' or friends' speech back into Russian to make sense of it; now, I totally understand word-salad sentences like "In how much time should we to meet tomorrow?" or "My friend very like to tell with you about you travel in Baikal." On a side note, that brings up one my favorite ESL mistakes: "My friend very beautiful girl--she have a long, black hair." The poor girl...

Anyway, here is a great song by the legendary rock musician Viktor Tsoi: