Language Journal #4: Are you a spy?

Buying a house and moving in has meant that my afternoons have been very busy, and my language practice has been reduced to listening to audio-books during my commute. On the bright side, I recently spoke Russian with 3 different persons for the first time!

As I was unpacking and cleaning up my new place, some of the neighbors stopped by to welcome me and we chatted for a bit. During our conversations, the fact came up that one of the neighbors spoke Russian. I mentioned that I was learning a little bit and she then greeted me with a friendly привет (Hello), I responded likewise, and since we’d been talking about my job, I asked где вы работаете (Where do you work?). My neighbor was somewhat surprised and asked “Are you a spy?”.

As funny as that was, it was also encouraging for me, since I had only been listening to audio lessons, and had never spoken or tried to speak to someone else before. After that day I started scheduling Russian lessons through iTalki. I took lessons with teachers from Belarus and from Russia. Some days later I spoke a bit with my multilingual co-worker, and while talking about other languages, we mentioned Russian. We said some phrases in Russian but I had to repeat mine slowly for my co-worker to understand, which reminded me that I need to continue practicing my pronunciation.

Even though that wasn’t much, it was still good motivation to continue practicing. My plan so far is to continue with audio lessons and complement them with lessons on iTalki. That’s all for today’s language journal. Until next time!