Language Update

I'm still not fluent by any stretch of the imagination, but I have now graduated to ordering meats and cheeses at the deli counter! Trust me, this is no small accomplishment, as the ladies that work the counter have about as much patience for my broken Russian as my wife does trying to teach me the broken Russian. I'm always concerned that they will get annoyed with me before I can finish my order and they will purposely give me the wrong stuff.

I have also moved up to speaking to the babushka at the yogurt kiosk on the road. I have to admit that I was quite nervous the first time, as I'm not so good with the names of fruit, but all went well and I walked away with exactly what I ordered. Some of you may wondering why I would buy my yogurt at a kiosk on the road and the answer is fairly straight forward. I often can not find low fat yogurt in the stores so I go on the Moscow version of a 'walk-about' in search of yogurt with a fat content under 5%.

I'm feeling more confident now with my language skills and I understand more each day. The classes are much more challenging as we are well into learning all the verbs and they keep bringing up this 'perfect' and 'imperfect' forms. Whatever, all I know is that one is used for current action and habits and the other for past and one-time only actions. It's confusing as hell some days and I often walk out feeling as though I know fewer words than I did at the beginning of class, but at some point I figure it will all come together. Either from a light bulb clicking on in my head or a cast iron skillet smacking my head (that would be from the wife).