cliches

Dumb as a post. Thick as a brick. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

It's funny how I revert to those cliches to help pull myself out of the frustration I feel every time I hear my tutor gesture with her left hand towards six pages of declined verbs and say "learn by heart for tomorrow".

So, let's see. It's 4 pm. I must go for a walk to get some exercise, go buy my evening's supper involving a walk past the dead dog in the ditch, go back to my room and try to cook supper over the steaming radiator, wash some clothes by hand and hang them randomly around my room, try to fall asleep through the barking dogs and firecrackers (see other posts), get up and have shower before hot water disappears (at least there IS hot water), make breakfast, study, answer email, have my 2 pm class, and then start the whole thing over again.

Somewhere in there I must "learn by heart" these lists of verbs; "learn by heart" lists of new vocabulary (nouns); do the exercises in the workbook, a feat which requires reading, translating, answering - and the answering is done in cyrillic handwriting, which differs substantially from print.

So, if I don't answer all your emails right away, or haven't posted any photographs (and I have several), it's because most of my time is taken up trying to live and do homework, and that's just with taking one course - Russian language.

(Regrets? Not a one. I have to admit that I'm also writing quite a bit, aside from this blog, in which I'm focusing on the day to dayness of things, I'm also working on some poems and fiction, although not in Russian!)

So, back to the cliches. When I don't manage to get all my homework completed, or memorized (it's impossible), well, it's an interesting exercise in ... something. As I walk between the residence and the classroom (I am the only student at this beginning level), I have to ward off the cliches and tell myself that I am learning this amazing language.

It's a lesson in focus, or, to use another cliche to fight off the negative ones, "keeping the eye on the ball".