Did you know that I speak Russian pretty okay? Because I sure didn’t!

It seems that I speak Russian better now than I did the last time I was here. Go figure. This fact has affected my life in three ways, which ways I will now take the liberty of investigating for you.

First, I am in a constant state of amazement at understanding 90 instead of 60% of the things people say to me or the things that I read. I spend a lot of energy rationalizing to myself that this particular Russian just speaks clearly or this particular author is just especially easy to read. I’m beginning to think, however, that that’s not actually what’s going on here. I think I might just be getting pretty good at Russian? So the development of this theory makes every day a little bit more exciting.

Second, I’ve noticed that a much smaller percentage of the weird looks that shopkeepers give me are looks of uncomprehenion or bafflement. Weird looks persist, but they seem to have less to do with my not being able to make myself understood.

Finally, in addition to being able to communicate okay, I seem to have cultivated my Russian persona to the point where people think it’s a good idea to ask me for directions. The terror that this turn of events has produced in my life knows no bounds. A total stranger walks up to me and I hope against hope that I’ll understand enough of the words to know what they’re looking for, and then, in those increasingly common but still rare instances when I actually know where they need to go, I hope against hope yet again that I’ll be able to overcome my shock and surprise at being in a conversation with this person that I’ll be able to dig deep and find the words to tell them where to go. I’m getting better, but I think these poor souls would still be better off finding somebody else to talk with. Yesterday a young woman asked me how to get to a hotel that happens to be across the street from my apartment, so I told her to go “correctly, that is forward, and then turn correctly, that is to the right, and you’ll see it (informal “you”).” For those non-Russian-speakers in the audience: “correctly” is “pravilno”, forward is “prjamo” and right is “pravda”. I don’t usually mix up these words, but all sorts of things spring out of a person’s mouth when he’s under pressure.