Feb 2006

17th

Good Intentions only last until it gets too hard to keep them. When I started this journal I decided to write every day and I did for awhile. The as we got busy I slacked off and as internet got harder to get to I took that as a sign to write weekly instead of daily. My wife keeps everybody informed so I could get by with less and here it is months between entries, a comment from a note I added to one of Virginia’s e-mails got the response that he forgot I was really here and had decided that Virginia was just hiding the fact that I was gone. I will try to do better. Let me tell you about my life here. Learning a language in the Peace Corps manner is time consuming and all encompassing. What I mean by that is you have to communicate or else. I have to teach in Russian and often before I can teach I need to learn about the subject before I start. I now know more about English Grammar then I ever cared to know. Did you know that there are 26 cases in the English Language. I do not ever remember learning about cases when I went to school but they learn them here and will be happy to correct you if you are wrong and no matter how sure you are of the pronunciation of a word they will question you and look it up before they will believe it. Usually they are polite and will not discuss it with you but if you are wrong and they are right they will always tell you. Most of the time we can just say it’s American instead of British because all of their English Text Books are written by The English. I get to teach computers. We started out with Word, then PowerPoint. then the big thing happened and every thing changed. We received our Grant. The Library applied for and received a LEAP Grant from the US Embassy. This grant specializes in Internet Access and primarily pays for two years of internet access for the library. “Mark you must stop teaching English and PowerPoint and Teach us the internet. Classes intensified and got bigger as I took on the tack of talking about the intricacies of the internet in Russian. I still speak very poorly but I can understand and write better then I can speak so I rely heavily on PowerPoint. I spend hours working on each subject preparing slides in Russian with screenshots arrows and so forth and hope that I can stretch the information out to last until I have the next subject ready. I have PowerPoint’s with 3-500 slide on each PowerPoint because Russian words are so long and I do not have a projector so they have to read the information on the screen. I have a copy in English so I can follow along for sure and I add stories in my broken Russian when ever I can. I use Photos of the people I love to spice up the PowerPoint’s and we talk about each ideas. Most of my students have never touched a computer before I came here so they have to learn everything about it, how to move the mouse, how to type, where the keys are and with the internet they now have to learn how to type in English as well because even if the words are in Russian the letters are in the English alphabet. My tutor says that my Russian is getting better with all of the practice at story telling but I can not hear it. I do know that I am more willing to speak now then I was before. Did you know, Of course not, how could you, Here in the land of Russia that it is not only OK but correct to say More Better or less better instead of Good better and best and “I Be Mark is the correct way to say your name. Side tracked. Now I am working on a website for the Library. I have to write the web site, design it cajole them into providing me with the information they want on it. Get it typed then I get to translate it into English, Russian and Ukrainian. I have to write a web site that is mirrored in Three languages so in reality I have to create three separate web sites and link them together. I know that I sound like I am wining but in reality I am loving it. I am learning to write this site in HTML instead of the simple way I wrote our site so it is a good experience for me. The three language thing is hard because I have to teach each page to let you se it on your computer with out changing your computer to do it. I recently forgot about that and sent out a compressed file that I compressed with a Russian copy of WinRar not thinking about the fact that most of my friends do not have their computer set up to recognize the Russian Character set so it shows up as ???? and weird characters. Then I forgot that even if you could read the characters you would have a hard time with the Russia instructions. I can make a web page work correctly now at least but have to force myself to remember. I type so much in Russian that I find my English Typing skills are getting worse and I look up to find odd letters in my words. I am especially fond of typing the H when I mean N because that is the Russian N. Thank Microsoft for Spell Check. Even if it is often wrong it always points out those gross mistakes of typing I am making more and more. Well I must end this missive and I will try to write more frequenter as they say here or more often as I should say in English.