8. The Book

The end scene.

You see, this is the last book I finished reading past week. I'd been reading it for more than 2 weeks because it was very difficult to read about all these mishaps that haunt the main hero, Holden, during his straying among buildings of New York. He wanders along its streets, like in a desert; he is so close to his home, but he is desperately homeless. Every injustice makes him suffer, and causes a storm in his soul. He is very irritable and he can involuntarily hurt the others. He is a kind of ethical tuning-fork for the author...

And for me... My sister, who'd adviced me to read it, said that I'd better read it now because later I just wouldn't understand it. And by the end of my reading I realised why. At that moment main hero explains what he wants doing in his life. He wants saving children, playing in the rye, from plunging over the cliff into the abyss, from the cruelties of the adult world. Now I'm by myself stay on the edge of the new life, but now I'm more confident about it because this book and its heroes will serve me like a compass in the ocean of passions, intrigues, and hypocrisy, that is espcially necessary right now.

Thank you for reading the post about my reading)

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

3. Homes, places we've grown

There is a place that I love with all my heart, where I feel special, cosy and secure. This place is my school where I spent 10 wonderful years...

Yesterday I came to visit my teachers with two former classmates who joined me later. We arranged to come by the time when all classes were dismissed, so that we didn't distract our teachers from their new students. As usual I passed through the school gate and met chains of students who came out of school laughing and feeling a great relief that this goddamn school is over for this day... If they could imagine what I feel now.

I entered into the square yard of the school, where once beautiful flowers and bushes were fading. Then, I went by the statue of "mal'chish-kibal'chish" (a hero of the civil war, the heritage of the soviet past, and though the historical context is quite disguisting, this story and this boy is an example of brave heart and true devotion - that's why we admire him) remembering that my classmate promised to hang herself on it if our Physics teacher would give her B for the final exam. I smiled to the school guard but it seemed to me that he didn't pay me much attention (maybe because I still look like a schoolboy). I went trough the hall to the stairs looking around to catch the changes that occured in school since the time I'd been studying there. But nothing  changed except for the one: a large sheet of paper, where the photos with the graduates of the previous year were, was replaced with the new where our photos are. All other things were the same as usual. It soothed me, made me sure that whenever I would come this place all things would be as they used to be when I graduated....

The snow-covered schoolyard in early december

Now, back to my school. It has 3 passages on each floor (the whole building has a square shape with a yard inside) and with a great delight I paced all of them inhaling the school air and peeping in opened classrooms. My destination was on the 2d floor where our classroom used to be. Fortunately my class teacher was there and we could have a nice talk with a cup of tea and some bisquits. That day I met a lot of my classmates too. 

My school is definitely my second home.

Oh, all that I know,

There's nothing here to run from,

'cause everybody here's got

Somebody to lean on... (c)

Thank you for reading.

2. The second post or what happened past week

{What's happening, guys?! So today we're gonna start with something really simple: (1+x)^n >= 1+n*x. Try to prove it using the method of mathematical induction :D }

Hello, people! :)

Now I'm hesitating over the choice which topic I'd like to discuss here this time. Since the free choice is the hardest choice for me as inexperienced blogger the best I can do is to describe some events that happened some days ago.

Try to find me in this crowd)

Last Saturday night (for some unknown reason I've remembered Katy Perry's song Last Friday night :) I was in Gorky park (and here I recalled Scorpion's Wind of change) enjoying German street festival where everybody could help themselves with Bavarian sausages (Bayerisch Würstel) and famous german beer with pasties (с пирожками :) - this only for adults, of course, children could delight in communicating with a big yellow Haribo (registrated trademark) teddy-bear who gave them packings of fruit-jellies (that actually had the same bear-ed form) for good behaviour. The highlight of the whole evening was the show performed by german singer Jan Delay and the orchester (with an eccentric name Disco Nr. 1) which plays with him over the last few years. It was absolutely fantastic! A singing (and jumping :) with the perfect backup accompanied by trombones, piano and guitars and plenty of kinds of drums! Form time to time Jan tried to interact with us with the help of a presenter but soon we all understood that no assistance is needed, language barrier was successfully surpassed) And at the end my friend managed to catch the thrown drumstick)

The Theater, Arbat street, 26

The Building of Foreign Department,
Smolenskaya ploschchad (square)

Next day I visited The State Theater named after E. Vakhtangov (famous russian and soviet actor and director who championed Stanyslavsky's ideas) to watch the renewed version of Shakespear's play Twelfth Night, or What You Will. And though it's a comedy (the comic effect was even heightened because all female roles were performed by men - it was absolutely hilarious when Viola (played by Andrey Kuzichev) in the disguise of a male was reasoning about how cruel the love may be, and how flighty women in love may be) there are some significant and serious points to be discussed. We laugh but at the same time we start thinking about the complicasy of love (what is love? baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more :), about how our identity can dissolve in it, about the love which can bring to madness, fear and spiritual insight. In a word, I loved it. After the play I could catch glimpses of night Moscow while I was bussing to the metro station.

Farewell, guys ladies and gentlemen ;) Thank you for reading.