The quarter is drawing to a close . . .

[philena]

I sit here typing, slowly returning to consciousness after a nap around 5:00--that horrible time of day when you know it's going to start cooling down soon, but you're so tired from fighting the heat that you can't stay awake any longer--and there's a lovely breeze blowing through my window. And it's blowing all the papers from my bulletin board, and several cockroaches (after almost a year of none!) have been sighted in the last two or three days, and people are emailing me constantly and making me feel guilty about not being in town, and my sister is leaving for Mongolia tomorrow for the next two years after having skipped out on the one weekend I managed to be at home before she left. And I'm terrified of my BA. I hope that when I return from California, towing Daniel along behind me, things will have rebuilt themselves to some extent.

В классе в пятницу, мы с другим студентом пытались разговаривать по-русски о наших докладах. Профессор, Валентина (она прикрасная. Кричит на нас.) сказала, что мы уже достаточно знаем, чтобы говорить о всем, что мы хотим. Только надо говорить просто, и если невозможно объяснить доклад просто, то мы плохо понимаем его. Я пыталась, и Брайн пытался, и, наконец, все выяснилось. Мы ничего не понимаем: не о докладах, не о классах, даже не о том, что мы сделали вчера вечером. Хорошо знать. Жизнь проще сейчас.

Comments

[annabananaface.livejournal.com]

for those of us not cool enough to speak Russian, would you care to translate? i've been sitting in suspense for weeks, hoping for a translation without having to ask, but i give up.

[philena.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry. It's about my Russian class: This kid Brian and I were talking about our final projects, me about my BA and he about his PhD thesis, and were having a dreadful time making all the intricacies understood. Valentina, our professor, who is fabulous and yells at us constantly (she says not to take it personally; she's just Russian), said that we have enough vocabulary and grammar to be able to explain anything, and if we can't describe it simply enough then we clearly don't understand it well enough. So now everything has become clear: I don't understand anything, not my BA, not my major, not my classes, and not even what I did last weekend. It's good to know, because life is simpler now.