Slipping Back In
I was afraid that a weekaway would affect my already poor language abilities, but within the first 12 hours back I did a pretty good job maintaining serveral prolonged conversations with strangers.
When arriving at the airport, I was of course accosted by numerous and eager taxi drivers calling out "girl" to me and looking at all the luggage I was hauling. "не нада," I responded, and kept going until one extremely persistant taxi driver confronted me out by the buses. He asked me where I was going to (my final destination) and shook his head and said that he'd get me to the train station at least a 1/2 hour earlier. He also gave me a fair price, so I decided to do it, as with my delayed flight, time was of the essence to get home as quickly as I desired. We had a nice conversation for th trip and he told me that I'd probably have to go to Odessa again to get home because the N-- train left an hour ago, which I was already aware of. I had a back up plan to stay in Kyiv with a volunteer, but the idea of hauling about 100 pounds of luggage on the notorious theive-infested Kyiv metro at night was less appealing than buying an extra ticket to Odessa (I had prior purchased one to N-- for the next night) to get home a day early.
After a few words with the woman behind the каса she told me I could get no tickets to N-- for tonight and when I asked about Odessa, she would not entertain it. A man in line then asked what it was that I wanted, because my Russian is so poor. He spoke English, so he told me my only option was Odessa, and gave me the train number and told me what to say and then left, as he had already gotten his tickets. Was glad for his help, evefn if this time teh каса lady was incredibly rude and even made fun of me. I asked for a coupe ticket instead of platzkarte, and I thought she told me they were more expensive, which I responded that I knew and then she looked at me for money. I then asked "how much" and she said, "you said you understood!" and then repeated what it was that she said originally. I looked baffled. The woman next to me plugged the number into her cell phone and showed it to me. I still don't understand how "doraguyuh" and "sorok-adeen" sound the same. So that was frustrating, but lead me to my second prolonged attempt at Russian.
Right before the train from Kyiv took off, it looked like it was just going to be me all by my lonesome in the coupe, but then two young men came in and started getting out food and drink, which they promptly offered to me. I declined the cognac, but took the coca-cola. They found out I was a foreigner and so one of them started asking all sorts of questions and we talked for a pretty long time. At some point in time though, they got up to go and smoke and actually showed me a little pipe that one of them had made and that they had an illegal substance. I thought "oh joy!" not really knowing the Ukrainian laws on such matters. I promptly started making up my bed and getting ready to sleep. It is the first time I have seen any such stuff here and suddenly realized that this could also be why they both were so anti-getting drunk--they both were into something else. Of course they would not let me sleep when they came back, chatting to me now a bit quicker and using more complicated speech. The one who was talking to me was also now wearing shades, even though it was after 11pm.
They finally seemd to accept that I was going to sleep and went out again to smoke more and after 10 minutes or so another woman appeared at the door and she would be our fourth coupe-mate. Eventually, they did come back, smelling and whatnot, and decided that they too must go to sleep.
Somewhere during our conversation though, before they had gone out, I realized that I was doing okay language wise and that I can do ok when I have a sympathetic listener. I also need to remember that while I have been here now for over seven months, I only studied Russian for three months, not having formally continued my study, something I still have ambivalent feeligns about. But it was reassuring to me that I am not a complete idiot!
When arriving at the airport, I was of course accosted by numerous and eager taxi drivers calling out "girl" to me and looking at all the luggage I was hauling. "не нада," I responded, and kept going until one extremely persistant taxi driver confronted me out by the buses. He asked me where I was going to (my final destination) and shook his head and said that he'd get me to the train station at least a 1/2 hour earlier. He also gave me a fair price, so I decided to do it, as with my delayed flight, time was of the essence to get home as quickly as I desired. We had a nice conversation for th trip and he told me that I'd probably have to go to Odessa again to get home because the N-- train left an hour ago, which I was already aware of. I had a back up plan to stay in Kyiv with a volunteer, but the idea of hauling about 100 pounds of luggage on the notorious theive-infested Kyiv metro at night was less appealing than buying an extra ticket to Odessa (I had prior purchased one to N-- for the next night) to get home a day early.
After a few words with the woman behind the каса she told me I could get no tickets to N-- for tonight and when I asked about Odessa, she would not entertain it. A man in line then asked what it was that I wanted, because my Russian is so poor. He spoke English, so he told me my only option was Odessa, and gave me the train number and told me what to say and then left, as he had already gotten his tickets. Was glad for his help, evefn if this time teh каса lady was incredibly rude and even made fun of me. I asked for a coupe ticket instead of platzkarte, and I thought she told me they were more expensive, which I responded that I knew and then she looked at me for money. I then asked "how much" and she said, "you said you understood!" and then repeated what it was that she said originally. I looked baffled. The woman next to me plugged the number into her cell phone and showed it to me. I still don't understand how "doraguyuh" and "sorok-adeen" sound the same. So that was frustrating, but lead me to my second prolonged attempt at Russian.
Right before the train from Kyiv took off, it looked like it was just going to be me all by my lonesome in the coupe, but then two young men came in and started getting out food and drink, which they promptly offered to me. I declined the cognac, but took the coca-cola. They found out I was a foreigner and so one of them started asking all sorts of questions and we talked for a pretty long time. At some point in time though, they got up to go and smoke and actually showed me a little pipe that one of them had made and that they had an illegal substance. I thought "oh joy!" not really knowing the Ukrainian laws on such matters. I promptly started making up my bed and getting ready to sleep. It is the first time I have seen any such stuff here and suddenly realized that this could also be why they both were so anti-getting drunk--they both were into something else. Of course they would not let me sleep when they came back, chatting to me now a bit quicker and using more complicated speech. The one who was talking to me was also now wearing shades, even though it was after 11pm.
They finally seemd to accept that I was going to sleep and went out again to smoke more and after 10 minutes or so another woman appeared at the door and she would be our fourth coupe-mate. Eventually, they did come back, smelling and whatnot, and decided that they too must go to sleep.
Somewhere during our conversation though, before they had gone out, I realized that I was doing okay language wise and that I can do ok when I have a sympathetic listener. I also need to remember that while I have been here now for over seven months, I only studied Russian for three months, not having formally continued my study, something I still have ambivalent feeligns about. But it was reassuring to me that I am not a complete idiot!
posted by Molly | 2:48 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home