Last Day of Class

Lidia presents me with my diploma on the last day of class

Today was the last day of class. Man...3 weeks just flew by. My brain has been completely full the past few days and I feel like most information was dripping out through my ears and flowing away. I am sure some of my last few lessons stuck though...but it make take some time to soak in.

The teachers were fascinated about Alaska and wanted me to give a presentation about Alaska in Russian.

Overall all this experience has been really fun despite the ups/downs. I am finding Russian an extremely challenging and demanding language to learn, especially at an accelerated rate. I knew this would be hard--but nothing like this. I worked my ass off 12+ hours a day. This was definitely not a leisure trip and I really feel like I need a vacation before jumping right back into work. Unfortunately I didn't schedule any downtime after returning home. I have to admit though, that I really enjoyed grinding away most of the time. There was something pleasurable about this in an S/M sort of way.

Here is the map I drew of Alaska during my presentation--на русском языке - конечно!

The teachers here were unbelievably motivated and dedicated to each student. They were also extremely thorough and personable--much better in all aspects than I could have ever anticipated. I will really miss my teacher (Natasha) from the past 2 weeks. She was like a mother and was absolutely intrigued by what she considered my exotic life back in Alaska.