Settling In

Things are going well and I'm beginning to settle into the routine here.

I work everyday from around 8.30am to 4/5pm. 

I'm logging and editing from a course called "The Problem of Evil" taughy by John Feinburg at Trinity in Chicago. Igor filmed it along with another course while he was in America a while ago. There are about 5 tapes for each lecture, so I have to load each one on to the computer and then edit them all together. So far I have worked 3days and been able to get 2lectures finished, which is rather good progress. They seem very appreciative of the work I'm doing as th

e courses are in english and while their other editor(s) know a little english it is very hard for them to keep up with Dr Feinburg and know where and when to start and stop cuts. 

After work I generally fall asleep for a bit due to a mixture of jet lag and work. Believe it or not, staring at a computer screen/camera can wear you out a tad. The past few days I've taken to exploring the nearby areas a tad, not too far but it gets me out of the building at least for a bit. Then it's generally dinner time and I spend the rest of the night doing some general reading and trying to learn some Russian. I'm rather proud that in the three days I've been teaching myself russian, I've managed to learn the majority of the alphabet and basic numbers. I'm sure my pronunciation is pretty horrible, but I'm not too sure as everyone speaks to me in English and I have to go out of my way to speak Russian. I try a little here

 and there ... I'll try more as I get more comfortable around the people. My big break through today was learning some verbs as well as the sentence "I don't know how to speak Russian" which would've been helpful yesterday as multiple people tried to talk to me on my stroll through the streets, oh well. 

So really no complaints although it would be nice to meet someone (preferably closer to my own age) to hang out with a bit. I'm all for introspective speculations and alone time, but sometimes you just need some other people. I'll make friends eventually, so no real worries.

On saturday, I'm going to downtown Kursk with a translator to see the city a little and hopefully learn how to use the public transportation by myself. I plan on making her teach me russian more than she translates, but we'll see how that goes.

Oh and check the view I got from my window yesterday. Double bows!

All's well on the slavic front, peace out girl scouts!