When my conversational Russian language teacher, Irina Vladimirovna, got up to express her amazement with our work and improvement for the past seven weeks at our goodbye party, I nearly cried. It was hot in the room, it smelled like good tea and cake, and one of the best teachers I ever had was telling me and my classmates that we had improved beyond her expectations.

We had just finished performing our final skits and poetry recitations to our teachers and praktikanti and carried in our hands certificates that would be permanent reminders of our success here in Moscow. I did not tear up (How? I still don’t know). I had a rough time here for a couple weeks where I was absolutely convinced that I had not improved in Russian at all, but now I know that’s not true. It takes me a while to not be shy and just talk, but once I get started, it becomes easier and easier to speak. I used to be able to understand barely anything anyone told me, and now I can understand Russian 50% of the time. I know when I am making phonetic errors, and I eventually catch my grammatical mistakes. I have decided that I will be speaking with my dad’s Ukrainian best friend over the summer to keep up my Russian until I can take Chekhov in the fall trimester.
At our little good-bye party, you really felt the joys of Russian culture. We loudly sang great Russian songs accompanied by guitar (I have attached two of my favorite Soviet songs below), heated up pots and pots of hot water for tea, and felt no qualms about eating a second slice of cake. Russians love to celebrate and to make you feel at ease. If you make the effort to do something, they will always try to help and put in the same amount of effort as well. I have had fabulous and truly gifted professors here. And while I did not tear up at the party, I am tearing up a little bit now.