Atyrau Journal - Learning Russian :(

We didn't go to Moscow, it just looks like it from the Kremlin picture.

We are, however, learning Russian. Because of Soviet dominance for seventy years, Russian is still the most frequently used language in Kazakhstan. Kazakh is used by a lot of people locally, but Russian is still taught in schools.

We chose to learn Russian because it will likely be more useful to us after our assignment in Kazakhstan is complete. What a project that turned out to be! We started with online lessons. During the second lesson, Rhonda was taken to task by the instructor for not knowing the Cyrillic alphabet - after only two days of study! Shaming seems to be the dominant teaching technique. For Jim, Russian lessons were more stressful than his day job for the first few months. With 20+ years of teaching experience, Rhonda quickly softened up the teacher with comments like: "Are we your favorite class?" and "When is our class party?" Eventually, the teacher seemed to actually like us. And thankfully, the online lessons came to an end. Now, it's Duo Lingo and private tutor after our summer break in the US.

Whatever you do, don't ask us to say anything in Russian besides hello, goodbye, please, thank you, and where is the restroom! Spacibo and Dosvedaniya!!