Mascha and the Bear

It happened! I had my first (two) classes! It was from 9.00 till 13.00 and then I slept from 14.00 till 18.00.

No but really it was quite intense. My first class was Russian Applied Grammar and Text Analysis. The semester is split up into three "sessionals" and an exam. Sessionals are apparently monthly exams that count towards your final grade. This is already more work than I've done the last three years in Belgium. And that's not including homework, projects, assignments and the final exam. I think it's safe to say I'll be speaking fluent Russian by the end.

However, I'm not sure how I feel about this teacher. I think her smiling muscles (definitely correct medical term. I looked it up)  have been surgically removed. It's like in Men in Black 3 when Will Smith asks for Agent "K" and describes him as smiling like this:

I'm a bit scared of her. 

Then we had communication skills. Yeah okay that was pretty decent. We started off watching a cartoon: маша и медведь. In the episode the girl, Mascha had done something "bad." So, in due fashion, we were told to write a sentence in Russian about something "bad" we did as a child. 

Couldn't think of a single thing. 

I was THE best child. 

Ever. 

Well okay. I did bite my bothers' back once. 

But I was four and I've apologized since. 

Our homework assignment is what kind of threw me. We are going to be debating marriage. Namely "love marriages vs arranged marriages." The class was divided into two groups and guess which group I get to defend! In Russian! The one I know absolutely nothing about! Supa dupah excited! 

Wednesday I had grammar again and it went much better. We're working on который (pronounced ka-to-rih) and its declensions. I didn't die this time exactly. I'd say pre-death status. And at least now I've become used to the different accents so I can properly follow along. 

We then had Russian cultural heritage. It wasn't bad exactly, but it was getting to the third hour of class (in one go) and then the teacher decides to turn off the fans because we otherwise couldn't hear a video. Mind you it's summer in India. And we're 30 people in class. 

By 1pm I had melted into a puddle of me. And hand sanitizer.

So far I have to say I'm very happy studying here. It's not too different from my classes in Belgium actually which is nice, makes it easier to adjust. The main difference is the amount of respect people have here for the teachers. We stand when the teacher enters and say "ma'am" after everything we say to her. I kind of feel like I'm back in middle school. All our classwork gets checked by the teacher. So we go up one by one and hand over our notebooks. It's not a bad thing, it's just different. Especially for something like Russian grammar where it's way too easy to make idiotic mistakes. 

The biggest change was the pronunciation of the Russian. As I said before we were discussing который (pronounced ka-to-rih), but in Hindi a "katori" is a small bowl. So the teacher kept saying "we'll be discussing and handling katori. Katori is blablabla..." 

I kept thinking to myself "why in the hell are we talking about bowls? Is this Russian? Am I in the right class? Shit. I need to be somewhere else. Well. This is awkward." 

Turns out I was in the right class. They're pronunciation is just a tad bit different than what I am used to. 

Friday I have more classes. Including the marriage debate. 

But no worries, as per usual, I'll keep ya'll posted.