Current mood:

happy

Practikovating.
Yesterday, in a hopefully not futile attempt to keep my Russian from disappearing, I had lunch with one of my sister's awesome friends who studied in St. Pete for a semester, and we spoke Russian more or less the whole time. All those familiar feelings washed over me: low level frustration and agony with little flashes of inspiration and triumph. We're at about the same level of fluency, though her vocabulary is definitely bigger, so I think it was pretty satisfying for both of us. Dusting off all those case endings and verb tenses felt like good, non-threatening exercise.

And it was a great warmup for my evening v gosti at the my real honest-to-God imported Russian friend's house. Katya is married to Eric, the oldest brother of one of my oldest friends, and the two of them very kindly invited me to practice Russian with them and their super adorable 19 month old girl Sonja. Now, Katya talks a mile a minute, and Sonja just kind of babbles, so between the two of them I was lost a lot. But then that feeling was pretty familiar too. My moments of greatest clarity came when Katya was speaking to Sonja, using the kind of language one uses for a person not yet out of diapers, i.e.e simplistic and very repetitive. Sigh. Fortunately Sonja is one of those cheerful little toddlers with the big eyes and the bald head and the winning propensity for bringing you all of her toys one at a time until you've got a great pile of them in your lap, so I didn't feel left out. She even got the hang of my name by the time I left, a trick guaranteed to melt the iciest heart.

Probably the greatest pleasure for me (besides the cream puff Sonja got halfway through before deciding it would be better if I ate that one) was being wrapped again in the snuggly blanket known as Russian hospitality. Katya and Eric haven't seen me in a long time and don't know me extraordinarily well, but they opened their doors without a single hesitation, put on the teapot and broke out the cookies. They asked me a lot of questions about myself and seemed fascinated by the answers. They tactfully overlooked my tons of language mistakes, and included me in their family jokes. When I left they told me to come back anytime--no need to call, just show up. That's the kind of evening that will put a big smile on your face, won't it?