7. Evaluating progress

I feel my English classes like a flow that took me at very the beginning of my education, and never let get out from it. It is interesting to learn in this class, and you easily get involved by all these readings, lectures and writings, despite the fact that sometimes I find some kind of activities too fomal and not creative enough. Now this flow brought me so far that an attempt to remote all this learning process back to the early beginning and to compare my present and previous knowledge and skills seem to be rather difficult. And I just don't want to do it, because reflection always causes disquietude in me. Also, I don't know what pictures could fit the current theme of the blog. But nevertheless...

I think that the main thing I've learnt here is about comprhension. Firstly, I realised that my listening skills improved a bit. Every time I come to the class I realise that need to stretch less my atention to understand instuctor's speech than I did it last time. Secondly, I started organize my speech in order to be understood better. And the last thing I think I'm still failing to learn is to present my ideas clearly in writing. It is easier to provide your ideas in speech because you're using different kinds of support except the language proper.

F. Tyutchev wrote in his poem "Silentium":

How can a heart expression find?

How should another know your mind? 
Will he discern what quickens you? 
A thought once uttered is untrue. (brilliantly translated by Nabokov)

Well, but, according to the goals I set, silence is not a way out for me, and I still need to get over these insurmountable difficulties during all my life. The most intersting part of the task of better self-expression is to learn new useful and vivid words and phrases which could help me discuss wider range of problems with native speakers. The most boring, but still very important not only for writing in English — is organising my ideas in a logically clear way. And I hope this class and this programme will help me perfect my skills more. Also, I hope that the second part of our course will be even more involving and exciting, and as we've already learnt some basic information, the course will teach us to something brand new.

6. Monsters, inc.

I'd like to devote this post to my favourite animated film - Monsters, inc. I watched it not so long ago, I guess that it was about 7 years. I just came to the shop wanting to buy a videogame and bought a cassette with this wonferful film instead. Later I realise how lucky I was that saw this film. I watched it again and again, and soon learned practically all the phrases and dialogues by heart. Then there came other films and other beautiful stories, we put our cassette recorder away, and I haven't seen it for many years... And once suddenly I saw it on tv. I didn't have much time to see it, but made a point to see it again on my own cassette. Now I also want to see it in English :) 

Let me introduce you my favourite heroes:

Mike Wazowski, or *googley-woogley* as Celia (his snape-heared girlfriend) calls him, is definitely my most beloved hero :) He is of my favourite colour, and he has the same name as I have. In spite of his optimistic lifestyle he always takes things seriously. 

 

J.P. Sallivan or just Sulley (or Kitty, as Boo likes to call him), a top-level scarer, but caring and attentive, monster as well) They are the best friends and colleagues who are always together, and it always makes me smile when I see this huge and thoughtful monster with small talkative and smiling googley walking and speaking with each other.

Another main hero (-ine) whom you love from the first sight is charming toddler Boo (as Salley names her) with a very funny baby gibberish vocabulary :)





And finally, the most mysterious person of the whole film - Roz. She is a strict administrator for the scare floor F and keeps all the keys to the children's closet doors. At the end of the film it turns out that she is #001 agent of CDA - Child Detection Agency.

She also takes part in many *bloopers* (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG2T7upUVAk&feature=related) that are shown after the film. The soundtrack song - If I didn't have you - is just awesome.

I hope I encouraged you to watch Monsters, inc. if you haven't watched it before, or to see it again if you watched it.

Thank you for reading.

5. like never before

This summer I went on the most intersting and educational trip of all my life. For the whole week my parents and I moved from one Italian city to another visiting different places and museums in each of them. First, we landed in Venezian airport "Marco Polo" and the next two days we were floating in small and fast Venezian vaporetti discovering the ameneties of the "Adriatic queen". The next stop of our trip was in Florence, and this town (or city) with its countless galleries really made me think, I mean, ponder, study, discover and learn something new and compare it with the knowldge I had had alredy before. This story is about how I spent more than 5 hours in the Uffizi.

The first lesson which I learn was the lesson of Christianity. The stories such as The Adoration of the Magi, The Annunciation, The Coronation of the Virgin, The Baptism of Christ and portrayals of the Holy family inprinted in plenty of masterpieces created by Giotto, Duccio, Cimabue and Lippi not only gave me an opportunity to feel the history (as these canvas were painted more than 500 years ago) but also made me plunge into the source of the vast ocean of the European culture (to which I also belong but didn't realised it so before - I saw how our Orthodox culture and Catholic culture diverged - but they both have the common source). As well as I was given a good chance to learn many interesting English words :)

The Renaissance halls taught me the second lesson. Then I had to recall all the historical and mythological knowledge I had and add them to the knowledge I used in the previous halls. So, you can see, it was quite a competitive task! Botticelli, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Caravaggio (whose canvas I saw this winter in Pushkin fine arts museum), Rafaello, Perugino and Titian painted on the Christian themes and on Mythological themes as well. For example, Botticelli's works include The Birth of the Venus, The Triumph of Spring, The Madonna of the Pomegranate and already familiar to me The Adoration of the Magi. As  I visited all these rooms, I discoverd that there were more than 4 Annunciations and Adorations of different masters. My favourite Annunciation is by Sandro Botticelli (I mean, the one, which is in the Uffizi; later I discovered that he has another 2 Annunciations о_О), here it is:

The colours are warm, and portarayals of Gabriel and Virgin seem to me to be more sympathetic and heartfelt than anywhere else... Also it was on the desktop of our Russian teacher's computer :)

By this moment we had visited less than a half of the whole exhibition. I was still trying to see as much canvas as possible, but the amount of the mental work which I've alredy had done made my head ache. I was very glad to find there masterpieces of Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck and other artists of XVII-XVIII centuries, but it was very hard to find out what really were on those canvas...

Well, it's a good reason to come back there again, isn't it? There is still a lot to learn. But due to its richness my first lesson there I will remeber forever. It is never late to learn.

Thank you for reading.

4. Here comes the autumn

My calendar :)

This Monday was the first day of October, and rain and a cold, piercing wind were an unpleasant surprise to us, who got used to the warm days of the late September. Practically all the trees turn golden yellow from summery green, fading and preparing for a long dark and frosty winter. People have also been started preparing: they look for the warm sweaters and jackets, buy and lay in stock honey and cranberry or currant jam (which my Granny prudently produces for us in summer) and try to be mentally prepared when suddenly (it always occurs suddenly) winter comes (though it seems to me that the only people who are not preparing are communal services which started to repair (or it's better to say tinker) pipes with hot water..).

Cafes these days are crowded, because everybody wants their warm cup of berry tea. This week I've already been to 2 of them: my favourite 2-storeyed Shokoladnitsa (La Belle Chocolatière or Das Schokoladenmädchen - the cafe network is named after this canvas) on Kitai-gorod and Tsiferblat (Clock-dial-plate), where you pay for the time spent in it. And I decided to buy a french press - a very popular tool in such cafes - to make my own favourite "sea-buckthorn"  (as my vocabulary says) tea which helps me, I hope, to get the vitamins and gather the strength for a cold winter and difficult studies.

So, I want to ask you, how are you preparing for the winter? You can leave your answers in the comment section below :D