In The Beginning: A prequel to my travels

Russian language has always been considered one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn. Mind you, there are many other languages like Chinese, Sanskrit, and other Asian languages, which are likely even more difficult, however Russian holds its own.

For nearly 25 years I’ve been studying this crazy hard language and still feel I have yet to even scratch the surface. Whenever I tell people I am fluent in Russian, inevitably the next question(s) are as follows:

A. Why did you decide to study Russian?

B. Did you learn it from your parents?

C. Are you a Communist?

I always respond to the questions by stating that I learned Russian from my father, a KGB double agent spy who met my Mom while serving time in a Russian Gulag (prison) for being an enemy of the state. Actually………ummmmmmmm…none of that story is true……however, it sounds pretty sexy!

The Old USSR Coat of Arms

The truth to the matter is that my father never knew a word of Russian besides “da” and “nyet” and he never was a KGB spy or a prisoner in Siberian Gulag. Instead he was a humble well-loved high school chemistry/physics teacher in a small town outside of Seattle. However, to his credit, he loved to read spy novels in his free time. So, I suppose you could say he was a wannabe “KGB spy” in his heart. And, no I am not a Communist, but I’ll admit I am a liberal, which I guess makes me a Communist in the eyes of some Americans.

That brings us back to question “A”, why did I start studying Russian? I started studying because every other summer the Bellevue High School Russian class planned a trip to the Soviet Union. I had always dreamt of traveling to exotic lands when I grew up, so a trip to the Soviet Union fit in nicely with this goal.

In anticipation of a trip to the Soviet Union and enrollment in Russian 1, I bought every Russian phrasebook I could find. I studied all the books and to enhance my language experience I affixed stickers to different pieces of furniture in my house. Even 20 years later, my Mom is still scraping fossilized stickers off of furniture.

Although I had started studying Russian on my own, Russian language class was still a year away. In the meantime I had to take 8^th grade Spanish. I tried to master Spanish but we just did not click. After a tumultuous several months, our relationship ended rather bitterly with my receiving a big fat F…as in fail!

When the day finally came to discuss my enrollment at Bellevue High School with my counselors, I instantly mentioned I wanted to take Russian. They examined my transcripts and saw a GIANT glaring, huge red flag screaming at them, an F in Spanish!! No way were they going to permit me to commit academic suicide and take Russian. After trying to coax me out of this “horrible feat”, they finally compromised, two weeks max and if I wasn’t excelling, it was lights out on the Russian experiment! In fact, they already had an alternate class lined up for me when…I mean “if” I decided to drop out of Russian.

I badly wanted to prove the counselors wrong, plus I was determined to visit the Soviet Union that summer! I knew it would not be an easy task to pass Russian after bombing middle school Spanish. I figured I would take one year of Russian, get a decent grade, go on the trip and subsequently drop out of Russian the next academic year. 

However, something funny happened between August 30^th, 1990 (my first day of Russian) and June 30^th, 1991 (the day we departed for the Soviet Union), I actually started to really become interested in the language, the culture and the people! In fact, on my very first unit exam, I received an A! Sure, maybe it was a fluke, after all a broken clock is always right twice a day. Nonetheless it was a solid start.

The Russian Alphabet

The two-week deadline came and went and what do you know I not only was still enrolled in Russian, but receiving all A’s! How could someone be passing Russian with all A’s after they flunked Spanish? I guess it was that drive to get to the Soviet Union, yet it still shocked just about everyone including my Russian teacher!

As the months passed by, I continued my mastery of Russian, which I credit to my sheer will, my teacher, and of course my parents who always believed in me. But, a little known weekly Russian Language learning series on our local education channel called “Let’s Get Acquainted” or "Давайте Познакомимся" is what really laid the foundation for my language skills. The series was aimed at Russian language learners and featured a set of short stories focusing on a certain topic, i.e. travel, Soviet/Russian history, culture, etc… And, like clockwork, every Friday night (as most of my peers were out getting drunk and partying) you could find me glued to my TV watching an hour’s worth of “Let’s Get Acquainted”.

Let's Get Acquainted Beginning

To this day I still enjoy watching “Let’s Get Acquainted” (even though I’ve watched each episode at least ten times) and learn something new every time! In fact, three years ago, I planned an entire trip to Uzbekistan based upon an episode of the series. 

Stay tuned for the next installment of my Russian language experience and the prize of going to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1991. Till then, thanks for reading!