Здравствуйте,
Another week in the books and the end of PST is looming. I had my progress assessment this week and so far so good. I have a great cluster with two other guys and thankfully we all click well and are motivated to learn the language. Classes are so much different then during my first month here. We started off just trying to figure out how to read a foreign alphabet and now we are given situations and we role play for 5-10 minutes. The great thing is that even if the exercise starts getting boring we can just start talking about whatever comes to mind. If we are speaking in Russian then it is still practice and generally not frowned upon. PC language training is short and intense. They throw a ton at you and see what sticks. The basic goal of PST language is to paint a broad outline of the language and to give you a foundation to build on.
I have my Site Placement Interview on Wednesday. Scary stuff, in less than a week PC will know where I will live for the next two years. I feel like I have a good idea of what I want to do here but a lot of that will depend on my living situation. I could be placed in a small village with ~500 people or I could be in a large city of +300,000. Only time will tell and since I am placed based on community needs I am fairly certain my fate has already been determined.
So now to explain the Дача (pronounced: Da-CHA). A Дача is a small plot of land that can most broadly be defined as a garden. It is very common for families here to own one and to grow a substantial portion of their food there. On our plot of land there are 6-7 fruit trees (apple, cherry, apricot, pear, peach), several berry bushes(red/black currant, raspberry) that I'm told produce quite well, so much garlic growing everywhere, and finally there are flowers all over to help spruce the place up. In addition to what is planted there is a good bit of free land that isn't being cultivated presently due to time constraints. To get to our Дача we took a bus to the end of the line and then walked another 5 kilometres. Besides serving as a garden these places work as excellant venues for BBQ and to get in some peaceful time in nature.
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Beer bottles are often used as garden liners
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