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Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
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5:36 pm
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I guess you have to lose a lot before you can ever win...?
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| Thursday, December 11th, 2008
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11:35 pm - no, i haven't been living in a cave. i've been living in russia, though, which is very similar.
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Can someone tell me what is Twilight? I know it's a movie about vampires...but I know nothing other than that. Someone please help me, I don't know my own pop-culture anymore.
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| Sunday, March 9th, 2008
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8:44 pm - A post not inspired by emergency
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To all who replied to my last post, which was inspired by emergency - thank you. Lena was thrilled to get real native-speaker feedback from two other Americans (because obviously I also made comments.)
So, since I never really have time to update this anymore (:(!!! ) I'm leaving the link to my other blog. Before I left, Dr. Dyer and the hc suggested I start a sort of 'intellectual blog' detailing my adventures in teaching English with a fulbright grant and Russian life in general that they could link from the hc website. Though I don't ever really have time to update this thing, I update the other blog reasonably often, because, well, it's for the hc, and I would do just about anything for the hc. It can get kind of boring, since it's mostly details of my life here, but there's tons of fantasticheski pictures of Irkutsk, Korea, China, and all the places I went on the Trans-Siberian after that. Anyway, if anyone's interested, here's the link.
http://masha-katja.spaces.live.com/default.aspx
Holla!
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| Sunday, February 24th, 2008
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12:26 pm - help me. i beg of you.
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GUYS!!!! I know, I know, I only post on here now when I am in desperate need of things. This is no exception. One of my friends and fellow teachers of English here in Siberia (who is Russian) is doing a round-table discussion on English proverbs on Tuesday and how native English-speakers feel about them. Of course, I only got the official list of these proverbs about 10 minutes ago, which is why I've waited until now to post it. Anyway, if you could PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take like 5 minutes and mark each proverb that you personally, as a native speaker of English, feel are more likely to reflect the person's attitude to law, work and individual/collectivism?
Attitude to Labor 1 The good workman does a good job 2 Work done have your fun/When the work is done, there is time for fun 3 Labor and patience defeat all resistance 4 He that will eat the kernel must crack the nut / He who would catch fish must not mind getting wet/ No pains no gains 5 Every day brings its own bread / Let the morn come and the meat with it 6 No equivalent found » Work loves fools 7 No equivalent found » Work is not a wolf – it won’t run to the forest Individualism vs. collectivism 8 One man in the filed is no warrior 9 Two heads are better than one 10 God helps those who help themselves/ Put your trust in God, but keep you powder dry 11 Paddle your own canoe
12 Your own shirt is closer to the body 13 Company in distress makes trouble less Attitude to law 14 Every law has a loophole 15 Necessity knows no law 16 No equivalent found » An honestly earned slice of bread is better than a stolen loaf 17 It’s your property and your fire – so, burn it if you desire
18 No equivalent found » The truth and law don’t go hand in hand 19 No equivalent found » Where money talks the truth is silent 20 No equivalent found » Not caught red handed – not a thief
21 One law for the rich and another for the poor
22 Fools are fools, they observe no rules
23 A guilty conscience is a self-accuser
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| Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007
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10:33 am - HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Hi from Siberia! I have been in Russia for two months now and am still alive, which is pretty amazing, I think. Anyway, I have been too lazy to update at all but hope that a number of people still read this and can help me out.
I am teaching a unit on working in America, especially writing resumes, personal statements, blahblahblah. This means, I AM DESPERATE FOR REAL RESUMES, CVs, COVER LETTERS, PERSONAL STATEMENTS, etc. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE EMAIL ME ANY RESUMES, CVs, COVER LETTERS, PERSONAL STATEMENTS, whatev. I need to provide real examples for my students or they won't get it, and want to show them a variety of resumes. I beg of you.
my email address is MASHA.KATJA @GMAIL.COM.
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| Thursday, July 19th, 2007
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9:27 pm
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Today, my horn broke., As I went through the drive-thru line at Wendy's, my horn started beeping when I turned around the corner. From then on, anytime I turned, even a tiny bit, my horn would go 'beeeeeeeeeep beep beep.' The ladies at the pick-up window looked at me like I was crazy. I had to drive to campus to stop by Dr. Young's office, and the whole way, people glared at me and gave me the finger. I tried pointing at my steering wheel and giving a helpless shrug, but I don't think many people understood. It was actually very, very funny, at least for the first ten minutes, but then I got tired of people looking at me with scorn and contempt and just wanted it to stop.
This is just what would happen to me.
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| Saturday, June 30th, 2007
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2:56 pm
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does anyone know how to post in a community on lj? and by 'does anyone' i mean 'i know that pretty much everyone except me knows how to do this, and i am ashamed that i cannot seem to figure it out and hope that someone will offer their help and not judge me.'
i need to post in the irkutsk community, which i joined on my russian lj, because i need to start trying to find housing in irkutsk, because i have a sinking feeling that my contact at my host institution is not going to help me arrange it as i have been assured she will. because homeless+siberia=bad idea
obviously i'm not going to say 'yes! yes, i'll take it!' based on what they tell me on the internet, but if i can find a few decent apt options in which the landlord would be willing to sign important documents for foreigners (not all landlords are), then i can live in a hostel for a few days and look at my apt options and move in a lot sooner.
spasibochki!!!
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| Friday, June 22nd, 2007
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9:02 pm - na kholodnoj zemle
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It has been a long, LONG time since i last updated this. I don't have much interesting to say, but from what I can tell the vast majority of lj posts the world over are made up of nothing much interesting.
Here's what's going on.
1) I am going to Irkutsk, a reasonably-sized city in the middle of Siberia, for 10 months, to teach English. Because I'm a Fulbright scholar, and as a Fulbright scholar, I have won this prestigious Fulbright grant to teach English in Russia. Since this is the only time in my life I will probably ever be a Fulbright scholar, I have decided to mention that I am a Fulbright scholar as possible to everyone I know and even people I don't really know. I will be in Moscow for all of August learning how to teach. In Irkutsk I will do a project on the effects of Soviet language policy on the Buryat community (wikipedia it) by doing interviews by age groups and seeing when, where and to what extent they use their own language today. I'm excited! And scared. But mostly excited. This is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. I get to do it all - teach English, speak Russian, do a linguistic project. AND someone else is paying for it. I basically just won the linguistic lottery. My plan while there is to become fluent in Russian, which surprisingly takes a lot more effort to learn than other foreign languages due to the terrible, terrible morphosyntactic features and (maybe this is only wishful thinking) study Spanish enough that 1) I can speak it without throwing in Russian words and declining things and 2) that I could pass the OPI with a 3. Because this is my big chance, guys! I'm going to do everything I can with it. But seriously, I plan to have probably 1 whole suitcase packed with necessities like American shampoo (because
Russian shampoo=hella expensive and hella terrible), Fruity Pebbles, and my Spanish and Russian grammar books and dictionaries.
2) I got a job. A good job, that pays. My job is at FNC in Oxford. My job is to break software -software for collateral and apparaisals - any way I possibly can. This includes making up fake entries for fields, such as "i don't live anywhere" for an address, banging on the keyboard and clicking things 500 times in a row. I am good at my job. The hours are good, the pay is good. it's all good.
3) I got a haircut. I decided to be adventurous and try something new. I will never do this again, and by "this" I mean both cut my hair and trying new things. Depending on how it's styled, I either look like Paul McCartney in the height of his Wings success or Prince Valiant. My only consolation is that it will look fantastic in a month or two and probably stay that way for awhile, but it's a small one. A lasting haircut is very useful because I am going to a land where I do not fluently speak the language, a land where mullets are popular, even on girls, and no non-native Russian speaker seems to know the word for 'mullet,' so the stylist could so 'oh, you want this?' at any point in time and you could foolishly reply 'da' so she doesn't know that you don't know that word in russian, or russian in general.
ANYWAY, that's the news. Cheers, neudachniki.
current music: KINO!!!
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| Saturday, May 19th, 2007
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5:35 pm - actually, it really is a good thing i hate closure
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поздравьте меня! я требую!
MC=fulbright scholar.
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| Tuesday, May 1st, 2007
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6:24 am - and now for the moment you've been waiting for
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| Friday, April 13th, 2007
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5:22 pm
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Moe's is closed?!?!
current music: funeral march
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| Thursday, April 5th, 2007
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9:34 am - people say i'm crazy, doing what i'm doing
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Yesterday I got a surprise in the mail - a valentine! Unfortunately, it was a valentine that I had sent to someone else that for some reason was undeliverable so they returned it to me, a month and a half later, AND made me pay 24 cents for the postage it took to return to sender. But hey, I got a valentine.
And I heard from Fulbright. I received a letter from them that said, basically, "we heard you really like waiting, so we're just going to let you do that a little more." I am an alternate. People have one month to officially accept or reject their Fulbrights, so the earliest I will hear is may. The latest I will hear is September, which is, amazingly, when the grant starts, because people could drop out at the last minute for all sorts of reasons, like an ebola outbreak or sudden year-long family emergency. It's a good thing I hate closure.
Also, I am done with damn thesis!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe it!!!!!!! 80 pages of blood, sweat and tears (mostly tears) was delivered to all 3 of my readers Tuesday afternoon. Tonight I am going to drink a lot in celebration.
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| Monday, April 2nd, 2007
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10:39 am
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OMG. CLOSE. SO CLOSE. SOCLOSE.
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| Monday, March 26th, 2007
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8:18 pm - weee are the champ-e-ooons, my frient
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I have decided that when damn thesis is over (read: completely written, not completely defended and revised and blah blah blah) I am going to go on amazon and spend tons and tons of money on musica. It has seriously been years and years and years since I last bought anything new. I could just buy them now, but my motivation to actually finish this is diminishing faster than the role of Russian did in Uzbekistan. I want to get some stuff by obscure Russian artists, though really, they're not very obscure at all if you live in any of the former Soviet bloc. For example: Zemfira. For those of you who don't know, and I'm going to guess that that's like everyone, Zemfira is a singer with a band named, amazingly, Zemfira. She does some fantasticheski covers of some of the best Kino songs and sang with Queen (see title above for how it sounds in a Russian accent) and her own music is also soooooooo good. She is, of course, from Ufa. I am also considering buying the new shins album.
Then I plan to buy books. Maybe 2, of even 3. I'm hoping to by 'Death by Black Hole' and 'Gulag,' both of which I have wanted to read for some time.
This post was brought to you by a desperate need for a break.
Cheers vsem.
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| Monday, March 19th, 2007
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6:34 pm - this is my update
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Today I found out that I am a moron. Everything is ok now, because Dr. Coles is a kind and forgiving profesora. Gracias a Dios.
Also, I am famous.
http://www.ovpc.com/default.aspx
That's me in the window!
Anyway, today was the worst day ever. I engage in hyperbole, of course, but seriously, it wasn't good. On top of everything else, I discovered from a holy man yelling outside the union that I am going to hell, of all things, because I am a chick and wear pants. Wha? I refuse to give up pants, and if that's the one thing that's going to condemn me for all eternity, I don't see any point in being a good person anymore.
current music: i wish it was that one song about million dollarov swa
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| Saturday, March 17th, 2007
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11:21 pm - no one except the 11 other linguistics majors of the university will find this as fascinating as me
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| Friday, March 16th, 2007
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4:58 pm - damn thesis update
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Dr. Dyer just sent me an email about my first chapter which yes, I did finally turn in. He says it looks "very good," which is the very antithesis of what I was expecting him to say. YAY. Only about 43 more pages including an in-depth chapter on Stalin and how his language policy was much more oppressive but quite clever and far more organized than Lenin's.
I'll give a dollar to anyone who can think up a clever title that won't violate copyright laws.
It looks like I am going to be scratching 'toolboy' off my list of potential future careers, along with 'cashier' (which I decided was not for me at age 11, when I learned that you don't actually get to take the money out of the cash register home with you), 'actress' and 'pharmacist.'
Cheers, golubchiki.
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| Wednesday, March 14th, 2007
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1:13 pm - thank you, jesus. thank you, lord.
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I am having the best day in my entire life. Woohoo!
On a completely unrelated note, April is going to be a good month.
current music: muztv
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| Sunday, March 4th, 2007
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5:44 pm - i am old
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I have just spent the past three days celebrating my birthday. I loves it. Last year my birthday was a two-day-long celebration, and this year I decided to make it three days. I think my favorite part was getting carded at murff's at 4 pm on my actual birthday. I told the bartender it was my birthday and i was 22 years old, and he said happy birthday and said he still needed to see my id. His happy birthday lacked sincerity, I felt. I had a happy dinner at Madre's, lots of drinks and wonderful gifts. Yay.
I didn't fail my Spanish quiz! I got a 76, which is very salvageable. Woooooooo and I think I will FINALLY have chapter 1 of damn thesis ready to turn in tomorrow.
I really hope degrassi's top 40 go there-est moments is on again tonight.
Cheers, amigos.
current music: face control
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| Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
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3:06 pm - i blame dima bilan for this
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умееть and имееть are 2 completely different verbs. I really wish I had realized that before writing that essay last week.
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luckiemonky's journal